Yesterday, I met with at a prospective client with the HR Director and the Director of Training. It’s a large engineering firm with more than 27 offices in twelve states. We were discussing the new leadership development program they are launching. They wanted my help with a new yearlong program for high potential, mid-level leaders.

When I asked how many people would be selected to participate, they said, “We’ve already selected them, there are 14 people in the program.”

And when I asked how they were selected, they answered, “We had the senior executive in each business unit or office nominate candidates based on the executive’s assessment of their potential.”

I immediately began to wonder about the odds of predicting who will become a leader and who won’t. The engineering firm has bet on the fact that the senior executives have made the right decisions in selecting the future leaders for the firm.

Unfortunately, the odds of predicting accurately who will rise to the top of the leadership pyramid are not nearly as good as most people think.

There are at least two major problems in making accurate predictions. First, many executives look for people who are like them. When executives are evaluating potential, they tend to look for candidates who demonstrate the attributes that enabled the executives themselves to succeed – they are looking for younger clones of themselves.

When I ask executives about this, they say, “Look, I know what I had to do to make it to the top. It’s not easy and not everyone can make it. I just want to be sure they’ve got the right stuff, like me.”

The executives assume that only people like them can make it to the top. That’s not the case. There are many different kinds of outstandingly successful leaders. Successful leaders are not all cut from the same mold – they come in all shapes and sizes, have different backgrounds and education, come from different parts of the country or from other countries, and have different attributes and characteristics. To assume that future leaders look like current ones is a mistake.

Why is this a problem? When executives look for clones of themselves (those who demonstrate similar attributes), they overlook the vast majority of candidates who aren’t clones, but who may have the potential. They limit the pool of potential successors by focusing on too narrow a range of candidates.

Another problem is that it’s impossible to know what will happen to potential leaders as they progress in their careers. Far too many unpredictable things happen to aspiring leaders that determine who will and who won’t become a leader. Having worked with hundreds of successful leaders, I’ve heard many stories. Among them:

“You know, I was lucky. If I hadn’t been at the right place at the right time, I never would have been ended up here. I’d like to say it was all the result of my ability, but that’s not true.”

“I never ever figured out why he plucked me from that group of young wannabees, but he did. He took me under his wing and looked out for me. That made all the difference. Without his help, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

“I didn’t know it at the time, but many of the jobs I’ve had prepared me for what I’m doing today. I learned things along the way by having to grapple with challenges that I thought at the time I wasn’t ready for.”

Leaders are shaped by the work they do. They learn along the way. And there’s no way of knowing in advance what they’ll learn and whether their learning will prepare them to take over the reins of the organization.

So, is predicting who will become the next generation of leaders a crap shoot, fraught with so many problems that it’s useless to try? No, but it’s important not to fall into the traps noted above. Two guidelines may help in creating a leadership development program that is useful and based on how leaders really emerge and develop.

First, cast a wide net – don’t rely exclusively on the senior executives’ often-narrow definition of potential.

Second, build a program closely tied to real work – give the participants challenging, real work to do, concentrate on and teach a few key skills they can use in addressing those challenges, and provide them with accurate, real-time feedback on their performance so they can learn what worked and what didn’t and how they can transfer their learning immediately to their jobs.

I just finished a biography of Genghis Khan, the legendary leader of the Mongols in the early 1200s. I wanted to see what he was really like. His reputation seemed to be inextricably tied to the terms Mongol horde, barbarian, and brutality.

I was surprised to find that he was a far more visionary and effective leader than I had anticipated and, despite his brutal tactics in warfare, instituted several policies that leaders could learn from today, among them:

He promoted people based on performance, instead of the traditional methods of the time to pick them from only from aristocratic families or from certain clans.

He shared the rewards of his victories broadly with everyone, warriors and civilians alike, instead of allowing a few generals to reap most of the benefits.

He never fought the same battle twice; instead of blindly using the same tactics again and again, he changed his strategy when the circumstances required it.

He learned from those he defeated; instead of suppressing or eradicating the knowledge and traditions of lands he captured, he regularly identified and embraced practices from them in order to improve the operations of his growing empire.

He established a safe and secure method of communications and transportation across thousands of miles and several territories to provide rapid and dependable transfer of knowledge and material goods.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Genghis Khan, the book is “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,” by Jack Weatherford.

Yesterday, as I was leading a program for a group of twenty up-and-coming supervisors and managers in a billion-dollar professional services company, the COO came by. He wants to support the program and stopped by during lunch to answer questions from the participants.

He was well intentioned, but ineffective, for several reasons. First, he was far too verbose. He took several minutes to answer relatively simple questions.

Second, he provided answers to questions they didn’t ask. For example, he said, “There are two things that might pertain to your question,” and he then proceeded to provide a long-winded explanation of the one part they didn’t ask about.

And, he skated around the answers. Rather than provide direct and clear answers, he danced around them.

His answers missed the mark because he wasn’t providing straight talk. He’s not alone. Far too many leaders believe that they don’t have to provide clear, short, direct, simple, and honest answers.

What about you?

email: archie@archietinelli.com archie@archietinelli.com