MRO Today - Build your people and teams

Build your people and teams

This is my fifth leadership article for MRO Today. The first article opened the series and established my five leadership lessons. Subsequent articles covered:

• "You must be up front and objective oriented."

• "You must be up-to-date and farsighted."

• "You must be service focused."

In Lesson 4, I’ll show you how building your people and teams contributes to the leadership process by building a learning organization.

Most thinkers agree that people are our most valuable asset. Moreover, we know today that teams accomplish much of what we do in the supply management process. Our leadership goal is to increase value by building our teams. That goal depends on better people. You get them by training and development, or by outside hiring. Outside hiring means that we depend on someone else for training and pay for that.

While some argue that professional development is an individual responsibility, effective leaders know that meaningful human development that supports and facilitates organizational goals is an organizational responsibility. Leaders that establish organizational goals for professional development can set standards for annual developmental progress, budget adequate support, and inspire and reward their people and teams for exceeding objectives.

Self-development, job success, advancement, leadership and mentoring are all tied together. Each uses and reinforces the other. Similarly, we know that our hectic professional and personal lives will become even more difficult in the future.

This increased complexity makes self-development and professionalism more important, but equally more difficult. Every individual and department should have a spreadsheet showing annual organizational expectations, individual objectives and progress. Progress in professional development cannot be left to chance.

It must be an organizational process with leadership.

The table below suggests how programs for training and development should be shared by individuals and leadership.

The difference between effective change leaders and just leaders is how they build and inspire people in their teams. Effective leaders provide the tools, time, training and other needed resources to build and empower their people and teams to do great work. Leaders must be involved with and support programs that build people and teams.

Training and development are organizational skills
Type of developmental activity	Level of responsibility		Comments
	Individual	Leadership
Orientations, general and functional	Attend and learn	Develop and present	Important for all new people and as an as-needed refresher
On-the-job training	Learn by doing (with a work schedule)	Develop plan and ensure that it works	Everyone has a goal
Job rotation	Help develop the plan and work it	Formalize the plan and ensure that it works	Leadership is a team effort
Self-training, such as reading programs, professional programs and college courses	Develop plan for support by leader	Approve plan and provide support	Plans should support company goals
Formal training programs (in-house or outside); opportunities include graduate/ undergraduate degrees or professional certification programs	Earn participation, work with leaders to be in programs and learn	Develop the curriculum; establish relationships with institutions and professional associations	Programs should be developed and budgeted annually or even longer for selected people
Mentor programs	Seek them out and use them	Encourage mentors to work with people	Leadership uses the system to ensure program progress

Robert Kemp is a consultant, speaker and the former president of the Institute for Supply Management. He can be reached at .

This article appeared in the December 2001/January 2002 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 2002.