Preventing Derailment: What To Do Before It's Too Late

Developing Michelle

There are four general principles of individual management development (broken into 12 steps on page 22), applied here to the special case of derailers:

1.  Preparing managers for change by showing a realistic picture of themselves;

2.  Transferring the information to personal ownership so managers feel responsible for their development;

3.  Developing managers through a series of targeted tactics; and

4.  Rewarding managers for improvement.

Preparing. First, Michelle had to be presented with a standard to measure herself against—a depiction of what effectiveness and derailment look like and the dynamic transitions necessary as managerial careers advance (Marv had to piece this together himself; their organization didn’t have ...