Leaders at All Levels

Leaders at All Levels

How to detect truly exceptional talent and give them a chance to develop the skills they need to become leaders.

Author(s): Ram Charan

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Date of publication: 2008

Manageris opinion

Companies are going through a real crisis, warns Ram Charam. The pool of talent that is supposed to provide the leaders of tomorrow is both dangerously shallow and of low quality. Now, no one would deny the importance of the stakes involved! So how did large corporations manage to get into this pickle?
The traditional skill development model is observed to be adequate for most employees, but ill-adapted to detect truly exceptional talent and give them a chance to develop the skills they need to become leaders.
To surmount this challenge, Ram Charam recommends adopting a formative model similar to that used in the artistic fields. Indeed, concrete experience, supported by mentoring or coaching to draw the requisite lessons, is the only way to develop the immense range of complex skills required of CEOs or business unit leaders.
Given the urgency of the challenge, it is essential to identify potential leaders very early on. There is no time to lose in exposing future leaders to experiences that will enable them to forge the required skills. Readers will thus find in chapter 3 an analysis of the types of qualities to detect