Coaching Future Leaders

Gallup Management Journal brings us this insightful piece about developing leadership within organizations. Gallup has been researching top-performing leaders for more than 40 years.

Their premise?

"Do you want to get the best performance from your organization's future leaders? Then start asking them direct questions that, when answered, will help shape and define the type of leaders they will become."

The disconnect?

"Many forms of leadership coaching attempt to teach future leaders "about" leadership. But relatively little coaching encourages leaders to concentrate on activities that will reliably improve their capacity to lead."

One crucial discovery has been that top performance is strongly correlated to seven main leadership activities or "demands."

Those demands are:

1. Visioning
2. Maximizing values
3. Challenging experience
4. Mentoring
5. Building a constituency
6. Making sense of experience
7. Knowing self

BOTTOMLINE: Focusing each leader's growth on the seven demands can accelerate leadership development. Read the entire article here for questions to ask leaders in development.