Page 83 - The extraordinary leader

60 • The Extraordinary Leader

Having a proper set of personal capabilities is another way of saying that
the excellent leader must have moved successfully through Stage II. Leaders
cannot skip this stage; if they do, they pay a price as they move upward in the
organization and then have to go back and acquire skills that should have
been acquired earlier in their careers. This is the time when self-confidence
must be developed, as well as trust in one’s own perceptions of situations.
Moving too fast through Stage II is also dangerous. In moving too rapidly,
people do not develop self-confidence or build credibility with others in the
organization. Our analysis of the research data on leaders shows that effective
leaders learned professional skills during this stage of their careers. Without
these skills, further progress is severely limited. Leadership in Stage II is some-
times described as personal leadership.
Stage III. The third stage is about contributing through others, and every
effective leader of others is at least in Stage III. Many people who have the
title of “manager,” however, are not in Stage III, but remain locked in Stage
II, even though they are surrounded by the trappings of a Stage III leader.
These are managers who continue to process claim forms or design a new part
because it is more comfortable to function as an individual contributor than
as a leader. Frequently, they will “cherry-pick” the best assignments and com-
pete with their direct reports for recognition and rewards. They are unable or
unwilling to leave their comfort zone of being personally productive using
some technical tasks.
Stage III behavior requires people to develop others, to represent the organ-
ization to clients and external groups, and to build strong internal and exter-
nal networks. Stage III contributors achieve positive results as they work with
and through others. They have organizational impact by mentoring others,
by heading up a project team, and by taking on responsibility for much more
than their own performance. (What this means, of course, is that there are
many Stage III people who do not have the words “supervisor,” “manager,”
or “director” in front of their names. The creators of this useful framework by
which to understand career growth have done research that shows there to be
five times as many people in Stage III who do not have a managerial title as
there are those who have a formal role and title.)
Stage IV. A small number of people move beyond Stage III and become
Stage IV leaders. Research shows that only 5 percent of the working popula-
tion ends up in Stage IV functions. That means, obviously, that 95 percent of
everyone working in organizations ends up having perfectly satisfactory careers