Have you heard of the term "bench strength?" In business, this refers to the capabilities and readiness of potential successors to move into key professional and leadership positions. The term comes from baseball, where it refers to a team's lineup of highly skilled players who can step in when a player is hurt or replaced.

In business, bench strength is critically important because organizations continuously go through turnover, restructuring and changes in business strategy. Whenever a critical person leaves, the organization should have a ready successor or plan for a replacement in order to avoid business interruption.

In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share insight into leadership development in order to build bench strength.

In the 2000 book, The Leadership Pipeline, authors Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel share a development process based on 30 years of consulting work with Fortune 500 companies.

This model helps organizations grow leaders internally at every level, from entry level team leaders to senior managers. It provides a framework that you can use to identify future leaders, assess their competence, plan their development and measure results. Put simply, you can use the model to think about how you'll train your people to take the next step up the leadership ladder.

According to the model, leaders progress through six key transitions, or "passages," in order to succeed. At each phase, an individual needs to take on certain traits or learn certain skills to successfully move up and perform at the next level. These six leadership transitions include:

  • From managing self to managing others (promotion to a first line manager)

  • Managing others to managing managers

  • Managing managers to functional managers

  • Functional managers to business managers

  • Business managers to group managers

  • Group managers to enterprise managers (CEOs and presidents of companies)

What's even better, these authors designed a similar model for small business. Instead of six passages, this model includes three passages:

  • Managing self to managing others

  • Managing others to functional manager

  • Functional manager to business manager

Each level of leadership requires a unique mix of skills, application of time and values/ priorities. Understanding these three passages offers several benefits:

  • It reduces the emotional stress of the transition and added responsibilities

  • It helps people move through these leadership phases at the right speed

  • It reduces the timeframe it takes to prepare the person for the leadership position.

Refer to this leadership guide to learn how to develop your leaders today to drive tomorrow's success.

Source: Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel are authors of The Leadership Pipeline. Ram Charan is a world-renowned business advisor, author and speaker who has spent the past 35 years working with many top companies, CEOs and boards. Stephen J. Drotter is chairman and co-founder of the Leadership Pipeline Institute.