Equipping Managers to Lead

By Dr. Shelley Young Thompkins

Over the life of my career, I have witnessed people being promoted to the role of leader because they excelled in their roles as individual contributors. It is the case of a top sales person being promoted to Sales Manager or best clinician who has amazing bed side manners being named Nurse Manager or Team Lead. It seems natural that these individual contributors make great leaders – after all, they have excelled in their roles. While the best workers may or may not make the best leaders, organizations continue to promote employees in this fashion. As an individual contributor, they excelled; as a leader they may struggle.

I believe these individual contributors can make great leaders, with grooming. Often these contributors have a proven track record as individuals; too often they lack the basic soft skills and relational skills to be effective as leaders. The great news is that for most, these skills can be obtained by processing through four foundational steps:

Individual Assessments
Training
Mentoring
One-on-one Coaching

Being a successful leader means being able to influence change by sharing the vision with employees, engaging employees to be in alignment with that vision, and empowering them to do their part to execute on the vision. Additionally, the leader’s attitude and behavior can significantly influence whether an employee remains with an organization.

I invite you to read my full chapter, Equipping Managers to Lead in the new book, Coaching Perspectives VIII, to learn more about how to transform great individual contributors into