How to Develop & Promote Future Leaders from Within
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This might be a huge opportunity you’ve been missing out on.
I’m talking about developing & promoting leaders from within your company.
This is super valuable to talent retention & building on great culture.
First, why.
Developing leaders within your organization vs hiring externally is a great opportunity to move someone into a leadership position who is already familiar with the company and how things work. Right off the bat, you’ll have a leader who has more understanding and empathy for the global picture of the organization.
Promoting internally also provides career paths and opportunities to develop your people. This is massively important because it builds loyalty and has the opportunity to convert employees into loyal, dedicated talent that could choose to spend years, or maybe their entire career with you.
Imagine the folks that view their job as “just an hourly gig” whose mindset would dramatically shift if they were mentored and given the opportunity to grow at your organization. An employee could easily go from not seeing a future at the company to working for you for 10, 15, or 20+ years.
Another perk to developing and allowing folks to grow internally is that if employees see that the company cares about them and their coworkers, and wants to move them up, that builds good will and dedication which causes people to work harder and stay in their jobs longer.
Tools & tips around how to do this.
First, you have to know clearly what you’re looking for in future leaders in order to identify them. Get crystal clear about what traits and skills and qualities you base hiring decisions on when it comes to leaders. A very passive way to approach this is just posting a position when it opens and seeing who applies — but this doesn’t really leverage your current talent.
The active way to hire internally is to be regularly assessing if you have folks internally who already posses some or all of the traits you are seeking in order to identify potential future leaders.
I have another blog that goes into more detail about how exactly to identify future leaders, linked here.
Once you have identified potential future leaders, go to those people and have a conversations with them. It can be done in a scheduled formal check in/feedback conversation, or as casual and simple as “Hey, I see a lot of leadership qualities in you — do you want to become a leader? Where do you want to go in your career?”
If someone expresses interest it’s a great opportunity to mentor them and start providing helpful feedback and development in that direction.
It’s extremely important to note that you don’t want to create favorites or unequal opportunities, so make these conversations available to all staff and be transparent and clear about what it takes to become a leader, and ask that people speak up and show interest if they’d like to.
So many companies have missed the boat.
Many people don’t even consider that they could become a leader for various reasons due to their personal background or mindset around their own growth, etc.
As a leader, it’s important for you to take the time to communicate that you see potential in people who could be future leaders. Otherwise, you miss the boat on what could’ve been a mindset shift from someone who had potential to do bigger, better things for their career and inside the company.
I should also note here that it’s okay if someone doesn’t want to become a leader. It’s completely okay if people aren’t interested in climbing the career ladder or growing that way in their career. But regardless, this is an important conversation to have because it gives you an answer as to if they’re interested in moving up or not, and who knows, it might be the spark or push they were waiting for or just never had before.
Then, mentor people.
Tell them what you need to see from them, teach them how they can strengthen those skills you’re looking for — not through the lens of their current position, but how they will need to function as a leader.
Take the time to coach up potential leaders to strengthen skills around feedback, communication, self awareness, etc. so that they can beef up their leadership skills.
Take the time to mentor them and coach them up.
Develop them from within. Promote people from within. Employees will appreciate and take note of it, and will stay longer (and be happier!) when they know you’re taking care of & investing in folks.
Don’t keep someone stuck because they’re valuable where they are. Take the opportunity to help people grow internally — it’s 100% worth it.
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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