(Alpharetta, GA) November 16, 2009

-The following is an article from "Living Your Leadership Legacy."
A newsletter published by Competitive Solutions, Inc.

Where Did All Our Leaders Go?
Over the last few years an alarming trend is taking place in organizations across the country – no one wants to be a front line leader. Companies are asking both internally and externally for people to step up and fill this void and the answer is a resounding, "No thanks." How did companies get here? How is it that a once coveted position is now in such dire straits? How is it that very few people want the responsibilities that come with a front line leadership role?

You don't have to look far to find that answer. In the last 15 years, the roles and responsibilities of front line leaders have been decimated. Once believed to be the integral role in achieving organizational performance, now they have been renamed coaches, facilitators, mentors and many cases, seen their role eliminated entirely from the organization. Why? Many professors of academia promoted the concept that for work teams to flourish and thrive, front line leadership must vanish. They advocated that front for team ideas and involvement to flourish the supervisor role must go away. So for the last 15 years the role, and more importantly the credibility of front line leaders have been eroding away. The supervisors who have remained have seen their work responsibilities and expectations grow exponentially with little to no direction, skills or training in how to drive accountability, urgency and focus into the teams they were tasked with facilitating. In fact, many leaders were put into ambiguous roles of when to coach, manage, dictate and facilitate and unfortunately the lines were never clear when to do either. This became even more complicated by the fact that many front line leaders were promoted into the role due to their technical or process knowledge, not necessarily due to their people skills.

Fast forward to today, recognizing that organizations may have been too zealous in their approach to achieving the proverbial paradigm shift that teams were supposed achieve, many organizations are redefining the role of supervisors/frontline leaders. More than a few organizations we encounter are reassembling front line leaders in the place of failed self-directed work teams. On the surface this is a positive direction, but one must drill down to see the new issues facing front line leaders.

Based on the baggage garnered during the last 15 years, successful front line leaders must possess an arsenal of engagement tools necessary to effectively manage a savvier workforce. Front line leaders must be equipped with the processes necessary to accomplish the following outcomes in their respective organizations:
• Create and sustain a clear business focus
• Create and sustain a shared sense of urgency around the business focus
• Create and sustain accountability systems to support the business focus
• Create and sustain a communication process that links the previous three items together

Simply being the technical expert is no longer going to be enough to create and sustain high performance. Front line leaders today need the engagement skills to address cultural change needs but at the same time being able to deliver bottom line performance. Front line leaders need to learn processes to effectively manage their teams, communicate, and set clear expectations. With these skills, supervisors are ready to take on their revamped role and become a key component in driving accountability and business processes in today's business environment.