EIGHTY-EIGHT ASSIGNMENTS FOR DEVELOPMENT IN PLACE
EIGHTY-EIGHT ASSIGNMENTS FOR DEVELOPMENT IN PLACE
Michael M. Lombardo
Robert W. Eichinger
Center for Creative Leadership
Greensboro, North Carolina
The Center for Creative Leadership is an international, nonprofit educational institution founded in 1970 to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. As a part of this mission, it publishes books and reports that aim to contribute to a general process of inquiry and understanding in which ideas related to leadership are raised, exchanged, and evaluated. The ideas presented in its publications are those of the author or authors.
CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
© 1989 Center for Creative Leadership
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by Bob Burke and Laura Gibson
Text design and layout by Joanne Ferguson
CCL No. 136
ISBN No. 978-1-882197-20-0
Table of Contents
Background: Experiences That Develop Managers and What Makes Them Developmental
Eleven Challenges Common to Developmental Experience
Assignments for Development in Place
Setting Up a System for Development in Place
Helping Managers Get the Most From Their Experiences
How to Use This Article
This article is intended as a tool for managers and professionals at all levels and for human resources professionals. Its purpose is to help you add developmental assignments to current jobs. As implied by the title, the focus is on what can be done without moving people into new jobs, on developmental options that can be exercised in existing jobs to more systematically develop people by providing variety in leadership challenge and help in learning from these challenges.
The article will offer 88 developmental experiences that can be added to existing jobs. After reading this, you will have a basis for matching the developmental needs of subordinates to the experiences most likely to address those needs. You will also be able to give subordinate managers the information they need to take charge of their own development more systematically.
As a manager responsible for the development of subordinates, this article will help you take a look at your own job and perhaps find pieces of it that are no longer developmental for you but which might be developmental for one or more of your subordinates. Handing off these parts of your job can lead to development for your subordinates and free you to enhance your own development as well.
The article is organized in five major sections:
| Section | Pages | Contents |
| 1 | 1-3 | Background: Discussion of the experiences that our research found to be most developmental to managers and what can be learned from these experiences. |
| 2 | 3-5 | Discussion of the eleven challenges common to developmental experiences. |
| 3 | 5-12 | Discussion of options for development in place, including matrix of 88 such options and the likely developmental aspects of each. |
| 4 | 13-22 | Considerations in setting up a system for development in place. |
| 5 | 23-28 | How to help managers get the most out of development in place. |
Background: Experiences That Develop Managers and What Makes Them Developmental
The Center for Creative Leadership’s continuing studies† of executive growth and development have confirmed and extended the adage that experience is the best teacher.
In these studies we found that variety in leadership challenges—certain jobs, exceptional other people (overwhelmingly bosses), coping with our mistakes, enduring hardships, and coursework at pivotal moments—all contribute to the building and seasoning of managers.
Specific experiences teach specific lessons necessary for success. But it is critical, as T. S. Eliot said, not to “… have the experience, and miss the meaning.” Managers we studied who went on to become effective executives not only had the experiences but learned lessons from them. Learning was not automatic, only made possible by the encountering of certain challenges.
Armed with this knowledge, development can certainly be a more systematic effort than it has been in the past. By exposing young managers to developmental jobs and developmental bosses, and by helping them become effective learners, we can increase our pool of potential leadership talent for the future and provide more meaningful work for managers.
Several problems get in the way, however the most obvious is that American organizations are hardly in a boom era. Since 1980 the Fortune 500 has eliminated 2.8 million jobs, 30 million people have been displaced in restructurings, and entire levels of organizations have disappeared overnight (Peters, 1987).
With the rapid increase of dual-career couples and single heads of households, a trend line projected to rise further beyond the year 2000, many managers are refusing geographic moves. A recent study found that 60% of relocation requests were refused. A human resources director told us the tale of asking nine managers to take a plum developmental assignment in France before he got a taker. With organizations slimming down, the problem of creating challenging assignments is complicated by the fact that there are now fewer developmental jobs. In addition, many companies have slowed moving people around due to cost. What is needed is more than a recounting of the types of assignments that are developmental. What is needed is help with development in place so that challenge and growth can be added to virtually all managerial and physical jobs.
This is exactly what this article aims to do. Before we discuss development in place, however, we will take a few pages to look at what makes certain kinds of assignments developmental. Then we will turn to the question of how developmental challenge can be provided in existing jobs.
There are five broad categories of experience that executives generally cite as being potentially developmental:
(1) Challenging jobs, because they