Are Leaders Born or Made Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Are Leaders Born or Made - Essay Example 9 Case Study Rolls Royce is a technology leader which employees 36,000 people in offices, manufacturing and service facilities operating in 50 countries. The company has long history of employee development but currently they are reexamining their development strategy. In 2005 a review of talent management which was up till now being managed locally within business units was done and new concept of talent management at global scale was introduced (Jane Yarnall, 2008). Rolls Royce realized the importance of talent management and that it should not be a standalone approach. Leaders can only emerge by identifying the potential talent at the grass root level and then nurtured and developed according to the organizational needs. The efforts which were previously been done at the regional level needs to be coordinated and aligned with each other and with organizational objectives to maximize its effectiveness and broadening its horizon. After reviewing their current policy and assessing it s strengths and weaknesses they charted out a number of steps for their global talent management program. A new stream of graduates was hired as trainee managers or the leadership graduates, developing a pool for future leadership. And as this pool of candidate grew in experience and maturity, succession planning was successful. This program had a clear and predefined set of roles and expectations from the line managers, while at the same time, there was development of a human resource database, keeping in mind the global focus. Career development and progression plans were developed and communicated objectively to the employees, for assuring and ensuring no conflicts by being absolutely objective, alongside coaching and mentoring. This, in turn, assisted the business to focus on leadership development with a strategic eye for the future requirements10(Jane Yarnall, 2008). The above charted out plans further strengthens the view that Rolls Royce also believed in the theory that lead ers are more made than born as suggested by Daft and a no of other writers on the theory of leadership development. Rolls Royce realizes the importance of the quality of human capital and strongly believes that the success of the company depends on how the management programs for all the employees have been established within the company. Before launching this global talent management program Rolls Royce actually conducted a self analysis survey to identify the weaknesses of the old development program. In this self analysis program they asked themselves the following questions. Where do they stand today? How healthy is their existing succession plan? A survey about internal and global demographics What metrics should they use? What kind of leadership is required for the future? An analysis of the need of future graduates Identification of real indicators of high potential What additional development programs are required An analysis of competitors leadership development program If we take a closer look at these questions then it reveals that it was actually a journey for the company through the stages of leadership development as suggested by Daft. Once it was decided at Rolls Royce that born leaders are a rare commodity and cannot be found easily, Since there is no