CIO just ran an article with the title, "How to Turn Your Employees into Leaders." It's worth a read for the central story.

The writer, Stephanie Overby uses Motorola CIO Patty Morrison's experience as the red thread that runs through her article.  Here's the lead.

"Motorola CIO Patty Morrison sleeps well at night. She takes real vacations. She has time to think. It doesn’t sound like the typical description of life as a CIO, particularly an IT leader at a $42 billion company in the midst of a major reorganization in the acutely competitive communications equipment market."

And why does Ms Morrison sleep well? It's because she doesn't get those crisis calls about outages in the middle of the night. There are people handling that.

Other people are running significant IT projects at Motorola. Ms Morrison doesn't toss and turn worrying about what's not getting done.  She's got confidence in her people.

She also illustrates one important reason why you should be developing the people who work for you.  It's not enough to have good people working for you.  You have to have good people who can handle significant assignments on their own.  The only way to get that is to select good people and help them develop.

As a boss you've got two jobs. You must accomplish the mission. You must care for your people. Part of caring for them is developing them and that leads to a virtuous cycle with benefits for you and the company.

You're going to lose some of the good people you develop. Morrison has seen 16 of her people move on to CIO positions at other companies. But those provide you with good relationships and contacts and when they leave they open up possibilities for other good people.

So, if you're the boss, sit down and figure out how you're going to help your people develop. It will be good for them, good for the company and good for you.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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