Here’s How You Can Tell If Someone is an Emerging Leader and What You Should Be Doing to Help Him or Her Develop Into a Great One.
Why do you need to identify and develop emerging leaders?
First of all, you face tough customers and fierce competition. That, of course, goes with the territory in most industries.
However, you also face complex organizational challenges—challenges that can only be addressed on the strength of dynamic leadership. Not just leadership at the top, but leadership in every department.
More so, these challenges demand that you also look to the development of leaders for the future – your emerging leaders, because the challenges of today will continue into tomorrow and be joined by new challenges still to come. Often referred to as Succession planning, it is a smart business strategy progressive companies apply to fill important leadership roles down to another employee.
Finding and cultivating these future leaders is imperative to fill critical positions in your organizations. How will you go about it?
Where to Put Your Focus to Find Emerging Leaders
The starting point is to take note of individuals who exhibit high potential for leadership. Unimportant is whether these individuals are performing highly in whatever role they happen now to occupy.
The reason it is a mistake to prize performance over potential is that some people who are exceptionally competent at their jobs lack what it takes to be a great leader. By elevating those who aren’t cut out to be leaders, you risk the creation of department or companywide morale problems—and those can easily bring about a loss of productivity.
What to Avoid
Consider this example. On the payroll of an average-sized company is a technician. Because he is the company’s best technician, it’s decided to promote him to the position of manager of the service department with the expectation that his excellent technical skills will translate into excellent leadership skills.
He eagerly and appreciatively accepts the new responsibility. However, in practically no time at all, it becomes evident that he is incapable of inspiring subordinates to act as a cohesive, functional, efficiency-driven, cost-conscious, innovation-minded team.
After a period of wishful waiting to give him a chance to “grow” into the role, top management finally realizes that pushing this technician to take on an assignment outside his area of expertise was a mistake. Now, someone in the company is going to have to play the “bad guy” and remove an otherwise outstanding employee from his or her leadership post.
The job will go to someone else, but whoever gets it will be nervous about stepping into the shoes of a coworker who vacated not due to promotion but, rather, to demotion.
Additionally, the tech who lost the position will almost certainly be disgruntled, having suffered the indignity of being branded a failure. How much contagious bitterness he will spread throughout the company in the weeks and months ahead is difficult to predict. But spread it will, and almost surely to the detriment of the company—perhaps even to the extent of unsettling a number of loyal customers and reliable suppliers. This occurs in almost every industry.
No Desire to BE an Emerging Leader
The corollary of this example is the employee who excels in his job but has no desire to be a leader. He’s promoted to that position regardless. A born follower at heart, he has no clue what to do with the leadership mantle thrust upon him. Things quickly unravel and, again, someone must act as the bad guy who brings news of demotion. Hard feelings surface and, once more, the company is in trouble.
Moral of these two stories: it is vitally important that you identify the right people as emerging leaders – individuals who demonstrate great potential to serve in that capacity and truly want to advance in the company.
Finding Employees with Leadership Potential
Here is a list of questions you should be asking yourself as you scout for individuals with the makings to become a dynamic leader. Does this person:
- Demonstrate initiative beyond the current job position?
- Want to advance in the company? (ASK!)
- Proactively offer ideas and potential solutions to problems (thereby showing he or she is invested in the company’s success).
- Demonstrate accountability?
- Possess interpersonal skills and work well with others?
- “Make things happen” by being proactive instead of reactive?
- Bend over backward to help customers and team members?
- Exhibit unflinching reliability?
- Think the same way you do when it comes to decision-making?
- Motivate and influence others?
- Appear capable of evolving into a strategic leader?
- Express interest in developing or improving upon leadership and management skills?
- Seem eager to take on more responsibility?
- (Most importantly) Communicate clearly and concisely?
Your Ultimate Goal: RESULTS
Your goal in asking these questions is to select as candidates for leadership development those individuals most likely to deliver results.
In the course of conducting your talent search, keep in mind that no rule requires you to only consider employees under the age of 40. You’ll find great emerging leaders among the ranks of your Millennial employees, yes. But you’ll also find worthy candidates among the gray-haired set. Always remember that the older employee who is intimately familiar with your processes, procedures, structure, culture, and perhaps even your customers may turn out to be an ideal individual to train for a leadership role.
Also, do not overlook the significance of America (and many other countries) being a multicultural, multiethnic society—a fact duly acknowledged by federal and state Equal Opportunity laws which encourage you to strive for the most diverse workforce possible. So be sure to give minority and female employees careful consideration as potential leaders. They bring unique qualities and perspectives to the leadership table and, as well, enhance your ability to attract, hire, and retain top talent at all levels.
Women as Emerging Leaders
Women make great leaders. They tend to excel in developing their teams. They also are more apt to be servant leaders who believe their purpose is to serve those they lead, bring out the best in them, and help them to excel in all they do. They also are more apt to encourage collaboration and simply make people feel good about themselves.
Beginning the Process of Emerging Leader Development
Now that you have identified potential and emerging leaders among your employees, it is time to prepare them for positions at the top.
Here are 10 ideas for success. Happily, these are simple.
1. Bring your emerging leaders together so that they can learn from one another. Invite them to jointly explore new ways of doing business, innovate better ways of conducting existing operations, cultivate stronger management/employee relationships, and strive to deliver the highest quality service to customers, to the other members of the team, and to you. Challenge them to come up with approaches that can be adopted companywide to better support your sales team.
2. Provide ongoing, repetitious training and an ACTION PLAN for each individual. The “one and done” approach to leadership training won’t cut it. The most effective way to provide training that continuously covers the familiar ground (in order to hammer home the business concepts every effective leader must possess) is to offer instruction that has practical application to your leadership trainees’ day-to-day activities. The result of this training should be competency in each of these areas:
- Strategic thinking
- Effective decision-making
- Managing and motivating employees
- Change Management
- Accountability
- Culture transformation
- Customer-service excellence
- Conflict management
- Execution
- Communication Skills
- Emotional Intelligence
- Problem solving
- Any additional training relevant to your company
3. Send your emerging leaders to the leadership training and discussion events of your trade association, or local chamber, or bring in a dynamic trainer who will deliver customized and not generic training once a month.
4. Send female leaders and emerging leaders to a “Women’s Leadership Event” or training program. This is a great morale booster. You could also follow the example of smart companies that have benefitted greatly by implementing in-house women’s leadership development programs or, put together one of your own. (Note: progressive companies allow men to be members as well!)
5. Designate a seat at your executive meetings to be filled by an emerging leader. If you have more than one emerging leader in your stable, allow them to sit in on a rotating basis—welcome a different emerging leader each time the top executives meet.
6. Request that each emerging leader’s supervisor monitor his or her progress, and update you on it at regular intervals. Make the same request to your HR department.
7. Instruct your emerging leaders to communicate with one another often in order to share their challenges and be able to help each other.
8. Assign responsibility to your emerging leaders to devise viable solutions to one or more of the company’s most pressing problems. When you do, you will be amazed at the results.
9. Set up shadowing. Have your emerging leaders spend a full day tagging along with an executive to see up close exactly what he or she does to contribute to company success. Have them shadow as well your sales manager, parts manager, and one of the sales associates.
10. Welcome your emerging leaders to your weekly meetings. Solicit their thoughts about the hits, runs, and misses of the previous week in customer service, sales, and other important areas of your business. Encourage them to offer their views about what they might have done differently during those last five business days to achieve greater success.
One challenge you may face is that an emerging leader may become very frustrated and impatient because a position has not opened up. Let them know from the get-go they will need to be patient.
One Final Point on Emerging Leaders
One final point. If your company is family owned and you’ll one day be passing the baton to a son, daughter, grandchild, or other relative they are obviously emerging leaders. Be sure to have in place a succession plan that includes the 10 ideas listed above. Your heir apparent needs to be fully ready, willing, and able to step into your shoes and carry your legacy forward. Leadership development of family members is a matter you cannot ignore.
It has been argued that great leaders are born, not made. But that is incorrect. Because even natural-born leaders must be trained before they can successfully occupy a big office or be in a customer-facing position. You owe it to your company—and to yourself—to properly and completely train individuals who are legitimately suited to become leaders. Otherwise, you may be doing nothing more than courting mediocre performance, or even disaster.
© 2022, Christine Corelli & Associates, Inc. Christine Corelli has had a distinguished 25-year career as an international keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and business columnist. She has authored six books, including the best-selling, Wake Up and Smell the Competition – now in its fifth edition. Corelli’s clients are characterized by Fortune 500 companies, major trade associations, and an abundance of mid-size and small companies. To contact her for an upcoming meeting or event, call (847) 477-7376. For information on leadership training: https://www.christinespeaks.com/boss-or-leader-leadership-training
About Christine Corelli
