There are several reasons why businesses spend a lot of resources and time on developing leaders.
This is mainly because companies with experienced and highest quality people are more likely to outperform their competition, particularly in bottomline metrics such as employee engagement, customer satisfaction, financial performance, and quality of services and products like a responsive website.
If you want your business fall into this category, you should consider using the appropriate strategies in developing leaders. Here are some tried and tested ways to help you identify and develop key people in your company.
1. Develop leaders early
Leadership development within the business is something you should always prioritize. Start by analyzing and assessing the strengths of the people in your business with potential to become leaders.
You can determine which staff members have what it takes to perform certain jobs by allowing them to identify themselves as your potential business leaders in various leadership positions.
2. Use big data
For many years, employers have largely relied on assessments, such as skill aptitude tests, IQ tests, and even physical examinations to answer questions related to promotion and demotion.
Now with the availability of big data, you can easily find the right employees for your business and predict how long they will stay in your company. These days, there are several businesses that use real data to determine talented leaders.
There are several different tests you can use to determine whether an employee can be a good leader or not. Keep in mind that not every employee in your company can become a good leader. Using big data will help you evaluate several people and determine their capacity to lead.
3. Challenge your employees
Another way to develop leaders in your business is to give your employees an opportunity to challenge themselves by assigning them unfamiliar duties and responsibilities.
This is a very effective way of testing their skill levels. If they fail, it’s fine since the opportunity offers valuable lessons which can improve confidence, solidify employee commitment, and even add new skills.
Watch to see how your employees treat the challenge. Do they give up, thinking the task assigned to them is above and beyond their skill levels? Or do they meet it head on, determined to learn new skills if need be? You know who the good leaders will be depending on their response!
4. Let your employees interact with current leaders
Most businesses have found an effective strategy to give their employees firsthand experience, especially in a leadership role. This is mainly because they want to shadow their current leaders. It goes beyond formal education and training where employees at all levels are exposed to quality leaders to get a feel of how top leaders think.
Even exposure to business executives and informal mentoring can help a lot to broaden an individual’s perspective as well as stimulate their passion for the job.
5. Rotate employee positions
For many innovative businesses, employee rotation has actually become an effective way to motivate, engage, and even work with several team members within the company.
By not locking your employees into just one position, it can help develop additional skills which could be used in leadership positions. Rotating employee positions is very helpful because it helps them extend their boundaries.
6. Inspire your employees to be passionate
Some of the best leaders inspire others to become great through their passion. Your employees can embrace their passion and it can grow within them. It’s therefore important to develop passion in your potential leaders within your business. They will become the key factors in the growth and success of your company.
By allowing your employees to be creative, sending out appropriate employee surveys and encouraging them to handle side projects, you will definitely see which of your employees have the potential to understand the culture of your business well.
In a nutshell, you can develop leaders within your business through several ways. One of these is to constantly provide them with the right education and training required to become a better leader.
You can also achieve this by having your employees attend conferences, classes, or webinars to help them refine and improve in their leadership skills. Even finishing a simple tutorial on how to make a responsive website, for example, can do wonders to your employees.
You can also teach them the importance of networking, especially in a small business. Encourage them to enhance their networking skills by having them associate or communicate with other employees they aren’t familiar with.
By identifying employees with potential, you can easily develop leaders within your company, and they will continue growing your business in the future.
Ready to take your business online? Get started with Bookmark website builder today!
Originally published at www.bookmark.com on June 28, 2016.
