The Leadership Pipeline

Executives typically pass through six stages of career growth.

Often companies lack enough leaders to meet the demand for leadership, but they can develop future leaders with careful planning and execution. Leadership requires developing new skills and a new attitude about what matters at work and how to manage time and resources.

Executives typically pass through six stages of career growth; each stage can help them develop leadership talents. The stages begin with managing other workers and proceed to managing other managers, running functions, heading a business, steering a group of businesses and, finally, leading an entire enterprise.

The hardest transition is from self-management to managing other workers.

In some ways, learning to manage your fellow workers is the most demanding passage. People who are doing a difficult job well usually don’t want to change, even if the change is a promotion to being a manager. They’re often uneasy about putting their work in other people’s hands in order to turn around and manage those same people.  Therefore, new managers may have the title of manager without exemplifying...