Leaders Made Here - By Mark Miller

One of my many fond memorable experiences in my career was actually toward the beginning of it - I was just promoted to Assistant Marketing Manager and was selected to take part in a year-long marketing training program through my organization. Not only would I get to travel to sunny California, but I would have a mentor that was going to take me under her wing and be a source of help throughout the process. I’ll never forget the opportunities I got to take part in that year - meetings in a hut on the beach, celebration dinners on the Santa Monica Pier, and even some star gazing off the Hollywood star-studded strip of Sunset Boulevard. Looking back, I believe that training was my first encounter with intentional leadership development. The company desired so much to rise up their future leaders from within the organization that they had invested both time and talent in putting together such a training program - they truly delivered on their slogan of “Make Good Things Happen.”

So often our companies get inundated with the day to day operational demands that we lose focus on the vision of the future and the leadership who will help get us there. Mark Miller wrote the book "Leaders Made Here” that focuses on this very concern of building a leadership culture. He points out from the beginning that the future of companies depends on the “quantity and quality of leaders” on a team, and therefore focuses on who you hire and ensuring that there is a leadership bench “three people deep for every key leadership position.” This depth of leadership helps develop performance, grow in future needs, and transition positions smoothly. The author goes as far as stating that “leadership is the only sustainable competitive advantage.” He warns, though, in order to achieve this that a leadership culture must be created within the company, not just a few training classes for leaders.

In that year-long training program, I was a part of, we had daily homework along with a weekly phone call from our mentor, then all of us meeting up in person once a quarter for in-person learning. We had scenarios we were given where we had to write a response of our procedures and/or reactions to various situations, had to take tests to challenge our knowledge, and were encouraged to foster relationships with not only our mentor, but each other to use as an ongoing resource for the future. This company seemed to be intentionally working on the skills and character iceberg presented by the author in Leaders Made Here. The book refers to 10% of leadership being above the waterline such as skills and competencies of the leader, but 90% being underwater which represents our leadership characteristics. That part is where this company really wanted their leaders to always have the mentality of contributing to another’s growth (mentoring), identifying emerging leaders (hence this was a selection process by leaders in the company), taking part in activities to foster growth in leaders (investing their time in getting together with us once a quarter), and monitoring our growth (scorecards, evaluations, tests).

Of course, the investment in such leadership was put to a timeline just as the author suggests. The scaling timeline moved us from the in-depth training of a year-long program, to then attend conferences throughout the year to continue our growth and development, and eventually become the mentors ourselves. Those mentors were invested in too - whether it be through executive coaching, annual company conferences, or other resources, but the point is that there must be continuing opportunities across all leadership levels - not just those controlling the funds.

That leadership program instilled in me at an early age in my career the desire to always learn and grow - to constantly be open to professional development, but it also was the catalyst that later on in my career would remind me of the importance of investing in others. My passion is to encourage, inspire and equip others to intentionally live their life full of purpose, and as the book says, I want “future leaders (to) leave a better legacy than I have.” One of the best ways we can do that is to make sure whatever line of work we are in, whatever position we may hold - that leaders are made here.

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