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This measures ability to recognize and solve problems for your customers. It does not refer to “emotional maturity.”

A key classification of your leaders is by years of experience. Divide your list of leaders into 3 buckets:

• Emerging: These leaders have less than 5 years of relevant experience.
• Mid-career: These leaders have between 6 and 14 years of experience.
• Advanced: These leaders have over 15 years of relevant experience.

Now having “relevant” experience is different from “total” years of experience. Thus, another metric to measure maturing is diversity of experience. You could create two or three buckets as follows:

• Beginner: These leaders have experience one or two business functions.
• Intermediate: These leaders have experience with  three to five business functions.
• Advanced: These leaders are ready for general management positions because they have touched almost every function in the organization.

Now you can set up a 3×3 matrix and plot your leaders on the graph. Be prepared to debate and modify your list based on new insight.

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Plants need tending, otherwise they will wilt and die, or rot. Especially the ones that are useful either for aesthetic value (pretty flowers) or sustenance (food). There are a few exceptions (cactus).

While it is not a perfect analogy, I hope it gets the point across. When creating a leadership bench, organizing training programs is just one element. You also have to create a support system that will cheer, encourage, motivate, and course correct. Much like a support group for recovering alcoholics.

When you set up your support group, you will discover:

• Role models, or lack thereof.
• Role models who cannot coach.
• Good coaches who do not want to coach.

You need to fill this gap with urgency. The support system has to be within the organization, and cannot be external. The leadership lessons need to be retained in the organization to begin the virtuous cycle of improvements.

The support group is critical because leadership training creates change agents. By definition, change agents are disruptive. If the change agents are not encouraged to drive change, they will revert to their old behaviors, rendering your investment in leadership training worthless.