In a Gallup article on Asian Leaders a writer shared a very profound line at the end:

“A great leader is one under whom many leaders emerge, 

rather than the one whom many follow.”

It struck a cord. As I look back on my career, I’m proud of the business results I’ve helped achieve, the organisational transformations I orchestrated and the impact I have made on people’s personal growth. However, I’m most proud of the fact that over all these years I can now count at least 25 people that have worked in my teams who are now (hopefully) powerful leaders of HR functions.

I strongly believe that a leader isn’t going to be remembered for the profit they’ve generated, rather they’ll be remembered for the powerful leaders that have emerged from under their wings. Whenever I share this concept many Asian leaders I meet strongly agree, however if I look at their track record in developing leaders, I don’t see that same belief reflected in results.

So what’s stopping Asian leaders from focusing on developing powerful leaders? A couple of points come to mind and I have suggestions for anyone wanting to be a great leader.

1. Relentless Focus on Delivering Today’s Results

On one side, there’s a high level of uncertainty and turbulence impacting frontier markets in Asia and on the other an unrelenting pressure to deliver financial commitments. Leaders have only priority and that’s to deliver today’s results. Creating space and time to focus on coaching team members falls as a result by the way line.

Suggestion: Make your subordinates directly responsible for delivery of results by making them report directly to your line manager for operational results meetings. Think of a football manager: the manager is responsible for fielding the team, making them play to win and is ultimately held accountable (and if necessary fired) for the delivery of result. He influences his team through coaching, making substitutions and time-outs. But at the end he doesn’t play. His teams does all the action and is responsible for wins or loses.

2. Focus Solely on Formal Training

Due to a lack of time and sometimes lack of imagination or experience leaders often choose the ‘easy way out’ by providing their team members with formal training sessions only. When we look back at our personal and most impactful learning experiences, I’m pretty sure you won’t mention any course you attended in the past 5 years. Instead, it’s probably a challenge, a meeting, an exposure or a discussion with the coach that has proven to be the biggest learning impact.

Solution: Identify what challenges a team members might face if he or she were promoted to the next leadership level. Subsequently articulate what experiences they must gather in order to ‘ready-themselves’ for these challenges and translate these experiences into assignments, projects, responsibilities, coaching assignments and if relevant training courses. Some companies are taking this idea forward and creating a learning experiences that integrate these elements into a holistic leadership development program covering 360 insights, individual development plan, action learning projects, executive coaching and class room training.

3. Fear of Losing Current Job

One key factor I’ve come across in why Asian leaders often don’t focus on developing other powerful leaders is a fear of losing their job and with that the status, perks, standing and power an individual has, which are all highly prized values in an Asian context. It’s an internal insecurity which unfortunately isn’t limited only to the “older generation” but permeates into the current workforce as ewll.

Suggestion: One of the best ways to combat fear is to directly deal with the potential consequences of something bad happening to you. In the case of fear of losing your job my advice would be to think what you would do if your boss fires you tomorrow. What alternatives would you have, what opportunities would this unlock for you, what do you have to do today to make yourself ‘independent’ of your current job? By taking the negative consequences out of losing your job, you will become more confident and less likely to be ‘afraid’ of your subordinate being better than you.

Create powerful leaders and you’ll be remembered for your successes for a long time to come. It really is that important. If you’re wondering just how to get started on this supposedly monumental task, subscribe to the mailing list and I’ll have you well on your way. Have a great weekend!