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The Critical Transition into the Leadership Role

Helping Individual Contributors Effectively Move into Leadership Roles
Every organization needs more and better leaders to compete in todays environment.
Thats why organizations work so hard to rapidly transition successful individual contributors into
leadership roles where they can have a greater impact. These roles can be formal management
(direct reports) or informal leaders (no direct reports), either way they have the potential for
increased leverage and impact, and for purposes of this paper, leader will represent both
groups.
With an increasing number of baby boomers retiring, and the ever increasing pace of
change, it is critical that organizations help make the transition of individual contributors to
higher impact leader roles as efficient, effective, and rapid as possible. The question is, are
they?
Emerge Leadership Group research shows that when individual contributors
successfully make the transition to effective leadership, they contribute at a level that is twothree times higher than leaders that have not sufficiently made this transition. Unfortunately our
research also shows that 75% of leaders in organizations today are not performing at fully
transitioned capacity.

Stages A Description of increasing Contribution & Impact

To describe and measure individual contribution and impact in organizations we use a
model that was developed at Harvard in the mid-1970s by Professors Gene Dalton and Paul
Thompson.1 In an eight-year study of how professionals contribute in organizations, Dalton and
Thompson found that the high performers transitioned through at least three, and in some cases
four, different stages of impact over the course of their careers.
A brief summary of these transition stages identified by Dalton and Thompson, which we
call the Stages of Impact, are as follows:
Stage 1: Learner-Helping and Learning: In this stage, a person is learning their new
position. They accept direction from others, learn basic skills, work on smaller tasks and
demonstrate future potential. These are typically new hires and people coming into a
new assignment.
Stage 2: Specialist-Developing Expertise: In this stage, a person is an individual
contributor that demonstrates full competency in their assigned role. They develop
technical and professional skills in an area of expertise, work with minimal supervision
and adopt professional standards for their area of expertise.

Emerge Leadership Group, 2008

www.EmergeGroup.com, [email protected], (877) 275-4557
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Stage 3: Leader-Contributing Through Others: In this stage, a person is directing

the work of others. They may be a leader with direct reports or an informal leader who
has no formal management responsibility but is still expected to lead a team. Their
focus shifts from narrow (i.e. specific expertise) to broad (i.e. organization expertise). A
person in this stage makes sense of the work, organizes and directs others, builds
strategic relationships and develops others.
Stage 4: Strategist-Leading Through Vision: In this stage, a person is creating and
deploying the overall business strategy through a team of direct reports responsible for
major functions of the organization. Their focus is strategic, not tactical, and often looks
at how to best position the organization to capitalize on changing market conditions. A
person in this stage provides organizational direction, develops new ideas, directs
resources toward specific goals and represents the organization to the market.
The crucial finding from the Dalton and Thompson research was that the meaning of
high performance fundamentally changed from one stage to the next. The approach and
behaviors that made an individual successful in one stage would unfortunately guarantee his or
her demise in the next. To be successful, individuals had to undergo a transition that required a
significant change in perspective, behaviors, tasks, relationships and skills. They also
discovered that these transitions to higher levels of impact did not occur automatically based on
age, education, experience, or movement into new positions.
The most difficult of these transitions is the one from a Stage 2 Specialist, acting as
individual contributor, to a Stage 3 Leader, who contributes through others. At least 70 percent
of all professionals never really understand that expectations, and therefore the perceptions of
others, change dramatically when one moves from Stage 2 Specialist to Stage 3 Leader. When
people do not successfully make the move to the expected higher levels of impact their
individual performance as a leader and the overall performance of their organization both suffer.

A Classic Professional Development Irony

Typically, highly successful Stage 2 individual contributors are the ones selected to
move into Stage 3 Leader roles. Every organization selects their new leaders from the cream
of the crop. The compelling logic is that the highest performing individual contributors will make
the best leaders. These individuals are then given basic management skill development in areas
such as coaching, delegation and conflict resolution. Whats consistently overlooked is
assistance in the transition from stage 2 to stage 3 and a clear awareness of the changes
leaders will be expected to make in: (a) their approach to work; and (b) the behaviors they
exhibit in their new higher impact role.
At Emerge Leadership Group, our research shows quite clearly that for strong individual
contributors to successfully transition into higher impact leader roles, they require a two-phased
development approach:
1) Transition Development - Transitioning TO the new role - fundamentally changing
your approach to work and the behaviors used in your new role
2) Skills Development - The appropriate skills WITHIN the new role -coaching,
delegating, conflict resolution, etc.

Emerge Leadership Group, 2008

www.EmergeGroup.com, [email protected], (877) 275-4557
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Most organizations focus on Step 2, mastery of management skills. However,

the behavior and focus change required in Step 1 is much more crucial and difficult, yet often
not even addressed. That is why people complain "we give them all this skills training and yet
they still can't make the transition to management!"
Not providing fundamental transition development is like building a house with no
foundation. For a while the house looks fine (i.e. initial period after someone is promoted into a
leadership role), however, when subjected to the first heavy winds (i.e. major business
challenges) the house will collapse (i.e. perceived poor performance). The lesson seldom
learned in organizations is that without a strong foundation of transition development,
management skills training will have limited impact and expected high impact leadership
performance will not be realized.
An additional negative outcome of the missing transition development is declining
engagement in the workforce. Leaders that have not fully transitioned behave in ways that
destroy an environment of engagement. A leader that has fully transitioned understands how to
build an environment of engagement through employee participation, involvement, respect, and
commitment to organizational goals and purpose.

The Challenge: Changing Perspective and Behaviors

The problem of not transitioning individual contributors to management or informal
leadership positions can be solved. However, most companies just address the symptoms and
never get to the root of the problem.
Linda Hill, a Harvard professor, conducted extensive research on this transition from
individual contributor to manager, and made the following observation in her book, Becoming a
Manager:
Listening to managers, it becomes clear that the transition to manager is
not limited to acquiring competencies and building relationships. Rather,
it constitutes a profound transformation, as managers learn to think, feel
and value as managers.2
Individual contributors must make the psychological shift to manager first by changing
their perspective, approach and behaviors from narrow specialization to a broad understanding
of major segments of the organization. Making the full transition requires an assessment of the
individuals current stage of impact and what behavior they need to change in order to achieve
higher levels of impact. Their progress then needs to be measured. Once they are getting
traction towards higher levels of impact, the basic skills needed to manage effectively (i.e. team
building, delegating, coaching, etc.) can be taught and will be applied more from a Stage 3
Leader rather than a Stage 2 Specialist perspective.

Emerge Leadership Group, 2008

www.EmergeGroup.com, [email protected], (877) 275-4557
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Why Companies Dont See The Problem

As mentioned earlier, most companies see the symptoms but not the root cause of the
transition problem. The symptoms include ineffective teams, high turnover, low morale, higher
costs, lower profits and a lack of innovation. The much less obvious root cause is individual
contributors who dont change their approach and behaviors commensurate with fully
transitioned high performing leaders. In addition to not understanding the root cause,
companies fail to see the importance of these transitions because:
1. There is an obvious logic to promoting the best individual contributors to
management positions;
2. Bureaucratic momentum continues to use the same approach (aka Its the way
weve always done it) and
3. Approximately 25% of individual contributors successfully make the transition on
their own, with little or no assistance, which tends to validate the status quo.

Not Seeing the Problem has Huge Implications

Not effectively helping people transition from Stage 2 Specialist to the higher impact role
of Stage 3 Leader can be directly linked to poor financial performance of many organizations. In
her book, Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership,
Linda Hill stated: The human and financial costs are staggering for both the organization and
those who fail to make the transition to manager.3
This issue has major significance for organizations. In our recent study of more than 100
companies, we found that 48 percent of all managers are seen as operating as individual
contributors.4 Another 27 percent of all people with the manager title are perceived as stuck
somewhere in the transition to manager and are making little or no progress. Linda Hills study
and our own experience tell us that the transition usually takes 3 to 5 years to complete unless
individuals get significant help.
In Dalton and Thompsons original study, an individual contributor who fully transitions
into the role of leader will more than double his or her contribution to the organization. If 75
percent of all leaders in todays organizations have not yet fully transitioned to the role of leader,
then even the most conservative calculation of the costs are significant.

The Transition Process to Higher Impact

There is a process and a set of tools that can help even experienced leaders fully
transition into the manager role. The process can be divided into the several steps:
1. First, leaders who are acting as individual contributors need to understand how to
make the transition to the leader role. They need to know how to make the shift in
behavior and approach that is required to complete the transition. A key result of this
type of development is a personalized transition plan created by each manager to
focus his or her efforts, establish a time frame for completion and create
accountability.

Emerge Leadership Group, 2008

www.EmergeGroup.com, [email protected], (877) 275-4557
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2. A critical tool in the transition development process is an assessment tool to

determine the gap between an individuals current and required behaviors to fully
function as a Stage 3 Leader. This assessment must (1) include prescriptive
recommendations for changing the approach to work and the required behaviors for
leaders and, (2) be administered before and after transition development to create
accountability and measure progress.
3. One of the most critical steps in this process is for each manager to take on a new
project or responsibility. This project or accountability should address a specific
high-value business need and be sufficiently complex that it is more than what the
leader can accomplish alone. Dalton and Thompson found the most important
catalysts for helping to facilitate a successful transition from an individual contributor
to leadership role were job assignments or responsibilities that would help people
grow and develop without overwhelming them.
4. Leaders of people making the Stage 2 to Stage 3 transition must: (1) support the
individuals transition plan; (2) remove barriers; (3) offer resources; and (4) provide
coaching and protection.
When this process is clearly articulated and followed in a disciplined way, individuals
who are leaders in title only can complete the transition to becoming high impact leaders. In the
process, they deliver increased business results, realize higher personal job satisfaction,
develop greater capability in others, and build a much broader network of support.
With stage 3 transition assessment and development help, organizations will be able to
ensure that their individual contributors are able to develop into high impact leaders as
efficiently, effectively, and rapidly as possible. Thats critically important because every
organization needs more and better leaders to compete more successfully in todays
environment.

Emerge Leadership Group is a research-based assessment and development organization that focuses
on helping individual contributors maximize their impact by more effectively transitioning them into
leadership roles.

Footnotes
1. Gene W. Dalton, Paul H. Thompson and Ray Price, The Four Stages of Professional
Careers, Organizational Dynamics (Summer 1977), pp. 19-42.
2. Linda A. Hill, Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of
Leadership, Penguin Books, 1993.
3. Ibid.
4. Nationwide Study conducted by Emerge Leadership Group, 2003 - 2004.

Emerge Leadership Group, 2008

www.EmergeGroup.com, [email protected], (877) 275-4557
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