Leaders groom others to succeed

Edward Orange, IBM Manager. Photo / Supplied

Effective companies identify and develop talent from within, writes Diana Clement

Land A job at Flight Centre and within a couple of months you could be identified as a future leader.

"Grooming people for leadership is the reason Flight Centre is so successful," says Sue Matson, peopleworks and human resources leader at the company. "Everybody is a potential leader."

A typical new recruit is aged 22 to 24 and in a cocoon, says Matson. "We put them through a set of experiences at Flight Centre and they grow into butterflies."

Matson herself started on the shop floor at a Flight Centre branch as did Rick Hamilton, executive general manager for Flight Centre New Zealand.

The process of identifying talent is so ingrained in the organisation that area and team leaders become quite perceptive at spotting potential, says Matson. What they're looking for, sometimes subconsciously, is:

* Confidence

* Empathy combined with mental toughness.

Equally, Matson and others in the management team circulate at monthly meetings and social events looking for those people.

Once they're identified, possible future career options are discussed with candidates. They are also given formal leadership training and join monthly area meetings and meet one-on-one with their team leaders regularly. Another feature of Flight Centre grooming is ongoing coaching. "Eventually that 23-year-old becomes a 43-year-old running a nation," says Matson.

Leadership grooming at Flight Centre is not just academic, however. "We show we believe in them by giving them a shot (at something more challenging)."

Flight Centre won a JRA Best Places To Work Award in 2009. Another award winner, this time in the world, is IBM, which was named No 1 Global Company for Leadership in a study by Hewitt Associates, published in Fortune magazine.

IBM has a "promote from within" policy and one Kiwi who has benefited from IBM's grooming is Edward Orange. Orange has been at IBM for 14 years and is today based in Shanghai where he is responsible for IBM's Collaboration Software across the Asia Pacific region.

When Orange was poached by IBM back in 1998, his friends were surprised and tried to convince him to look elsewhere. The company had been through a very difficult patch. Even so, it had a reputation for helping leaders develop and that was enough for Orange to give it a go.

Over time, IBM as a company has changed and is no longer predominantly hardware-focused. And that means good leadership and management becomes all the more important. "A services company is quite different to one selling commodities," says Orange..

Once on board, Orange was soon being groomed for greater things - even though as he notes, somewhat with his tongue in cheek, that his ambition initially was simply to stay in a job for more than three years.

Throughout his time at IBM, Orange has been mentored by managers and also HR staff. Conversely, Orange currently mentors 11 IBM managers.

Three of his own mentors in particular had profound impacts on him:

* The first, Karen Steidle, now based in Australia, taught him two key lessons. One was to "listen to the things that people weren't telling you". This is particularly relevant in China and Japan where staff only want to part with the good news. The second piece of advice from Steidle was to become self aware. "She said: 'every quarter look in the mirror and say: what is my problem and how do I address it?"'

* The second was Taiwanese manager DC Chien, who sent Orange on a 7 Habits course - developed from the bestseller 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - from which he honed his prioritisation skills. Chien was also a great believer in working hard, but balancing work and life and encouraged his mentee to take the same approach.

* The third was fellow Kiwi Richard Smith who was "intolerant of mediocrity" and taught him to follow up every sale to ensure it was successful and also to give opportunities to cross sell or up sell.

At one point in his career, Orange found himself at risk of derailment when he was required to report to a boss who he simply couldn't connect with. He asked for help and was assigned an official mentor from HR, who coached him to learn to work with the manager.

Management training is also key in the IBM grooming process, says Orange. As well as the 7 Habits course, he was sent to Harvard University to complete a strategy course and also completed in-house training called Managing In The New Blue, aimed at teaching executives to motivate staff and get the best out of people.

It's not just about being groomed at IBM. "As an IBM manager it is your job to make the people below you successful," says Orange. "That is ingrained in the culture." There is a specific programme in place for this process called the BTL (Business and Technical Leadership)." It is a structured way of identifying emerging leaders that ensures that the company has the right business and technical leadership talent in the appropriate key positions at the right time. Those people are registered and their talents recorded.

At 46 and despite considerable success in the IBM organisation, Orange's career ambitions still aren't stratospheric.

"I have always aligned my career ambitions with my family," he says. Shanghai has offered great opportunities for his children's development.

They mix with many nationalities at an international school and speak English, Mandarin and Spanish.

Another finalist for the 2009 JRA awards, Hyundai Motors NZ, is quite open that it is very slow to hire and quick to fire. But once you're "on the bus", says chief operating officer Tom Ruddenklau, the company will set you up for success. "We are very deliberate about building capability," he says.

At the end of 2008, facing a bleak year for the motor industry, the Hyundai Motors NZ management team set about looking for ways to develop the depth of its organisation.

"So we developed a programme where we picked out five to six people as performers, gave them coaching and development and challenged them as a team." All have risen rapidly as a result.

For example, says Ruddenklau, marketing assistant Devyn Cantley, who is still in her mid-20s, has risen to brand manager.