Manager For A Day Program Teaches Leadership Skills Succession planning is kind of a weird topic for a lot of leaders. Succession planning, theoretically, is super easy to do. Okay, we just have to find the next group of leaders who are going to replace the current group of leaders as they succeed and get them the right leadership skills, et cetera, et cetera.
Most executives I study are driven by power or achievement (or some combination of the two). Power-driven people want to be in charge and they want authority to make decisions that will impact others. By contrast, achievement-driven people are more thrilled by accomplishing difficult tasks, even if no one else notices. 
Teaching attitude is something that a lot of leaders give up on before they even try. They say “Pat just is the way he is. He’s a little cranky, and he’s a little sarcastic, but I can’t do much about that.” But when you look at great leaders, they do teach attitude, and so can you.
When I go into organizations and I ask the employees “tell me why your team exists?” the most frequent response I hear is “I don’t really know.” This certainly isn’t great news, but it does help clarify one of my recent research findings that only 23% of employees say their leader always communicates their vision clearly. 
Have you ever been in one of those team meetings, virtual or face-to-face, where a few big personalities just dominate the space? They usually talk louder than everyone else, and if the boss or team leader isn’t speaking, all you hear are their thoughts, their ideas, their yeas and their nays. 
We’ve all had the situation when an employee walks into our office with a problem they want us to solve (or dozens of problems they want solved). Maybe they walk into our office and say, “I need your help boss, that other division won’t respond to my emails about giving me the data I need to finish my report.” And then they stand there waiting for us to solve that problem.
Today’s managers talk a lot about wanting employees to be more accountable and to act on their own initiative. And yet, those same managers turn around and say to employees: “I have to give you assignments; I have to give you feedback; I have to hold you accountable.” 
When I asked 5,000 plus employees from a wide spread of industries “Who teaches you more about the dos and don’ts on the job, the boss or your fellow employees?” The results were pretty shocking. 67% said they learn more by watching fellow employees. Now, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion, especially if you have a lot of high performers on your team, that this is a good thing.
Being a boss is no easy job, and it’s pretty common to wonder, “How am I really doing?” Unfortunately, traditional business metrics don’t really offer much guidance. A great P&L, for example, might be the result of leadership brilliance, but it could also be the result of the market popping up, and chances are that one leader didn’t single-handedly drive the dial up.
While many of the traits that define a good manager vary depending on the organization, the team and the manager, through my studies I have identified a set of six personality traits universally found in the most successful leaders of remote teams. You may find you already naturally possess some of these characteristics while others you will have to work to develop.
