“You have what it takes!”, “With a little training you could go far, in this organization!” or “We are looking for people with your ability, to become a leader with our company!”
Have you ever been told something similar?
Maybe you have said this to some of your staff. If you are in management long enough, eventually you will.
Are you developing the future leaders of your organization?
The future arrives quickly and the current leaders of your organization need to start developing individuals to take their place. It has been proven over and over again that the leadership of your organization will not automatically appear when they are needed.
Here are some steps you should be taking:
- Identify individuals in your company that you feel have potential leadership skills.
- Talk with them to inquire of their desire to grow and identify leadership skills and the areas that you will need to stregthen.
- Give them an opportunity to lead. This could be training of new employees, performing a qc inspection, or handling a complaint or request from a company.
- Review with them the goals and objectives of the company and how they fit in.
- Set up a weekly training session. You could possibly review the last weeks activities and ask how they might have handled certain situations they were not involved with.
Remember that when we develop leadership from with, we need to make sure that we are willing to make the investment in time and of course dollars. You will need to have a lot of patience!
DO NOT expect the within a week or two after being promoted, that this individual will automatically have the same leadership skills that we might.
It is unreasonable to expect a new leader to have the knowledge and wisdom in a short time, that took us several years, perhaps decades to learn.
“Winning companies win because they have good leaders who nurture the development of other leaders at all levels of the organization.” —Noel Tichy
