How to Identify Future Leaders
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This article is a follow up to my storytime video around how terrible leaders get promoted, and this time, I’m focused on how to measure and promote people who are great leaders, and make sure that you’re only moving people up in your organization who are fantastic.
The Queen’s Gambit
Why a chessboard to talk about this point? Because it’s strategic.
The people that you elevate in your organization as leaders, and the leaders that you already have and continue to move upwards, is strategic; you’re making moves. It’s critical for organizations to identify the most valuable pieces and act accordingly.
Get clear about what kind of leaders you want.
Accurately identifying and promoting great leaders is vital. Be crystal clear and transparent about the behaviors and traits you promote for, and make choices based on those. Tenure or obligation aren’t reasons to promote; choose great leaders, period.
Decide with clarity what it takes to be a leader in your organization. Write it out, share it, use it as a guide. Be transparent from day one to every employee and leader about what qualities will be the basis of decisions when it comes to filling leadership roles.
Ask people what they want so you can help them get there.
Another point to make is that “talent mapping” is important. I know that’s a very HR jargon-ish word, but what it means is going to people inside the organization and having conversations about what they want to do the most, and where they want to go next.
Ask your people, “What job do you want to have in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?” Actively discover that from your people so that you know as a leader and an organization where people are headed so you can help them get there.
If you have people that want to become leaders, then take the opportunity to be proactive and coach them. You can guide them and give helpful feedback and encouragement along the way. Let them know right now the things that you’d want to see from them in order to move into that kind of role.
Again, like I mentioned above, this is one reason why it’s critical to be extremely clear about what it takes inside your organization to become a leader. The more clearly defined the parameters, the easier it is to guide someone in the right direction.
The other thing important to note here is that some people don’t want to become leaders, which is perfectly fine. Some employees are wonderful individual contributors but would not make strong leaders.
If that’s the case, find ways as an organization to create opportunities for increased compensation and upward progress that don’t involve becoming a leader of a team.
Sometimes moving someone into a leadership position who is a great individual contributor is the worst case scenario because they aren’t necessarily great leaders. And if they aren’t then not only will the entire team suffer but you’ll lose all the benefits of that person’s contributions in the role they were great at. You could end up losing them altogether, as well as others on the team because one side effect of bad leaders is that they cause employees to eventually quit their jobs.
Consider who you’re continuing to move up in the organization, too
This one is very important for people who are already leaders inside organizations.
One factor that should weigh heavily in terms of promoting somebody inside an organization is feedback from their team. I am a huge fan of a culture of feedback, where people give feedback to their leaders, and organizations ask for feedback from employees about their leaders. It is a huge mistake for companies to not do this.
Like I’ve said before and will again: No terrible leader has a team that loves them, and no exceptional leader has a team that doesn’t.
Side note: Make sure they’re being honest.
If you’re gathering feedback from teams about their leaders, find ways to make sure they’ll tell you the truth. People can be very afraid to say things that are less than great about leaders if they don’t trust the anonymity and discretion of the survey or who’s receiving it.
You must put processes in place to ensure that leaders will not see those direct comments or retaliate against whoever said them. If an employee is citing specific examples then it is often obvious who wrote the comment and organizations need to make sure that they are factoring that into the process and guarding against it on behalf of the employees. Going about this the wrong way can be extremely destructive, especially if you already have leaders who don’t belong in a position of leadership.
One great question to ask as part of gathering feedback about leaders is, “Do you feel comfortable giving honest feedback in this survey about your leader?” If the answers to that question reflect a lot of hesitancy, then you know that there are some trust issues there that should be addressed, or at least that you should be aware of. That can be a symptom of a leader who retaliates against people, or is not open to feedback, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a huge red flag.
Team feedback is important and should absolutely weigh heavily on a decision to continue to move a leader up inside a company. It’s one of the few ways that organization can identify leaders who are faking it and put on a good face in front of their superiors but are nightmares to work for. And those bad actors are out there, big time.
Reason #4,273 to have a clearly defined culture
Last point I want to make about this, which is tied deeply to the work that I do, is that when you have a clearly defined and established culture, it is one of the easiest, most effective ways to identify and select people for leadership positions.
When I say identify your culture clearly, I don’t mean a list of obvious values like “trust, respect, integrity, etc” I mean the behaviors and mindsets that define the rules of engagement of your culture.
A behavior-based code of conduct that defines how people are expected to show up in the organization that is undeniably clear, universally understood, and that everyone takes ownership and accountability for.
When that is in place, it provides a foundation for performance evaluations for employees as well as a compass and roadmap to identify future leaders and make decisions around who to move up in the organization.
Do not underestimate the importance of having only high caliber leaders. When it comes to the performance, engagement, and retention of your people, high quality leaders all the way up and down the company is the lowest hanging, sweetest, most important fruit you’ve got.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop