Markon Leadership Development: The Leadership Development Program Selection Process

The Leadership Development Program (LDP), Markon's internal leadership training, is designed to do precisely what the name implies—develop leaders from within the company to enhance the firm's growth.

Up until this point, we have made a conscious decision to grow our leaders from within, and a vital element of that is LDP.

But how do we select who gets to participate?

As the company grows, ensuring that the LDP is a merit-based program valued for what participants gain is critical. We do not want it to be viewed as ‘an old boys network’. In past years, we had a semi-formal selection process led by an LDP facilitator with volunteer LDP alumni as board members.

That process worked fine, and class membership was representative of the high-caliber staff in the firm. Candidates were nominated by the leadership team (directors and above) and LDP alumni. LDP has always had a high degree of interest, and we typically have 30-40 nominees for 10-12 slots.

This year, we modified the selection process. First, we chose a motivated LDP alum to lead the board. He received some very high-level guidance from the two current facilitators, and he developed and documented guidelines. He then chose board members from volunteer LDP alumni. The board represented a true cross-section of the firm, including all our portfolios and operations staff. Another upgrade this year was the requirement to have nominators answer three questions regarding their nominees. The questions included the candidate's strengths, development areas, how they support the firm outside of client/ops work, and other notables.

As a facilitator, while I could engage in the process, my role was to guide the rest of the panel. It was still a complex process. This year we had 31 nominees. After several hours of discussion, we ended up with 11 great selectees. The group went through the list several times, grouping nominees into ‘buckets’ of those very strong, those in the middle, and those not strong candidates – all based on the information presented by the nominators. Of course, the middle group started as the largest one. However, as the panel got deeper into the discussion the lines between the groups got clearer.

I am very proud of the way things worked out. As expected, the panel took their responsibility very seriously, and we got an incredible roster for the new class. Congrats to our selection committee leader and the committee on a job well done.

As always, there will be some tweaks in future years. Do you have any excellent practices to help improve a selection process like ours?