According to Fast Company, on average a person can expect to get promoted every two-three years, depending on the size of the company and industry. But no matter how often one gets promoted, the biggest step up you make in the corporate world is from managing a single team of individual contributors to being responsible for many teams. We call these people ‘leaders of leaders.’ These people are managing the leaders who have individual contributors working for them and now need to work with and through others to drive strategy and deliver on business goals.  

In this blog we’ll explore why the chasm between manager and leader of leaders is so big, how we help clients bridge the gap, and what you need to be thinking of when developing those in this critical position.  

What do we mean by 'leader of leaders'?

The difference between a middle manager and a leader of leaders is that the former is focused on getting day-to-day work done. For example, a middle manager in a manufacturing plant may have many people reporting to them, but their main objective is to ensure production targets are met.  

By contrast, a leader of leaders will have several leaders whose teams may have different functions reporting to them, and their focus needs to be on setting an enterprise-level vision, mission, and strategy. They need to balance this long-term thinking with the daily delivery of business goals via their direct reports. To do this, they must inspire their team, communicate a clear roadmap, and facilitate collaboration across silos.  

As you can see, becoming a leader of leaders is a giant leap to make, which is why it’s the stage that most visibly exposes leadership capability gaps.

What are the main challenges facing leaders of leaders?  

There are four core challenges that leaders of leaders face:

1. Getting stuck in the weeds. We see this a lot, where the leader becomes too focused on the short term, going deep into the day-to-day. They forget about the bigger picture, and as a result are ill-prepared for the future.
2. Engaging their team. Leaders of leaders must keep a team of busy leaders inspired, engaged, and connected. Helping everyone stay focused and moving towards the same goals is never easy when each leader has their own departmental and individual targets to hit.  
3. Stepping into the unknown. Having stepped far away from their own area of expertise, these leaders may be lacking confidence in their ability to deliver in domains they are accountable, but not responsible, for. This requires them to build the right team around them, develop trust with and between their team members, and remove blockers.  
4. Executive presence, networking and storytelling. Once leaders reach this level, they can find themselves in meetings and presentations with much higher stakes. They need to be able to show up not just as competent, but as confident. They need to build strong relationships through internal and external networks and be able to demonstrate their professional brand and represent the brand of the organization.  

We frequently see leaders either retreat into their comfort zone – the weeds they know well – or become too far removed from the day-to-day that they don’t understand the real issues facing their teams. At an organizational level, this shows up as lower and/or slower levels of growth, blockages in your talent pipeline, and high levels of attrition.  

Learn more about the 12 Common Performance Barriers of Leadership Teams in our 2-part video series.

What makes ZRG Consulting’s leadership development different?

Our unique approach to developing leaders of leaders is based on the Bravanti team at ZRG Consulting’s methodology:

• Coaches who have been there and done it. The executive coaches who facilitate our leadership development programs have been leaders of leaders inside businesses themselves, so they have direct experience of the challenges our clients face.
• Tailored content. We collaborate with you to design a leadership program distinctive to the needs and objectives of your organization. Content is engaging, interactive and encourages leaders to operate out of their comfort zone.  
• Thinking three-dimensionally. Our programs focus on the powerful trio of:

1. How do you focus inward? Through developing self-awareness, regular reflection, and greater emotional intelligence.  
2. How do you focus outward? By building a high-performing team, aligning it around a common vision, and maintaining motivation.  
3. How do you focus forward? Setting a clear strategy, seeing around corners, and working with other leaders of leaders to achieve enterprise-level goals.

• Immediately actionable. We believe the best way to learn is through doing, so our leaders bring in real-world scenarios they are working on, and practice what they’re learning on these situations. This accelerates their development and makes an immediate difference to them, their teams, and your organization.
• Cohort-based learning. Leaders learn from each other via cohort-based learning made up of leader from various functions and/or business units. This enables stronger partnerships, relationships and networks across an organization. Leaders learn to work together.

What are the business benefits of this approach?  

Our cohort-based development programs are exclusively focused on leaders of leaders. As a result, your organization will see:

1. Clear results: Through upfront agreement and understanding of program objectives and outcomes, we agree on short and long-term evaluation and measurement of our programs to ensure we are delivering what your business needs. Well-designed leadership development programs can often help your organization get unstuck, and deliver the breakthrough growth you’ve been striving for, but struggled to attain.  
2. Authentic, effective leaders: Via psychometric assessment, 360 feedback, coaching and learning from others, participants become more self-aware. Understanding their own styles, strengths and opportunities is a critical step to enable leaders to flex their leadership to build high-performing teams.  
3. Stronger internal partnerships: Through small group activity, skills practice and discussion of real-world scenarios leaders learn to support each other, be vulnerable with each other and provide effective feedback to each other. Lasting internal relationships are formed as they collaborate and improve strategic thinking. build an enterprise mind-set and leaders see a broader picture.  
4. Leadership pipeline. Our programs encourage active engagement of successful senior leaders as program advisors. By sharing their experiences and learnings, they transfer invaluable organizational and professional knowledge. Participants are provided exposure to leaders they would not normally come in contact with and senior leaders are exposed to people they may identify as ready for the next role and/or as a potential successor.  

When you focus on leadership development in a tailored, business outcome-driven way, you enhance your chances of delivering your strategic goals, retaining key talent, and strengthening your leadership pipeline.  

What should you be considering when choosing your leadership development firm?

There are many players in this space, and it can be hard to choose. Your decision criteria should be based on:

• A partner that listens to you. You need to collaborate with a firm that will understand your organization, your culture, your business objectives and your unique challenges.  
• A partner talks to you vs. sells to you. You need a firm that will share their expertise, their learnings ,and their limitations. A firm that collaborates with you and co-creates programs tailored to the needs of your leaders and organization will be a true partner.
• Cost. When organizations have business challenges, investing in developing leaders can feel like an unnecessary cost to bear. A question I often ask organizations is, what are the risks if you don’t get this right? If you don’t develop your leaders, or get the right leadership team in place, what’s going to happen? The answer is simple – you will never overcome your challenges and won’t get the business results you want. Find a partner with flexible formats that can tailor the most effective program within your budget.

Becoming a leader of leaders is a tricky step to negotiate, and there is a lot riding on it for the individual and the organization. But with the right leadership development partner and program, you can turn this stage into a competitive differentiator that helps you attract and retain key talent, build your reputation in the market, and drive faster and bigger growth for your business.  

We partner in business transformation, leadership acceleration, culture transformation, assessment & succession planning, executive and leadership coaching, and talent acquisition.?

Get in touch to learn more and get started!

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