It may well be that managing followers’ performance and achieving team and organizational goals are the most critical responsibilities for leaders. Leaders get paid to achieve results, and this should be the primary reason that people are placed in positions of authority. Those promoted into leadership roles for reasons other than achieving results are destined to lead mediocre, underperforming teams. Put another way, athletic coaches, military commanders, and restaurant or retail store leaders should be picked for these roles because of their ability to motivate followers to exhibit the behaviors needed to achieve winning results. But this is often no easy task. Followers may not understand what they have to do or the degree to which they need to exhibit certain behaviors for the team to win; followers need to be monitored and given feedback and coaching to exhibit the right behaviors; and leaders need to be able to differentiate between high and low performers and administer rewards in a fair and transparent manner. Leaders who shirk these responsibilities to be popular or avoid negative Glassdoor reviews or employee engagement survey results usually end up managing teams that report lower levels of morale and effectiveness.

Leaders are sometimes asked to share their opinions about which followers deserve promotions. Potential pertains to a follower’s overall capacity to assume more responsibility, move up one or more organizational levels, or become a leader. Potential is different from readiness, which relates to estimates of how much time it will take before followers would be able to handle the demands of a promotion. Some followers need little additional training or experience, whereas it may take another year or two before others would be effective in positions with greater responsibility. Leaders are often asked to provide potential, performance, and readiness ratings for replacement tables and 9-box matrices, two more formal techniques organizations use in succession planning.

Most organizations suffer from leadership bench strength issues and do not have enough of the right talent to fill key leadership roles. Outside hires can help fill these gaps, but more often than not, organizations are better off promoting from within. Most promotion decisions are based solely on the boss’s recommendations, which tend to be riddled with biases and inaccuracies. This is one reason why diverse and female candidates are underrepresented in leadership positions. To address this problem, organizations need to systematically include personality, intelligence, and team-building ability into determinations of potential and succession planning discussions.

1.CEOs make 312 times more than the average employee, and many of the organizations they lead have adopted a pay for performance philosophy. Do you think CEO positions fit well with the criteria associated with meritocracies? Do you think CEOs’ compensation conforms to the pay for performance approach?
2.How do you think the coronavirus pandemic affected follower performance, unit effectiveness, and follower potential of warehouse workers at Amazon? Intensive care medical teams? Restaurant server teams? University professors?
3.Large Chinese cities make extensive use of facial recognition and other types of electronic monitoring, and enjoy low crime rates as a result. Do you think the price of being constantly monitored is worth the benefits?
4.What goals would you include in a balanced scorecard for a gasoline station? What would be some of the factors that could affect the station’s ability to achieve these goals?
5.Did U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson get elected because of their leadership competence or because of their confidence and charisma? Defend your answer.
6.Who is the best person to get promoted? Someone who has been the team’s top performer for the past two years? The most popular person on the team? Someone who is a solid performer, but also goes the extra mile to help others be successful? Defend your answer.