Senior executives play a critical role in the development of high-potential managers. They control access to key assignments. They are sources of feedback, advice, and encouragement. They serve as role models. How can you encourage senior managers to be more actively involved in an experience-driven approach to the development of high potentials? A first step is helping them understand the dynamics of derailment—including the real costs to the organization—and what they can do to reduce derailment in their own organizations.
The Dynamics of Derailment
Derailment is a phenomenon all too common in organizations. Highly successful middle managers are identified as having potential to move up and eventually take on senior-level positions. Yet there are those who don’t live up to that assessment. They plateau below expected levels of achievement, or they reach higher levels only to fail, resulting in being demoted or fired. For these managers, their careers have derailed from the track to the top. Research points to common “fatal flaws” that play a central role in a manager’s derailment: interpersonal problems, difficulty leading a team, difficulty changing or adapting, failure to meet business objectives, and a narrow functional orientation.
The research also uncovered differences between those who derailed and those who arrived and excelled at top levels of the organization:
- Derailed executives were successful, but in a series of similar jobs. Arrivers had more diversity in their track records.
- Arrivers maintained their composure under stress. Derailers were moody or volatile under stress.
- In contrast to how derailers handled mistakes, those who excelled in executive positions admitted the mistake, alerted others, and then began fixing it.
- Arrivers were particularly single-minded in the face of challenging problems. Derailed managers were more likely to be pursuing their next position rather than focused on their current job.
- The arrivers got along with all types of people. Derailers were more likely to be seen as too political or too tactless.
Getting the Attention of Senior Leaders
Getting senior leaders to focus on the potential derailment problems in their organizations requires engaging them in discovering the truths about derailment from their own experiences, providing frameworks for organizing their discoveries, and asking them to diagnose the costs of derailment and their own role in the dynamics of derailment.
We begin by asking the executives to identify two high-potential leaders they have worked with: one who went on to be highly successful at the senior levels of the organization and one who derailed. What factors contributed the most to the success of the first leader? What factors played the biggest role in the derailment of the second leader? When comparing the two, what stands out? The examples come easily to mind for the leaders, and the ensuing discussion is always lively.
Next, we share the derailment research findings, pausing to see how many of their examples reflect a particular flaw or differentiator and asking for some specific cases. We have yet to experience a group that does not verify the research findings from their own examples.
The next step is to examine the cost of derailment to the organization. The executives’ initial focus is on the lost investment in the high-potential manager who derails. There are also financial costs when someone is demoted or fired (for example, severance packages, search firms to find a replacement, potential relocation costs). But the conversation quickly broadens to human costs, particularly the damage to the morale and productivity of individuals who work with someone who has one or more of the fatal flaws. There’s also the cost of losing the talents of a person whose development did not keep pace with his or her rise in the organization.
The final step is to examine what senior leaders can do to prevent derailment in their organizations. These leaders quickly point to the obvious implications: Give people a more diverse set of experiences; help them broaden their networks; be available to coach, advise, and mentor. But we ask them to dig deeper and see if they engage in any of these practices that can contribute to derailment:
- Moving high potentials too quickly through the ranks. The danger is that there is not enough time for the individual to learn from his or her experience in each position. The consequences of actions and decisions are not experienced. Deeper relationships are not built—relationships with enough trust for giving the individual tough feedback.
- Failing to coach high potentials about the shift in roles and expectations at the executive level. The strengths that got them on the high-potential track may not serve them as well at senior levels; for example, they have to leave operational details to others and focus more on strategic issues. Also, there are often unspoken rules at the top about how executives are expected to conduct themselves and interact with others.
- Testing high potentials by giving them tough assignments and then leaving them to fend for themselves. This sink-or-swim approach reinforces high potentials’ tendency to focus on demonstrating how well they can perform rather on how they can grow from the assignment. It also denies them access to an individual who could support their learning from the experience.
- Bringing high-potential direct reports with you as you move into a new position. Having trusted talented individuals to rely on might help a leader hit the ground running in a new position, but one dynamic of derailment is staying with the same boss too long. High potentials can become overdependent on a powerful boss, not developing their own perspectives and not learning from exposure to different styles or approaches.
- Not sharing with high potentials your own ongoing learning processes. This includes mistakes and how they were handled, assessments of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and struggles to grow and change. Senior managers can be powerful role models for continuous learning.
- Ignoring signs of interpersonal problems displayed by high potentials. How a high potential is behaving toward higher-ups in the organization is not always the way they are interacting with others. It is important to seek out information about individuals’ leadership styles and their impact on others. Tolerating bad behavior in a person who is prized for delivering results is perhaps the most common way senior leaders contribute to future derailments.
We close by asking the executives to consider a high-potential manager they work with or mentor who might be showing early signs of derailment risks and commit to action steps to get the individual’s career back on track.
Although teaching senior leaders about the dynamics of derailment focuses them on the critical role they play in the development of high-potential talent, it has the added benefit of stimulating broader thinking about how their own behaviors set a tone for learning throughout the organization.
Excerpt from CCL’s new book “Experience-Driven Leader Development: Models, Tools, Best Practices, and Advice for On-the-Job Development For more information, visit http://www.experiencedrivendevelopment.com.
Cindy McCauley, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Greensboro, NC. With more than 20 years of experience at CCL, McCauley has been involved in many aspects of CCL’s work: research, product development, program evaluation, coaching, and management. She co-developed two of CCL’s management-feedback instruments, Benchmarks and the Job Challenge Profile. Along with Ellen Van Velsor, she is co-editor of The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development. McCauley currently is involved in CCL’s effort to explore leadership as a collective, organizational capacity. She also delivers the Awareness Program for Executive Excellence (APEX) and manages multiple R&D projects.
McCauley received her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Georgia. In 2003, she was elected as Fellow in the American Psychological Association.
With more than 20 years in Human Resources, Sylvester Taylor is an experienced leadership coach, researcher, speaker, and facilitator. He has held a variety of senior leadership roles during his career at CCL, where he has worked since 1989. Currently, he is a director in Research, Innovation, and New Product Development, leading the Assessments, Tools, and Publications functions. Prior to joining CCL, Taylor worked as an administrator and an instructor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, teaching courses in Psychology and Statistics. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Economics and Industrial Relations.
