Whether your boss plans to promote you internally or wants the best for your career growth, many business leaders prioritize transitioning their super-active employees into future leaders.
If companies don’t follow this simple practice, this negatively impacts them in the fast-growing market. However, ensuring the employees’ happiness and will in the decision is also important.
Your employees will never leave if they see that the business leaders are investing their time and efforts to make the junior resources lead the department in the future. Such a collaborative, healthy environment promotes happiness and willingness for employees to spend quality time in the office.
You must create an environment where your employees can step forward and take the lead to manage all the relative activities within the department(s).
So, if you’re a leader looking to undertake this journey and see how others are doing it, this blog is the best for you!
Hear it from one of the best leaders and how they’ve developed their employees into future business leaders.
Furqan Sultan
Business Unit Head – CydoMedia
Build A Career Ladder
The most important thing any business leader can do to develop leadership is to build a success ladder on which they can climb and learn everything individually. The pathway to leadership should include several measurable milestones that entice employees to take an active part and become a leader with a creative mindset.
Make Them Step Out Of Their Comfort Zone
A good leader will always make their most potential employee step out of their comfort zone and take on challenges when necessary. You have to empower them to foster a growth-enabled mentality & for this, they need to step out of their comfort zones.
Give Them Responsibility & Autonomy
Giving your employees the freedom to make wise decisions is only possible if you make them feel the weight of their responsibilities so they can handle them courageously. And you know what? This is the most fantastic thing any leader can do to develop future business leaders.
Develop Training Sessions
Lastly, training and mentoring of the employees help them learn more and give them the credibility to understand and plan out value-added practices for the company. Moreover, they can gain expertise in leadership, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and verbal communication.
Marie Clarie Ross
Speaker, Facilitator, and Mastermind Mentor – Trustologie
Improve Their Self-Awareness
We are more likely to trust a humble leader who can admit mistakes. Self-awareness is considered to be one of the essential traits of a leader. Personality assessments and working with a coach are helpful here.
Communicate Meaningful Work
Excellent leaders spend time thinking about what needs to be done, making them better communicate to others why and how. Leaders who can communicate the context behind tasks convey important emotional information that better engages employees.
Embrace Change
There is so much uncertainty, and employees look to their leader to ensure that everything is okay. Leaders need to be able to talk about a compelling future and the steps to get there. Support leaders with communication skills that help others feel their hard work is worth it.
Shirley Borg
Head of Human Resources – Energy Casino
Future leaders need to be encouraged to upskill. If you find it hard to track skills and suggestions for each employee, you might want to invest in an HRIS system that allows you to track employee performance.
Some platforms allow you to set performance goals and write down any skills and upskilling suggestions. Some can even calculate how much upskilling all employees with what was put into the system would cost, so it’s easier to plan and manage the budget. Any future leader must be willing to learn and take on challenges; inspiring them to learn new things might lead them to a leadership path.
Push employees beyond their comfort zones. Encourage teams to collaborate & interact more. No matter how challenging or unfamiliar the situation, a leader must be able to function there. Teaching employees how to react in various situations is necessary to build a higher understanding of how to work in and lead a team.
Encourage collaborative decision-making in each team. When you foster an environment for creativity and freedom, each employee learns to take on responsibility. Making sure everyone’s voice is heard also boosts confidence, which is essential for future leaders. Who would want to follow an uncharismatic person who doesn’t believe even in themselves?
Matt Atkinson
Director – SME Geek Ltd
Offer Leadership Development:
Invest in providing your employees with leadership development opportunities and courses that will help them develop the skills they need to become future leaders. This could include attending seminars, taking online courses, or enrolling in formal leadership programs.
Create Mentorship Programs:
Establish mentorship programs where employees can be paired with senior leaders in the organization to learn from their experience and gain valuable insights.
Provide On-the-Job Training:
Offer on-the-job training opportunities that will allow employees to gain the skills and knowledge they need to become effective leaders. This could include job shadowing, taking on additional roles and responsibilities, or attending workshops.
Bonus:
Anyone can choose to be a leader in a company, no matter what their job title says. Here are some practical tips:
Standards:
Demonstrate the standards you expect from others. Challenge others when they don’t demonstrate high standards. The standards you walk by are the standards you accept.
Communication:
Employees should improve their communication by ensuring they are clear, concise, and consistent.
Catch Out, Catch In:
When an employee misses a deadline or standards slip, challenge them as to why – this is catching them out, which needs to be done as soon as possible. Once caught out, we then need to catch them back in when they hit their target or achieve the high standards expected.
Azmaira Maker
Founding Director – Aspiring Families
Share your story
Your story is extraordinary, especially when you have the foresight to develop your current employees into future leaders. Share this story with your workforce and show them how you’ve made your way to the top and now have the opportunity to help them on their journeys. Remember not to leave out the wrong decisions and extraordinary challenges that had you almost giving up — these are the lessons that will truly give them direction. In sharing your story, you won’t just give them the details on how to grow into a leader; you will serve them inspiration and confidence too.
Recommend the right leadership books
Introducing your employees to books written by leaders or ones dedicated to leadership is a great way to get them started on their leadership journey. From stories of successful entrepreneurs and executives to insights by social and even scientific stalwarts, there are so many books out there that reveal all the intricacies that go into shaping a leader. These books will help them find their weaknesses and strengths and, more importantly, show them how to deal with or make the most of them. Your inputs are undoubtedly crucial as a leader, but with these books, you will offer them a lot more perspective.
Sign them up for leadership training
Signing up your employees for leadership training is a concrete move that helps you invest in your employees directly and hone them as future leaders. Leadership training offers insights often lost in the melee of a workplace, insights that come in handy in everyday situations and teach people the skills to handle long-term challenges too. With the right coach and guide to back them up, you can count on your employees to open their eyes to leadership opportunities and have enough confidence to grab the chance when it comes their way.
Kris Harris
Founder – Nootka Saunas
Allow Them The Freedom To Make Decisions
When you give your employees the freedom to make decisions, you have already begun allowing them to act as leaders. A true leader can take stock of the situation at hand and act accordingly to derive the best possible results. In giving your employees this freedom, you not only teach them how to handle on-the-job situations but also offer them the opportunity to gain the confidence they need in their own abilities and instincts.
Create Customized Growth Blueprints
Each employee is different, with different skills and expertise, and therefore, the potential to grow into a different kind of leader from another. In creating customized growth blueprints for your employees, you can offer them insights that help them take each step to fulfill the eventual goal of becoming a leader. Without a growth blueprint, even employees who hold promise could be led astray or, not knowing their worth, may never even try leadership.
Help Them With Their Weaknesses
Every leader has their share of weaknesses, but the successful ones know how to overcome them and even use them to their advantage. In your quest to hone your employees as future leaders, the best help you can give them is to outline their weaknesses and show them ways to tackle these shortcomings. In addition to letting them in on these weaknesses, you may even be helping them gain awareness of potentially harmful setbacks they hadn’t paid attention to before.
Key Takeaway
There’s never a short way to success, one has to face hurdles, take on challenges, and become strong enough to overcome the norms, and shine as a leader. A good leader is someone who encourages fostering a healthy environment where everyone stays competitive with each other and leads changes. We hope that you find the answers you have been looking for. Happy Reading!