ATD Blog
Whos Next in Line Develop Tomorrows Leaders Today (2012)
Mon Apr 30 2012
By: Preston Brown
In Who’s Next in Line? Develop Tomorrow’s Leaders Today, Preston Brown writes a plan to trade and develop new managers who are set to replace some 60,000 government retirees in the upcoming year. Preston outlines obstacles to this plan which include: Lack of time, Inadequate funding for designing programs and developing employees, Difficulty in assessing and selecting succession candidates, and Difficulty forecasting attrition for succession positions; As well as ways to overcome each.
Excerpt Taken Directly from Who’s Next in Line? Develop Tomorrow’s Leaders Today By Preston Brown
“Managers are likely to be more motivated and successful in their role if they are trained in the fundamentals of leadership development and learn to be patient with the process of trial and error. They need to understand the 70-20-10 rule of development: 70 percent of development occurs through experience; 20 percent by learning from other people such as managers, coaches and peers; and 10 percent from formal training in the classroom or online.
Knowing comes from observing, doing, incorporating new ideas from the experience, and teaching others how to do it. The most effective learning follows the apprenticeship and mentoring model: learning by observation, and by doing a task with someone who has done it before. (For more on mentoring, see article on p. 42.) The single most important aspect of learning to be a leader is self-awareness, which can only be learned over the course of many months or even years.”