Leaders Are Already in Front of You
As most successful professionals will tell you, leadership isn’t just about having people follow you or telling people what to do. It’s about creating new leaders who can step up to the plate in their ventures or take over for you when you leave. Hiring a new leader from outside the organization shows you don’t have a bench you’ve built up on your own. Barry Diller puts it more bluntly: “If you hire people at senior positions, you are a failure.”
This connects to the five stages of leadership outlined by John Maxwell in How Successful People Lead: position, permission, production, people development and, finally, pinnacle.
Essentially, as you move through these stages, you become less egocentric, have more trust and come to represent values bigger than yourself. People become more and more willing to follow because they are comfortable and see everything you’ve done and stand for.
People need time to develop as leaders, and not everybody will be at the same level at the same time. But Maxwell believed that anybody could lead. They just need to decide what type of leader they want to be and the opportunity to develop that vision.
That’s where you come in. As a leader, you should constantly be on the prowl for good potential in your people. When you find someone with specific skills or talents, it’s your job to match them to higher positions they’d thrive in and prepare them for that work. If you do this with intent from day one, you should have qualified, trustworthy people within your organization to handle significant responsibilities.
The Benefits of Building Leadership From the Inside
Hiring from within your business to fill C-suite positions provides the benefit of having people who really know the organization. People you’d hire at that level have been around a while. They know the ins and outs of what you’re doing, know the people, and live the company’s culture. It’s easier for them to get going in the job and keep everything humming.
This insider knowledge addresses one of the biggest risks you’d take on in hiring an outsider — the person you bring to the C-suite might feel like they need to change everything up just to make an impression or justify being there. Insiders usually already have a solid reputation with the team. They understand that they shouldn’t violate what’s already working.
Additionally, when people see one of their own climb the ranks and make it to the top, it sends a strong signal that everyone has growth potential within the company. They can think, “This person started at the bottom and climbed the ladder — I can, too!” As a result, more people are motivated to stick around and get on the management track.
Formalizing the Work
Part of preparing people in your organization for the C-suite comes from training and coaching. Having formal training available is a must. It can be videos, online courses, in-person meetings or whatever else you’d like that’s easy and relatable for your people. But it should outline the core values you expect individuals to operate under, the protocols or procedures you expect them to follow and strategies they can use to get great results.
The big question is, who heads all this training up and oversees it? Initially, if you’re the CEO, it’ll probably fall into your lap. You’re the one who arguably has the best understanding of operations and where people are needed. This can be tough because you’ve got all your other CEO responsibilities, too. Eventually, though, you can consider hiring a chief human resources officer who can wear the training hat as you scale. Their whole job is to make sure people are developing for the future and reach their leadership potential. Either way, there has to be someone at the organization who develops leaders and helps them work themselves out of a job to be promoted.
If Nobody’s Responsible for Your Leadership Training, Start Now
Needing to fill a C-suite position isn’t all that uncommon. You can avoid some of that time-consuming executive search if you’ve been developing potential candidates within your organization from the start. If you don’t have someone who is responsible for guiding your team through the five stages of leadership, take on that responsibility yourself or assign it to someone you trust. It’s a simple way to ensure smooth transitions and progress for the long haul.
