How to Build Leadership Powered Company - Book Report/Review Example

How to Build Leadership Powered Company In the reading, Charan, Drotter and Noel (2011) presented how leaders in a big company evolved from being responsible for one’s self to being responsible for an enterprise. As the writers explained, each transition may be characterized by values that are pertinent to the completion of each leader’s function. Through this pipeline, companies can have an alternative to hiring leaders from the outside, an act which presupposes that the managers in these companies only perform or their skills stop at their current phrase in the pipeline. The leadership pipeline helps in creating leaders from within the company, thus keeping each manager’s strategies for the completion of his objectives aligned with the organization’s targets or goals. According to the authors, there are six phases in the pipeline that managers should go through in order to enhance their managerial skills and, as a consequence, evolve and control the business better. The first stage is what the authors call from being able to manage oneself to managing others. I learned from the authors that an individual who enters the work environment has an opportunity to hone certain skills like planning, punctuality, quality and reliability. He is also observed to relate well with his co-workers, exemplifying values of a good leader. When this happens, the person is deemed responsible enough to be put in a position where he can start guiding others to be like him. Managers at this phase still have tasks to complete, but they must learn to delegate some of their tasks to others so they can balance their time between being a worker and a manager more effectively. Managing myself is easy since I control my thoughts and my actions, so I control the outcome of what I do. If I need to learn anything, I ask or try to figure out how to do things on my own. If I make a mistake, it is just my responsibility. However, if I become the manager, I must be ready for subordinates who may not have the same work ethics I have. I must also be prepared to check if something is wrong and be able to know the right words so I could address the mistake without offending the person who committed the mistake. If I want to become someone who transitions to managing others, I should be able to look beyond my needs and tasks to the needs and tasks of the people under my supervision. I should be ready to delegate tasks to them. In order to step up from just being one of the employees doing my fair share of work, an aspiring manager like me should be able to make the transition and start being responsible for people who will start turning to me for guidance and instruction. From managing others to managing managers is the second stage in the pipeline. At this point, leaders should be able to discover individuals who could be promoted to the first stage of the pipeline. This would be the people stage two managers will be responsible for. Stage two managers spend more of their time, as the title of the second stage states, looking after first level managers or trying to find people in the pool to promote to First Level Manager. At this stage, I learned that it is actually more advisable to focus on managerial duties rather than one’s tasks. As the authors stated, the “manager of the managers” should be really focused on the skill of managing and distinguish between managers who can move up the pipeline and those who would rather focus on individual work than trying to lead others. Also, part of managing managers is the willingness and readiness to coach first-level managers as some of them may have been put in the position directly and not as a result of a promotion. The hard part in this stage has to do with the attitude of managers. Of course, some of the managers are second level managers because they performed well at first level. As a second level manager, my task is not to intimidate them, but to let them know I am there to help them go up the corporate ladder. At this stage, my concern is to help the first level managers develop their leadership skills even more. Third phase in the pipeline is moving up to being a functional manager. A functional manager does more delegating of functional tasks within his team because aside from overseeing his team, he must attend meetings with the higher ups and contribute to strategy formulation for long-term goals. The functional manager should work with other functional teams to achieve the organization’s vision(s). If my understanding is correct, functional managers are those that head the different departments in a corporation. The functional managers collaborate with each other for resources and brainstorm on the corporation’s next steps based on each department’s reporting. I think this is very important because functional managers should ensure that their departments run very smoothly independently and hand-in-hand with the other departments. Also, functional managers should have good communication skills because they need to shift from speaking to their subordinates to speaking to the bosses. As the writers noted, a functional leader must have a sense of maturity that will allow him to know when and how to relate to the people around him, boss or subordinate and discourse well. This is an important skill because it is one way for the functional manager to earn the trust and respect of the people around him. By relating well to everyone around him, low- or high-ranking, he is able to show a deeper sense of maturity. The fourth part of the pipeline is that of a business manager. A person in this position is one akin to division head or that role function managers look up to. Business managers do not only need a level of maturity that will allow them to communicate with a much larger and wider variety of people, but also to be able to align future goals with what the company needs at present. I learned that from this phase managers start to become more involved in the business aspect of the organization. Although he still needs to practice excellent leadership skills with the people under him, his focus is making sure the present outcomes of the business all lead to the company’s vision for the future. The fifth step in becoming an excellent leader is to shift from being a business manager to a group manager. A group manager is one who controls several business managers. The individual in this position must be able to think at a global scale and must be prepared for bigger challenges. Moreover, a group manager must be able to inspire not only inspire the people in one of the businesses under him, but each and everyone in the all the businesses he has been assigned to manage. At this stage, I learned that a manager’s job becomes more and more difficult as one goes up the hierarchy. From just being responsible of yourself, as business manager you become responsible for an entire group of maybe a thousand or more employees and everything else that will make the processes run smoothly. Not only that but you need to multiply this responsibility several times, dependent on how expansive the organization is. Moreover, if the organization has spread its business internationally, the business manager has to learn to adapt strategies that would also conform to important business etiquette in some countries as cultures are different. For example, a business manager needs to reconsider making free coffee available to the company’s offices in Asia as the employees may appreciate it but may be even more grateful for free tea. Finally, the sixth and final phase in this leadership pipeline is going from group manager to the enterprise manager or who is called CEO. The individuals at this level have an even more daunting task because they are in-charge of major decisions that could spell the progress or decline of a company. Because of this, a CEO must be able to know exactly what the job demands of him and must be willing to make the right trade-offs when necessary in the performance of his responsibilities. A CEO must know by heart the vision and strategies of a firm to achieve said vision and implement these strategies efficiently. The CEO is like the head of a family. All the burden of making the company stable in the industry is on the CEO’s shoulders. He needs to make sure that the company is ahead of its competitors, the company is meeting its targets and the employees have a stable job and income. The CEO has to have foresight, perseverance and great management skills to do all these. From the seven chapters of the book, I have gained insight on several things about leadership that I believe would benefit me in the future. First, I know now that becoming good leader requires excellent communication and interpersonal skills. At every stage, the managers need to collaborate with others when performing their functions. Being inarticulate or expressing ideas in a way that may be unappealing will definitely cause problem. The second thing I’ve learned is that as someone goes through the pipeline they should also grow more responsible and mature because the importance of their role only becomes more apparent going up the phases. The third and final thing I learned is that each manager has a significant role in making the corporation progressive. As such, coaching should be given when needed in order to avoid “clogging” of the pipeline by people who refuse to adjust their ways or who have not entirely grasped the significance of their role in making corporation successful. References: Charan, Ram, Steve Drotter, and Jim Noel. (2011). The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build The Leadership Powered Company. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011. Print. Read More