Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

Our industry is facing a significant talent drain in the next 10 to 15 years. In 2003, the National Science Board estimated that 25% of the US engineering and science workforce would retire by 2010. A recent article in Design Intelligence reported that one-third of the AEC workforce is 50 years old or older. Undoubtedly, many of these older workers are in management roles. Are we prepared to pass the torch of leadership to the next generation?

I have encountered very few firms that have any kind of formal leadership development process in place. Ownership transition is a hot topic in our business, but firm principals seem less concerned about the equally daunting challenge of leadership transition. The time to make this a priority is now. And leadership transition is only one reason why your firm should have a structured process for developing new leaders:

• There are obvious benefits in generally strengthening the leadership skills in your firm at all levels. Most firms lack adequate "leadership bandwidth" across their operations.

• A strong leadership development program is a valuable asset in recruiting and retaining top talent. The younger generations generally want opportunities to advance at a quicker pace than we Baby Boomers experienced—and they'll need to given the aforementioned demographic shift.

• Formal leadership development provides an excellent forum to reinforce and clarify corporate values and what's expected of firm leaders. This is important in building a sustainable firm culture and enduring competitive advantage.

So where to start? Let me suggest a basic framework for thinking about leadership development and some important dos and don'ts.

A Three-Pronged Approach

Leadership development is a complex undertaking and a long-term commitment. You can't develop leaders by simply sending them to a seminar or assigning them new responsibilities. I recommend a comprehensive three-pronged approach:

#1. Choosing the Right People 

Clearly, one of our problems has been elevating people to leadership roles because of their technical credentials rather than their leadership skills. The best potential leaders in your firm may not be the strongest technically. They may even come from a nontechnical background. Indeed, the number of A/E firm principals without a technical background more than doubled from 2000 to 2005, according to a survey by ZweigWhite.

So what traits should you be looking for? Following are the ones I believe matter most:

• Welcomes the leadership challenge. There are too many reluctant leaders in our business. We need leaders who will embrace the challenges and commitment required, including the prospect of giving up some (or most) of the technical aspects of their work.

• Strong people skills. Taking initiative and making good decisions are obviously important leadership traits. But keep in mind that leaders cannot succeed without the willing involvement of others. Leaders must have the ability to effectively engage people in getting things done.

• Change agent. The ability to implement positive change is an imperative for leaders. We don't need leaders to maintain the status quo, which unfortunately is what many of our supposed leaders do. Change is mandatory for growth, improvement, and innovation—and aren't these the ingredients of real success?

• Thinks like an owner. This implies many things, from having an entrepreneurial spirit to being willing to take on the tough challenges. It also refers to the ability to lay aside personal agendas for the good of the whole organization. Unfortunately, this trait is not as common among principals and other managers as you might expect. 

• Focused and disciplined. Effective management of time and attention is among the most critical leadership skills. We have limited reserves of both. Strong leaders exhibit a tremendous ability to focus their efforts on what matters most and to maintain that focus over the long term.

• Continuous learner. Some senior members in our ranks are too smart for their own good. They no longer have the drive to learn new things, or to open their minds to different ideas and approaches. They make poor leaders. Good leaders are constantly seeking better ways of doing things, hence they never stop learning.

• Makes others better. An effective leader is best judged by the impact he or she has on others. Leaders inspire, mentor, and hold accountable. They recognize that helping others improve requires a substantial amount of their time. The best leaders are passionate about helping others grow and perform at their best. 

Some things to avoid. In seeking to identify leadership potential within your firm, you should try to avoid the following common mistakes that other firms make:

• Don't place too much weight on seniority. Pick the best people regardless of age, seniority, or technical credentials (unless these credentials are specifically relevant to the leadership role).

• Don't fail to seek input from those who work most closely with leader candidates. Sometimes corporate managers have an incomplete picture of how well a candidate interacts with his or her closest colleagues.

• Don't limit choices to people who are like the firm's current leaders. There is value in broadening your leadership bandwidth with different perspectives and abilities.

• Don't overlook lackluster results because the candidate is likable. There are many who can "talk the talk" but don't "walk the walk." 

• Don't forget that everyone is watching. Be sure to communicate to staff what is expected of leaders, and act consistently with those expectations.

#2. Establishing a Formal Process 

If you want to secure effective leadership for the future, you need to be deliberate about it and not leave it to the usual process of "natural selection." The best leadership development programs combine multiple approaches including training, coaching, sharing forums, on-the-job exercises, and assigned readings. The following outlines some key elements of an effective leadership development program:

• Make it a process, not an event. I suggest a program that extends over 8 to 12 months with multiple activities every month.

• Keep it hands on. Don't spend too much time on leadership theory. Make it practical and directly applicable to the real-life situations that participants are facing.

• Use ongoing coaching. This is critical. Research reveals that skills training is only effective when combined with ongoing encouragement and advice. Ideally coaches will come from your own staff. But if you don't have people with the requisite skills or commitment, look outside for help.

• Incorporate self assessments. Various testing and survey instruments can be used to enable participants to define their natural competencies, leadership and communication styles, attitudes, knowledge, and progress over the course of the program. One of the key attributes of effective leaders is a keen self awareness.

• Tailor the program specifically to your firm. Beware of canned leadership development programs. Your firm's culture and practices will impact how leadership is exercised effectively in your organization. Participants will also tend to dismiss any leadership training that does not specifically fit their situation.

• But seek some outside help. To avoid simply reinforcing the status quo, you should get some outside consulting help. The amount of help depends on your budget, internal resources, and objectives. But the external perspective and credibility of a consultant can add significant value to your program.

• Demand significant commitment. To do this right requires some sacrifice, both on the part of the firm and participants. Define in advance what the firm and management is willing to invest in leadership development. Then clarify expectations for participants and invite them to opt out at the outset if they're not willing or able to devote the effort.

Program content. There are many directions you can go with training topics and exercises. Let me suggest that you focus on four specific areas: (1) people skills, (2) time management skills, (3) ability to effect change, and (4) business skills. Here's a list of possible topics:

• Leadership styles

• Emotional intelligence

• Motivating others

• Team building

• Communication skills (including persuasion)

• Time management

• Leading change

• Client skills

• Business development skills

• Practice management skills

• Enabling leadership in others

Some things to avoid. Once again, there are some common approaches to leadership development programs that I would encourage you to avoid—or at least to critically evaluate before committing yourself:

• Don't waste your time and money on crash courses or quick fixes. Leadership development is a long-term process. Training seminars and books on leadership are useful tools in an overall program, but don't accomplish much on their own.

• Don't take a smorgasbord approach to program content. Some firms bring in multiple speakers or read different books. I'm certainly not against incorporating different perspectives, but I'd urge you to define some common themes and definitions and stick to them. Leadership is a complex topic. Your objective is to simplify it so that participants can better enable it.

• Don't use the program to indoctrinate into the status quo. I've touched on this previously and repeat here only because it's a common trap. Clearly, you should seek to replicate the best aspects of your current management. But since leadership is about change, you want to be careful about reigning in your new leaders too much.

• Don't put too much stock in personality typing schemes. Understanding your personality and the differences among others is certainly a valuable skill. But some leadership programs, in my opinion, put far too much emphasis on this aspect of dealing with people. Personality typing schemes are prone to making quick characterizations of people that minimize their individual uniqueness. I've participated in several of these and I've never been that easy to categorize. I assume this is true of many others. There is no substitute for getting to know people as individuals rather than as personality types. Plus leaders are often dealing with groups of people where tailoring your approach to each personality type is difficult, if not impossible. Among the different approaches, the Myers-Briggs assessment is the most thoroughly researched. But studies also point to abuses of this system, so use it or any other with some restraint.

• Don't allow participation and effort to diminish over the course of the program. Given an 8- to 12-month duration, it's natural to see some loss of momentum over time. But isn't one of the traits of effective leaders their ability to keep the effort going over the long term? I'd suggest changing the format, making the material increasingly practical and hands-on, stepping up active coaching, and maybe even taking a month off as ways to avoid a significant drop-off in interest in the latter months of the program.

#3. Creating a Supportive Culture 

You can select the right people and enroll them in a formal program, but you'll likely struggle to develop leaders if you don't address the influence of corporate culture. Why is culture so important to leadership development? Well, consider the definition:

Corporate culture is the sum of behaviors, habits, and rules that influence how things get done within the firm.

Culture affects any long-term efforts to get something done, and that includes developing new leaders. But it's especially relevant to this issue because how leadership works is also strongly influenced by culture. Leaders are more effective when they know how to leverage culture to their advantage. Yet there are times when a firm's culture stands in the way of a needed change. Then a leader must really prove his or her worth by leading the difficult process of changing the culture.

A leadership culture. Leadership development occurs most readily in what I call a leadership culture. This kind of culture is characterized by the following:

• Leadership is encouraged at all levels of the organization. At the most basic level, leadership can be defined as the ability to persuade others to follow. In this context, anyone in your firm can assume a leadership role, at least temporarily. The best firms promote an environment where personal initiative is encouraged and supported, including engaging coworkers in those initiatives where appropriate. Of course, these efforts must be consistent with corporate objectives and values. But enlightened firms avoid creating unnecessary constraints to personal initiative.

• Continuous improvement is a priority. Firms committed to continuous improvement need ample leadership bandwidth across the organization to guide improvement efforts. Interestingly, when firms take on the challenge of continuous improvement, more leaders seem to arise. It makes sense if you think about it. You don't need more leaders to keep doing things the same way, so few new leaders emerge. But when the need (and the potential rewards) exist, people tend to step up to the leadership challenge.

• There is adequate coaching and mentoring. In a leadership culture, well, leaders invest their time in others. And that provides fertile ground for cultivating new leadership. Most firm cultures I've worked in are only marginally sustainable. That's because leaders don't spend adequate time helping others grow and develop. Forced mentoring programs generally don't work. The dedication to coaching and mentoring must come from willing leaders.

Barriers to a leadership culture. Unfortunately, the obstacles to creating a leadership culture are several in the typical technical consulting or design firm. If you desire to have such a culture in your firm, here are some things you will need to overcome:

• Lack of role models. It's hard for the next generation to learn about effective leadership if they can't watch effective leaders at work.

• Limited upward mobility. A common complaint I hear among junior staff (and even more senior staff) is the lack of opportunities to advance and grow professionally. This may be due to a number of causes, including slow firm growth, unclear career paths, and tightly held ownership (where there are limited leadership roles for non-owners).

• Failure to appropriately delegate. This problem is related to the above. Increasing responsibility and complexity in work assignments is key to developing leadership capability. Unfortunately, many PMs and other managers are not so good at delegation. 

• Preferential treatment. This occurs when people are promoted into leadership roles for reasons other than their leadership ability. This is all too common, and it stifles leadership development among those who were passed over despite having better skills and potential.

• Poorly defined values and standards. These provide the bedrock for leadership, those few immutable principles that anchor all decisions and corporate activity. Without them, a collective definition of leadership becomes harder. And fewer people rise up to fill the ill-defined role of leader.

• Lack of accountability. Of course, a critical responsibility of leaders is to hold people accountable to do those things that really matter. Where there is little accountability, there is an obvious leadership void. That makes it more difficult to develop the next generation of leaders.

• Resistance to change. If you're trying to prepare new leaders, but encumber their efforts with a general resistance to change, you'll not get far in their development. This unfortunately happens quite often. Another way to stifle change is to create too many inflexible rules or unnecessary bureaucracy. Before launching a leadership development program, I recommend conducting an honest assessment of your firm's "change readiness." The two go hand in hand.

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