May/June 2017

Leading Insight
Are You Wired to Lead?

Developing engineering talent that is prepared to take on senior and executive leadership roles is essential to the long-term success of any AEC firm. A professional development research study examined leaders within various industries, including engineering, to identify the knowledge and skills that can enhance business metrics and revenue growth.

The study found that experience alone doesn’t build leaders. High-quality assignments and projects should be specifically designed to provide early-tenure leaders with the opportunity to sharpen the skills that will drive results, inspire excellence, and enhance the ability to lead teams. Years of experience is connected to expertise and leadership potential in three areas: high-growth skills, moderate-growth skills, and low- or no- growth skills.

High-growth skills factor into leadership strength levels. These skills include driving for results, inspiring excellence, and leading teams, which all require goal achievement and team motivation. The study found that new leaders were challenged the most by leading teams because successful achievement of goals isn’t a solo act. This success depends on the varied capabilities of team members.

Moderate-growth skills involve coaching, driving execution, and global acumen. Leaders with more tenure are 2.6 times more likely than leaders with fewer years of experience to have stronger skills in this area. Projects and assignments can be provided to help professionals grow their skills in driving execution and global acumen.

Low- or no- growth skills are skills that have no connection between tenure as a manager and strength: executive disposition, selling the vision, operational decision making, and customer focus. High-tenure leaders were only 1.7 times more likely to have stronger skills in this area than lower-tenure managers.

The average years of managerial experience ranges from 12 years for mid-level leaders to 18 years for more executive leaders. What are the average number of years of experience necessary to become an expert in these skill areas?

The Characteristics of a CEO

Can personal attributes play a role in how managers recruit and develop professionals equipped to lead and ultimately guide an organization? The study’s researchers analyzed the characteristics of more than 240 finalists for chief executive officer positions.

What CEO Candidates Do to Excel

• Obsess over execution and results.They stay laser focused on outcomes and demand specifics on how results will be achieved.
• Instantly and accurately size up complex business situations. Relying on seasoned business instincts, they quickly sort the good business ideas from the bad so they can steer toward best bets.
• Fixate on customer/client needs. They embody the customer persona so that they can get specific about diagnosing how business plans will meet customer needs now and in the future.

How CEO Candidates Are Wired

• Intensely competitive, confident, and emotionally resilient. While it’s true that most executives share these traits, they are even more pronounced among those preparing for a CEO position.
• Craving of attention. Most personality derailers, such as arrogance or volatility, decline in prevalence. Not so for attention-seeking. The top job attracts those who enjoy being noticed for their talents and charms.
• Creative or pragmatic (but rarely both) Twenty-one percent of CEO candidates are creative, conceptual strategists, and 29% are practical, no-nonsense operators. Only 8% have both traits.

Where CEO Candidates Struggle

• Default to the short-term. The so-called “strategic plans” these leaders make are often not very strategic at all. They solved operational dilemmas, but few generate effective long-range growth strategies. So, meaningful organizational change is rare.
• Treat talent as an afterthought.Their most rigorous planning seldom focuses on talent. Coaching is diplomatic, but is often not goal oriented. Talent development is perfunctory, not strategic.
• Experience difficulty in being inspirational. When trying to rally the organization behind their plans, most leaders turn reflexively to financial projections. Leading from the heart doesn’t come naturally for them.

Access the full High-Resolution Leadership report at www.ddiworld.com/hirezleadership.