- Industry: Technical / Specialist / Healthcare -

"The employees that we're moving into leadership roles are unsuccessful and it's affecting our bottom line."

Many organizations agree that selecting and developing leaders is critical to the success of their business. Often, promotional opportunities or succession planning will focus on how well a person performs in their current specialist role and their tenure with the organization. The problem is that success in a specialist production role does not always guarantee success in a team lead or manager role. Technical knowledge and skills are still important for leadership roles, but as a manager rises in the organization a whole new skill set is required for the challenge of leadership. Being an effective team lead or people manager requires the following unique set of skills:

• Ability to make quick decisions in crisis situations

• Building and maintaining trust with direct reports

• Being approachable

• Leading new initiatives and taking risks

• Ease of interacting with people at all levels (front line to senior level)

• Imparting technical information to non-technical stakeholders

• Inspiring and motivating a diverse group of front-line employees

"How can I evaluate my high potentials against these critical leadership skills?"

Thomas International’s Job Evaluation process can help you identify and select the best employees for team lead and manager roles. In many cases, organizations have defined the technical skills required for leadership roles but the soft skills or behaviors for leadership roles are not clear. The Job Evaluation process begins with HR and Senior Management completing a DISC based job assessment to gain clarity on skills and competencies for success in the team lead and manager roles. The next step is to measure current team leads and plant mangers that are successful in their roles using a DISC based assessment. The job assessment completed by HR and Senior Management is meshed with the results from the assessments completed by current team leads and plant managers. With the Job Evaluation process complete, organizations have a Job Standard to measure high potentials against.

Organizations can utilize the team lead or manager Job Standard in succession planning as well as training and development.

• Succession Planning: high potentials can be assessed against the Job Standard for any strengths and possible limitations or gaps.

• Training and Development: individual and group wide training and development plans can be created to ensure high potentials are set up for success before moving into leadership roles. Current team leads and managers who are finding their roles challenging can also be set up for successs using the Job Standard. Possible challenges can be closed with specific training to target their performance gaps.