Quora Answer: How Can a CEO Allow Subordinates to Demonstrate Their Leadership Skills?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How can a CEO allow subordinates to demonstrate their leadership skills?” 

First, we need to identify the leaders within any group of peers.  This is done by giving them a group project, and observe who takes responsibility for organising them, and managing the project.  The success or failure of these group projects are often secondary.  This can be something as mundane as a project group for productivity to organising a staff event.  When I do this, I am not looking for the most vocal, but the most effective among them.  I want to see organisation, I want to see targets, and I judge those against results. Even if they fail, we can still find raw ability that can be polished. 

Second, I give that person a specific project, and explicitly put him in charge of it.  This project has specific objectives.  I want to see if they are able to come up with milestones, anticipate challenges, and recruit people for their team.  Part of leadership is the ability to build a team, and motivate them towards a specific challenge.  A project leader who cannot handle strong personalities, and fills his team with water carriers instead of generals likely has limited leadership abilities.  These projects have limited impact on the bottomline, and are meant to test bed initiatives. 

Finally, should they pass this, I give them a major campaign or project, and send one of my management team to mentor them through it.  This brings with it the pressure to succeed, higher visibility, and requires dealing with both internal and external stakeholders.  They successfully complete this, and they are on the fast track to upper management.  They fail this, there are no second chances.