DEVELOPING leaders from among a company’s employees is important to business because business grows and changes.
“Leadership development is a business deliverable, but people don’t often pay attention to it,” said Benedict Hernandez, president of Contact Center Association of the Philippines, during a panel discussion on fast tracking leadership development as part of the Cebu ICT-BPM Conference last week.
He added that the process of leadership development must be deliberate and institutionalized.
Looking for potential leaders must be more focused, and the method of looking for them must be made more effective.
There is a difference between the workers before and the workers now, he said. Now, the group to sift through for high potentials is the millennial group. Millennials, or Generation Y (Gen Y), refer to those born in the late nineties through the 2000s.
“Are you recruiting millennials for the job, or recruiting them for the vision of the company?” he said.
Hernandez said millennials want the fast and the easy. It is difficult to pinpoint promising people from them, he added.
Darwin Moises, senior manager of Lexmark Shared Services Cebu, said millennials are the most interested to learn and the most interested to be mentored.
“They want to know what they are getting themselves into. Unlike with the older generation where people learn the ropes on their own, millennials like being mentored,” Moises said.
Potential corporate leaders must have leadership capacity, capability and the drive to move towards globalization, said Prabhakar Bisen, country head of Cognizant Technology Solutions Philippines, Inc.
Jomari Mercado, president and chief executive officer of IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), said all employees should have development plans. Those who surface as high potentials should have succession plans.
“We have to be conscious about who have high potential to become successors, and give them more – longer projects, more responsibility and the like,” he said.
“If you are a high potential, you will be put in programs that accelerate you,” he added.
Hernandez said rigorous programs for development must be institutionalized.
“All companies should have that,” he added.