And that's why your organization should work on it
It's not a given that organizations have a common language about what good leadership is. Lacking such a common foundation in your organization can prevent employees from talking to each other across levels and departments and from achieving their goals.
The Leadership Pipeline is a framework for understanding how to create great leadership at all levels of management. The key is to be aware that successful leadership depends on what is being led. In other words, you need to work on defining and exercising the right leadership at the right level.
The Leadership Pipeline approach is based on the fundamental assumption that there is a difference between managing employees and managing leaders. Leading employees has specific tasks and challenges that differ from leading managers, which in turn differs from the role of a functional manager or senior manager. In other words, the leadership task is different across all levels of the organization.
This difference means that the right leadership at the right level calls for different competencies across the leadership pipeline and for successful leadership. The Leadership Pipeline challenges the notion that there is a universal recipe for how successful leadership should be practiced throughout the organization.
What skills do you need to master at your management level?
When successful leadership depends on what is being led, it becomes crucial to map out the key tasks, skills and responsibilities for each level of leadership. Here, the Leadership Pipeline is a powerful tool for pinpointing what constitutes the right leadership at the right level.
By distinguishing between different levels of leadership, it becomes possible to identify competencies that are particularly important for success in a given leadership task. Without defined role descriptions, expectations and success criteria for good leadership at each level of management, it's difficult to know what your particular leadership role entails - and more importantly, what lies outside your management space. As a result, strategic initiatives often fail on their journey down the management chain.
To create a cohesive management chain, it's important to align expectations between management levels and provide feedback. When do I succeed in my leadership role and when do I fail? When leadership roles are clearly defined at all levels of management, the goal of 'good leadership' becomes visible to the entire organization.
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Transitions in the management chain: Moving from one level of management to another
When a skilled employee moves into management responsibilities and now has to manage employees, or a manager of employees has to try their hand at managing managers, a transition occurs or what Freedman (1998) calls the triple challenge.
As a leader going through transitions from one organizational level to another, there are certain skills that need to be learned, unlearned and retained in order to succeed at the new level of leadership. Therefore, it becomes crucial to ask the question: "Is the given behavior at one point in time also sufficient for the new leadership role?" Some competencies will likely be applicable at the new level. But there will certainly also be a number of new skills that need to be learned.
Last but not least, there will also be a handful of skills that have proven effective at the previous level, but are no longer key to successful leadership at the new level.
The basic idea of the Leadership Pipeline approach is that good leadership depends on what is being led - and that awareness of this contributes to the supply of good leadership at all levels. This should be reflected in everything from recruitment and onboarding processes to skills development, management training and contracts.
Sources
Charan, R.; Drotter, S. & Noel, J. (2011): The Leadership Pipeline, 2nd edition, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Dahl, K. and Molly-Søholm, T. (2012) Leadership Pipeline in the public sector. Copenhagen: Danish Psychological Publishing House
Freedman, A. (1998) Pathways and crossroads to institutional leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal. 50, 131-151.
