Cultivating Leaders from Within: Transforming Workers into Leaders

Background

A guiding premise behind the creation and utilization of advancement pools lies in the fact that most organizations have complex management structures (Twombly, 1990). Staff members who demonstrate excellent potential for leadership are sometimes looked over in favor of an outsider with more experience. These up-and-comers within the organization, if given appropriate training and opportunity, could easily become managers of specific areas, transforming them into loyal leaders who experience high levels of job satisfaction. Advancement pools are also generally accessible to the entire body of the organization that allows staffers who are “late bloomers” to experience the same potential for advancement that new hires enjoy. This also provides a perfect resource from which the administration can draw members for assignments to special task forces or perhaps delegate increased levels of administrative responsibility as discussed in van Ameijde’s (2009) discourse on distributed perspectives. In this situation, the leadership team will understand individual contributions to the organization, while providing a clear picture of an individual’s ability to balance his or her own desires for advancement with the needs of the organization (USA Today, 2001).