Diamonds in the Rough

While nearly all managers have their hands full with day-to-day duties, the best leaders make time to keep an eye out for top talent in their organization, with the hopes of grooming future generations of leaders. Experts say the federal government falls short of the private sector in developing its top talent and that managers should be leading the efforts to reverse this trend.

Tom Fox, director of the Partnership for Public Service's Center for Government Leadership, says it's not as easy as it might seem even to identify top talent. "If you're a senior career official, you may not have a great window into each person's individual strengths," he says. "And you don't know what diamonds in the rough you have even with people you have regular contact with."

Fox recommends a team approach to identifying future leaders, with managers and leaders at all levels assessing individuals' leadership abilities to target top talent. Collaboration is equally important once that identification has occurred. "Grooming and developing is a team effort among senior leaders, working together to figure out the best avenues, and making sure they're aware of opportunities in agencies and beyond agencies to develop professionally," he says.

These opportunities should include both formal and informal avenues, according to Fox. As important as formal training and mentoring programs are, many senior officials say it was a combination of these programs and informal one-on-one relationships that helped them achieve their top positions. These informal relationships can form a sort of "corporate board of mentors," Fox says.

Bob Rosner, author of The Boss's Survival Guide (McGraw-Hill, 2009), advises managers to consider promoting people even before they're ready. In a column for Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit employee rights group, Rosner says it is a natural inclination for managers to want to place people in jobs they've already proved they can do. But doing so will produce only the expected results. "The real innovations usually come from people who are in a bit over their heads, able to make new connections and not bound by what's worked in the past," Rosner says.

Rosner also advises managers to initiate candid conversations with future leaders, even if those discussions include the possibility of going elsewhere. "Since there almost always will be a next job, don't be scared to talk about what's next," he says. Doing so will make employees feel that their supervisors care about them and their career.

Both Rosner and Fox say organizations should commit to creating development opportunities regardless of the economic climate. Rosner says he has seen many organizations that had worked hard to create learning opportunities for employees abandon those efforts in the wake of the recession. "Call me old school, but I think learning should never go out of fashion," Rosner says. "Give people formal learning, training and informal learning opportunities where they can discuss their decision-making process."

But many organizations in the private sector understand the need in tough times to double down on efforts to develop leaders, Fox says. With federal employees' reputations under attack, budgets tightening and workloads growing, now is the time for the government, and managers, to do the same.