We are well into the new school year, a good time to focus attention on and give gratitude to the educators of tomorrow's leaders. Teachers deserve admiration for regularly facing classrooms of pupils with vast differences and needs, and still managing to fill young minds with the knowledge that turns them into productive citizens and creative thinkers.

Some of today's pupils will eventually land at the doorsteps of industry and business, eager to perform. In the ideal scenario, some of the best employees will become high-performing CEOs and CFOs, executive directors, or hold other highly responsible positions of leadership. But for this ideal to occur, learning must be a lifetime pursuit and teaching, or development, must meet individual needs.

In too many organizations, this does not happen. Employee development programs are often like ordering from a menu that offers a single entrée, no substitutions permitted, and everyone has to like it. In development classes, this means that managers with different needs will join others both like and unlike them, to study the same things – customer service, perhaps, or team building, or leadership in general – whether they need these sessions or not. Organizers of such programs should glance into the room at mid-point and see how many pupils are engaged in the subject. If you see vacant stares, doodling and finger drumming, take it as a sign that your development needs an infusion of relevance and reality.

The First Step
One of the most effective things a leader can do when developing employees is find out what they need. Asking, "In what area(s) do you need to grow?" is simple enough. But just because the question is easy does not mean the answer is at our fingertips. Everyone has blind spots, and all ambitious employees want to present themselves in the best possible light. For example, don't expect someone to tell you that she is good at everything except for establishing relationships. Many people just do not want to admit that a skill or two might be weak. Even those who know where they need to improve might not be willing or able to articulate it clearly.

This is where an objective assessment can be a useful method of determining exactly what your employees need to develop into a great leader. Let's define an "objective assessment" as a measure of on-the-job behaviors or skills required to perform the job. A list of these skills could be quite long and include such things as displaying commitment, an ability to develop teams, skill in motivating team members, and the constant fly in the organizational ointment, effective delegation of duties to others.

Such a list can seem endless, but that does not mean it must intimidate. One of Profiles' assessments designed to develop managers looks at 18 important areas or skills sets. Even with its detailed examination, it takes only a short time to finish and can be completed online, in the privacy of the employee's home or office. Such assessments are scientifically designed to obtain responses that are honest and clear.

After the Assessment
If we were in a classroom, we'd ask for a show of hands in response to this next question, and we'd expect to see few fingers in the air: How many organizations actually DO something with assessments once the employee has completed them? Here's another question: Are the assessments designed for action?

We envision a classroom full of shoulders shrugging about now.

One of the mysteries common to many offices has to do with the Bermuda Triangle of amassed information. Self-studies, projects, reports and assessments gather dust on shelves or get lost in the bottom of a pile on a desk. People get busy with phone calls, day-to-day duties and out of town conferences, and then they go on vacation for a couple of weeks. Soon the valuable information about Jim or Sally's ability to communicate with team members is lost.

We believe truly helpful assessments come with easy-to-follow next steps. The same assessment described earlier comes with action reports, one for the employee who completed the assessment, and one for his or her supervisor or on-the-job coach. The manager's assessment is a self-study. Like any good diagnostic, it reveals which measurements the manager excels at, what the organization needs, and what the manager needs to work on.

The coach's assessment comes with a report on the employee, as well as exercises and activities for the coach to assign. Designed for employee growth, this report is like a tailored suit – it fits perfectly. If you knew something was missing on Sally's team but could not define what the ingredient was, this report will tell you. Perhaps the missing link is effective communication, or maybe Sally is not listening to team members as carefully as she should be. Whatever the case, the coach's report will say so – and the coach will know how to help Sally shore up these weaknesses in performance.

Life provides us with valuable educational milestones: moving from grade school into middle school, graduating from high school, finishing college and advanced degrees. But such milestones do not signify an end to learning. Each one puts us on a new path to something new. Just ask any teacher. 

If we could use only three words to describe Daniel S. Harkavy's philosophy, they would be: Make a Plan

From his business, Building Champions, to his book, Becoming a Coaching Leader: The Proven Strategy for Building Your Own Team of Champions, Harkavy advocates planning your life – all of it – the way you want it to be. He uses a “Core Four” platform to do so, which he describes as "the foundation of your coaching strategy" that will lead its followers to business success.

Building Champions' Core Four, explored in detail in Becoming a Coaching Leader, includes:

• A life plan. Think of this as the first brick in your foundation. As Harkavy sees it, the life plan enables a person to determine what's important to him or her and then devise a plan to build it.  
• A business vision. This part of the core is how you see your future and start developing the strategy to create it.   
• A business plan. Brick by brick, this is what business builders use to support the vision and the life plan.
• Priority management. This helps the entrepreneur make decisions that enhance business success while allowing him to have a life outside of work.

But Harkavy advocates more than just planning. He wants readers of his book to think about who they are, why they exist, and why they do what they do every day. Numbers are important in business, he notes. But everything cannot be merely about numbers. There must be more to life and to business, or else we are doomed to lead lives of desperation. Besides, he notes, just studying the numbers does not lead to success.

After describing the different kinds of leaders, Harkavy presents his philosophy in three parts. The first part of his book examines what a coach is. The second explores the four aspects of his Core Four, and this section makes up the bulk of the book. The final part looks at how this plan for work and life will change the leader and his or her organization.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
BECOMING A COACHING LEADER:
The Proven Strategy for Building Your Own Team of Champions
Author: Daniel S. Harkavy
224 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN-13: 978-0785219828