Courage - How Companies Should Develop Leaders in Their 20s

Our role is to prepare the next generation of leaders to do better than we did.

“OK! Now go lead those people who used to be your peers!”

That is what happens in a majority of organizations. When someone is promoted to lead people who used to be their peers, most companies do nothing to prepare new leaders for those unique challenges. They are promoted because they were good individual contributors and someone sees their potential to lead. But nobody is preparing them.

Some new leaders, if they are lucky, might go through a basic supervisor course, but those courses often focus on the administrative tasks a new leader needs to complete. The real challenges come from leading people who, just last week, were their peers.

Year after year. Generation after generation. New leaders are put in this difficult position and we are not preparing them. So why aren’t we doing something to prepare them?

Leaders, whoever and wherever you are, your role is to prepare the next generation of leaders to do better than our generation did.

Think about the challenges of leading former peers: