When you think about the future leaders of your company, which names come to mind? Who are your company’s next-generation leaders?
The truth is, many organizations struggle to determine who their future C-suite executives, board members, directors, and managers will be. It’s not that these organizations don’t have plenty of potential candidates. It’s that they don’t know who will rise to the top.
However, leadership doesn’t happen automatically. Developing leaders shouldn’t be a “wait and see” activity at your company. It takes proactive planning to develop leaders and help them achieve their full potential.
If you’re wondering how to develop leaders in your organization who can find success for decades to come, read on. Below are six effective ways of developing emerging leaders and helping them flourish.
1. build their emotional intelligence
High emotional intelligence (EQ) is a hallmark of great leaders. Contrary to popular belief, EQ isn’t an inborn trait but an acquired skill that can be built through leadership development education and ongoing practice.
Leaders with high EQ are good at adapting to change, resolving conflicts, and using feedback to find creative ways to succeed. These are all excellent qualities to have in a leader at your company, especially if you’re hoping to grow and expand the business.
2. Help Them Develop Interpersonal Skills
Another powerful way to develop leaders is to help them hone the valuable interpersonal skills it takes to effectively manage teams of people. Some of the most important interpersonal skills for team-building include:
- Active listening
- Patience
- Flexibility
- Empathy
- Problem-solving
- Conflict resolution
When someone is skilled at managing interpersonal interactions, it’s much easier for them to build team rapport and camaraderie. Even when major challenges arise, they can use their interpersonal skills to handle things thoughtfully and continue supporting their teams along the path to success.
3. Support Positive Communication
While communication is critical in the workplace, not all communication is positive. It’s essential to root out negative messages to keep communication flowing productively in a way that encourages and motivates people.
Leaders are responsible for creating a culture of positive or negative communication. By developing leaders’ communications skills and helping them practice handling difficult situations, a company sets a standard of positive communication.
4. Create Respect and Authority
Terms like “respect” and “authority” carry both negative and positive connotations. While both of them are crucial for organizational success, the business shouldn’t be a dictatorship.
How do you build leaders who garner respect and authority? Teach them how to balance a need for authoritative leadership with soft skills like showing emotional vulnerability, caring, and using words of appreciation with their employees.
Encourage one-on-one discussions between employees and managers beyond the annual review process. Give them time and space to build personal connections that lead to deep feelings of respect and admiration.
5. Hold Them Accountable
The world’s most successful companies have a high level of personal accountability where each employee takes responsibility for successes and failures. Accountability involves staying open to feedback and using it constructively to move toward achieving personal and professional goals.
Accountability is not an excuse to criticize people; it’s about holding employees accountable positively and productively, which takes education and practice on the part of leaders. When everyone is in the habit of staying accountable, it brings them together in the spirit of achievement.
6. Use Coaching and Development, Not Just Training
Finally, one of the most powerful ways to develop leaders is to provide them with the resources to grow and expand their skills. Too often, only lip service is paid to leadership development; no action is actually taken to develop emerging leaders.
For meaningful, lasting change, experts recommend robust coaching and development programs as opposed to simple training programs. This is the best way to develop a new generation of leaders.
How to Develop Leaders in Your Organization
At Leadership Resources, we help companies develop their most promising achievers into high-performing leaders. When your company needs to implement an effective leadership development plan, we’re here to provide expert guidance and support.
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As you research ways to grow and optimize your business, you’ll come across the term “strategic planning” quite a bit. But what is strategic planning, exactly? Strategic planning refers to a carefully crafted and supervised process (or processes) that helps you make informed decisions to grow your business and overcome obstacles. Like any competent strategy, this planning involves many moving parts that must remain flexible enough to allow for changes when necessary. Let’s break down five crucial strategic planning process steps so you can safely steer your organization in the right direction.
What Are the Five Steps in the Strategic Planning Process?
1. Understand Where You Stand
The strategic planning process begins with a thorough analysis of your organization’s current situation. If you don’t know where you stand right now, you won’t know where to go next. Determining your strategic position requires collecting good data from multiple angles. Seek detailed insights from your leadership team, receive feedback from employees and customers, and compare key performance indicators (KPIs) with those of competitors in your market. Take a look at your company’s current vision and mission statements as well. Once you’ve gathered all of this information, break it all down into four categories of interest: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). This SWOT diagram (or similar visual aid) will help clarify your standing so you can better move forward with your strategic planning.
2. Form a Coherent Vision
Now that you’ve got an aerial view of your organization’s strategic position, it’s time to develop a new vision that addresses every weak point and bolsters your existing strengths. This vision should capture a broad, general, and concise picture of what your company wishes to achieve and become. Developing this vision can help you write a mission statement as well, which lays out your business’s reason for being. Having a clear, coherent vision and mission statement in place will provide a solid bedrock for your decisions moving forward.
3. Identify the Gaps
Strategic planning is all about getting to where you want to go efficiently. Your vision provides the general direction, like a compass – without a map, however, you’ll have a hard time avoiding the obstacles that stand in your way like rocks dotting the sea. The next step in this process, then, is to identify the barriers and gaps that separate your current position from the one you’re trying to achieve. Common gaps faced by companies of all sizes include public relations, financials, market share, internal systems, communication, and so on. Conduct a thorough gap analysis by breaking down specific gaps and asking key questions that dig to the heart of the matter. If, for instance, your business isn’t meeting a specific customer demand, you might ask why you’re not positioned to meet this need and realize you haven’t devoted the proper resources to that task.
4. Get Your Goals in Order
At this point, your organization should know where it stands, where it’s headed, and how to chart a course to get there. There’s still the matter of doing the work, however. This is where proper goal-setting comes into play. Every gap you identify should be met with a specific plan (i.e. goal) that addresses the problem with precise actions and indicators that relevant parties can keep track of. These goals should have a concrete date, specific figures, and list of individuals responsible for achieving them. Each goal, no matter how small, should be in service of the larger vision and focused by your latest mission statement.
5. Execute, Analyze, Revise
As you deploy your strategic plan, you’ll soon find that many variables are out of your control, such as market forces, personnel changes, destabilizing world events, and more. In some cases, you’ll simply fail to meet certain goals. If you cling too tightly to your plans or start from scratch, you’ll likely suffer setbacks. Rather than retrace all of your steps in strategic planning thus far, it’s better to adapt accordingly. Check in on your goals at intervals to track your progress and identify any unforeseen issues that have cropped up. If necessary, adjust your goals to account for these changes and repeat this cycle. Frequent monitoring is crucial for ensuring the success of any strategic plan, even if it means the details of said plan don’t look exactly the same over time.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease obstacles and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
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Quality of leadership largely determines whether an organization rises, falls, or remains stagnant. But leaders do not magically descend from some higher realm. They are cultivated over time through experience, education, and perseverance.
Nearly every company contains its share of potential leaders, and it is the responsibility of current leaders to identify and foster future leadership roles or else risk leaving a major hole in the organization. Failing to spot a future leader puts the company at risk of losing them forever.
Of course, not every worker is destined to be – or interested in being – a leader. Investing in these individuals is not a waste of time, but the lion’s share of leadership development resources are better spent on those who display the potential to hold a leadership role.
With that in mind, let’s go over how to identify future leaders at your organization.
Who Goes the Extra Mile in Your Company?
Past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior, especially when it comes to self-motivation and a willingness to learn. When seeking the future leaders of your company, a good place to start is by looking at previous results.
Consider who in your organization consistently goes above and beyond expectations. Look for people who think beyond the basics and seize opportunities to try new things and assist others.
- Who seems to have a burning desire to do more, learn more, and connect more?
- Which salesperson might not have the best sales numbers yet, but seems genuinely interested in being the top seller?
- Which customer service rep always leaves customers chuckling and smiling?
- Who’s always talking about wanting the company to grow?
- Who’s bursting with creative ideas?
In addition to work-related tasks, give a closer look to the employees who seem personally dedicated to outside causes and personal hobbies that show dedication. On an even more basic level, keep an eye on who helps out around the office simply because they care. They may have hidden leadership potential.
- Who stays behind to help clean up after an employee lunch?
- Who seems to remember everyone’s birthday and helps them feel special?
- Who has ideas for company celebrations and outings?
Employees who are highly motivated, results-driven, and interpersonally connected tend to show their enthusiasm without specifically being asked to do so. These are highly valuable employees and team members who come up with new, innovative ideas that drive the company’s efforts into new territories.
Pay close attention to the people in your company who keep the enterprise moving forward with passion, as they already exhibit strong leadership qualities. With extra support and encouragement, they could become your company’s future superstar managers and executives.
Weigh Both Potential and Performance
Also, look beyond your sales and customer service staff. Even if they’re not your top performers in terms of your bottom line, they might be perfect fits for various leadership roles in the future. Provide leadership training now, and your company could help all kinds of people become top performers who reach new heights. Performance is undoubtedly a key indicator when spotting future leaders, but it’s not the only indicator. You may have employees who hold high potential but who are currently diamonds in the rough. They may work extremely hard but don’t seem to exude much leadership role potential quite yet.
“Leadership potential” is a somewhat ambiguous metric, of course, and therefore more difficult to pick apart than hard data. Still, pay attention to potential leadership skills, such as:
- Strong communication
- Organizational skills
- Team-building aptitude
- A desire to grow and learn
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Strategic thinking
- Humor and creativity
- Openness to feedback
- Willingness to be held accountable
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a quiet or reserved person is incapable of being a leader. Not every leader is a bold, take-charge type. Some leadership roles call for more measured forms of leadership that are a great match for more reserved people.
Shake Up the Structure
Another helpful way to identify future leaders is by stirring the pot a bit. Start rotating job duties or assigning new roles to people every now and again. In doing so, some individuals will take full advantage of the opportunity, learning new skills and pushing themselves beyond their perceived limits.
Others may wish to stay in their comfort zones or might buckle under the pressure. You’ll be able to see who thrives when given more responsibility and who shies away from it or outright rejects it. This technique is known as job rotation, and it’s common in certain industries. Companies use it to see who can handle leadership, to prepare for audits or prevent fraud, and to keep employees engaged so they don’t burn out.
Job rotation is a powerful exercise for succession planning, as it can help you determine which candidates can adapt quickly and take on new roles when necessary. Not everyone is the right fit for leadership, and that’s okay. The goal is to find the right candidates for immediate additional leadership development.
Ask Yourself: Who Is Asking Questions?
While not everyone who asks questions is bound to be a leader, all future leaders ask questions. Leaders are curious, peppering people with questions about pivotal issues that impact the company, their teams, and their personal futures.
This spirit of inquiry is directly related to strong communication and therefore strong leadership. Questions are a huge part of tackling thorny issues and finding workable solutions. People with leadership potential also have the bravery and boldness to be inquisitive.
So keep an eye on those who take the time to clarify concepts, inquire about plan specifics, seek solutions to ongoing problems, and ask seemingly simple questions that others might be too timid to ask. These are the hallmarks of a potential leader and someone who inspires others to achieve great things.
Train Your Eye for Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is one of the most important qualities of a good leader. Those who can listen to the concerns and suggestions of others and act accordingly strengthen the company’s culture, encourage employee buy-in, promote teamwork, and improve the organization’s reputation and operations as a whole.
EQ is about understanding what people mean, even when it’s not what they say. This is a challenging concept for many people who aren’t naturally intuitive. In a professional setting, EQ is about being willing to have complex interpersonal interactions that reveal deeper truths and help move issues forward.
Contrary to popular myth, emotional intelligence is learned and not inborn. It’s a skill that can be developed through education, coaching, practice, and determination. Emotionally-intelligent company cultures tend to be more successful because they can nimbly seize opportunities that arise day after day.
When looking for EQ in future leaders, look for individuals who display empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, and strong social skills. These individuals are often poised for leadership positions, with some additional guidance and support.
Who’s Personally Invested in the Organization?
Even if you’ve found a handful of candidates who meet the above criteria, you have to consider whether or not they’re in it for the long haul. Are they invested in your company? This isn’t a strictly financial question. It’s about an emotional and psychological investment that goes beyond the paycheck.
Those who show strong future leadership role potential are in high demand, after all, and many businesses spend significant resources training future managers only to have them exit the organization shortly after. This is a cycle of employee loss that’s much easier to prevent when you identify future leaders and nourish them to their full potential.
Developing future leaders in your company starts with identifying the best candidates and continues with retaining them. You may be pleasantly surprised at how many people in your organization want to move up in the company and remain working there if you give them the right motivation to do so through leadership development.
While you can’t force any of your leaders to stay at the company, investing in their growth is a crucial way to retain your top talent. And those who routinely express their interest in the company’s future and their role in it are top contenders for future leaders. In short, if a potential leader is invested in your organization, you must invest in their development.
The Accelerate Leadership Program
Does your company need additional assistance with how to identify future leaders and give them the support they need to flourish? At Leadership Resources, our goal is to help companies thrive through deploying effective leadership techniques, especially when it comes to nourishing emerging leaders.
Any company hoping to spot future leaders among its employees would benefit from leadership development coaching and education. Leadership coaching and development programs go far beyond basic leadership training programs because they use a holistic approach that incorporates a proven process, customized coursework, peer interactions, leadership coaches, software, and an archive of helpful resources to help them stay engaged.
Consider the Accelerate Leadership Program (ALP), which helps participants expand their leadership confidence and knowledge. ALP allows each participant to hone their leadership style while learning the essential skills it takes to connect with people and lead teams to success.
At Leadership Resources, we help companies identify emerging leaders and encourage them to reach their full potential. When your company needs to implement an effective future leadership strategy, we’re here to provide expert guidance and support.
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There is no single “right way” to operate a business or poise it for long-term success. Every enterprise is unique. Still, specific leadership development approaches transcend these differences, offering near-universal benefits to businesses of all sizes and types.
Strategic leadership refers to one such approach to business management that can yield numerous long-term benefits when properly implemented and executed. Of course, it’s worth noting that the upsides of the strategic leadership approach are contrasted with some downsides, too.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of strategic leadership. In particular, we’ll focus on how your company can gain the immense benefits of strategic leadership while minimizing the impact of any potentially limiting factors.
What Is Strategic Leadership?
Strategic leadership can be defined as a leadership philosophy that prioritizes the communication and execution of a particular vision via tangible, streamlined actions and processes. In other words, the strategic leader not only generates and clarifies a business’ vision but also adeptly leads its team toward realizing said vision one step at a time.
The best strategic leaders can simultaneously keep the big picture and the key details in mind, which is precisely what allows their business to achieve its short- and long-term goals. The leadership skills required for this brand of leadership include strong communication, a focus on culture, judicious deployment of power, self-control, compassion, consistency, loyalty, and strong motivation.
The Plus Sides of Strategic Leadership
Many potential leadership development benefits come with the strategic leadership approach. First, strategic leaders can unite teams, generate buy-in, and keep everyone on the same page as they work together toward a collective goal. In this way, each strategic leader keeps their team members from losing focus or losing touch with one another, which makes it that much easier to move the entire business forward.
Also, strategic leadership establishes a framework for practical decision-making. When goals are clearly communicated, everyone can better contribute to the collective vision. Strategic leadership also facilitates impartial, long-term thinking because it filters daily decisions through the lens of the broader vision.
Strategic leadership also encourages company-wide accountability and productivity, which sets the stage for overall success. Although some employees may fear the concept of accountability because it sounds a bit scary at first, the strategic leadership approach embraces positive accountability by incorporating active listening, interpersonal feedback, emotional intelligence-building, and leadership training.
Finally, the best strategic leaders cultivate commitment among their teams by acting as daily role models for proficiency and practicality. In other words, they practice what they preach! For all of these reasons, businesses should consider investing in strategic leadership training.
In fact, pursuing the strategic approach to leadership is one of the best ways to ensure a company succeeds at attracting top talent and retaining superstar employees. High achievers are naturally attracted to companies that come with the benefits listed above, and they’re more likely to remain at companies that are supportive and successful.
Imagine your company as a huge rowboat that’s out at sea, spinning out of control. A strategic leadership plan not only helps everyone put their paddles in the water and row together in unison, but it also points the boat in precisely the right direction so you arrive at the desired destination as quickly as possible.
The Setbacks of Strategic Leadership
A strategic leadership approach isn’t always a flawless one, of course. As with all long-term processes and goals, there’s no way to know for certain what the business, industry, or global situation will look like in the next year, five years, decade, and so on. A major challenge like a national economic instability or worldwide health crisis can put a strain on your organization.
Personal and professional stress is a side effect of these situations. In this way, long-term strategic thinking itself can become a significant expense and source of leadership stress, especially if a seemingly solid plan becomes irrelevant in the face of unpredictable changes. This is why strategic leaders must be as flexible as they are visionary.
In a similar vein, strategic leaders can get lost in the bigger picture and start neglecting the business’ most pressing issues and needs, which can cause budding problems to go unresolved and eventually interfere with the very vision in question. This can put pressure on sales performance and other key metrics of success.
Ultimately, a lack of attention to the present moment can halt company growth and even result in long-term harm. Strategic leaders who either take too many risks or are too risk-averse can cause the company to miss out on key opportunities.
On the flip side, even sudden rapid growth can come with a dangerous downside. What if you leverage strategic leadership and suddenly find runaway success? The human beings responsible for handling extremely fast growth can become bogged down and overwhelmed in the process. Your employees need the company to help them cope successfully with this rapid pace of change.
To avoid negative outcomes, a company can prioritize fostering a positive and supportive organizational culture. This includes addressing the foundational elements of the Success ChainTM, like actions, behaviors, attitudes, and habits of thought.
It’s also essential to implement company structures and procedures that nurture strategic leadership, like succession planning, using an entrepreneurial operating system, and choosing technological solutions that support rather than hinder success.
Developing a Winning Strategy for Your Leaders
Strategic leadership is not inherently good or bad, but rather a tool that can raise a business up for years to come or sink the whole ship for lack of seeing the iceberg straight ahead. Every enterprise must determine its own balanced approach to strategic leadership development so it’s able to safely navigate the current moment while aiming for the bigger goal in the distance.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease stress levels and maximize productivity. We offer a wide range of coaching and business consulting services that help you support your valuable employees’ personal and professional success.
Contact us to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most. We strongly encourage any company interested in strategic leadership to explore the Accelerate Leadership Program, which is explained in more detail below.
Strategic Leadership With the Accelerate Leadership Program
The Accelerate Leadership Program (ALP) is one of the best ways to ensure your company takes full advantage of the benefits of strategic leadership while limiting any potential downsides. It helps you get the most out of your leaders at all levels.
Enroll as many emerging leaders as you wish, and they’ll each experience a leadership program that feels personalized and individualized. They’ll develop their leadership skills alongside their peers in a proven leadership curriculum that involves interpersonal skill-building, leadership coaching, and a progressive two-stage program that uses our proprietary Accelerate software to guide each participant to success.
Ready to learn more? Explore ALP now or schedule a consultation with us today. We’ve helped hundreds of companies support their high-potential leaders through skillful strategic leadership. You could be our next of many success stories!
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How is your organization ensuring its future success? The choices a company makes now in developing leaders will impact its achievements and growth for decades to come.
Continuous development of high-potential employees should be a top priority. Invest in your people now, and you’ll see the long-term dividends in your organization’s ongoing prosperity.
Below are some of the most important steps a company can take to create a strong group of effective leaders. Build these goals into your strategic plan now to ensure leadership development remains a key factor in your company’s future.
Developing Leaders Starts with Strong Employee Engagement
As companies adjust to incorporate hybrid and remote teams, employee engagement is more important now than ever before. A sharp rise in remote working has put everyone at risk of feeling less connected to their employers.
What is your company doing to continually engage with its employees? How are you ensuring your emerging leaders feel personally connected to your organization?
Developing company leaders goes hand-in-hand with maintaining positive connections with employees regardless of distance. Now’s the right time to reevaluate your company’s performance management and employee development program to ensure employee engagement is a top priority.
How to Develop Leaders Who Think Like Innovators
Evaluate how your organization is working to build effective leaders who stay at the cutting edge of innovation in your industry. Forward-thinking companies are good at welcoming diversity and constantly seeking out fresh points of view.
Leadership development programs encourage people to forge new interpersonal connections and expand their understanding of your company, the industry, your client base, and the world. When your emerging leaders know more about what’s possible, they can build a mental picture of what it’s like to lead a team toward future success.
Encourage your potential leaders to feel confident suggesting new ideas and trying new things. Get the most out of your employees by fostering a culture where innovation and even failure aren’t such scary prospects.
Retaining Your Top Talent Over the Long Term
Retaining talented employees has become extremely difficult, especially in highly-competitive fields like sales, information technology, finance, and healthcare. Hiring managers are seeing challenging behaviors like employees quitting after just a few days of accepting jobs, then using multiple outside offers to demand huge raises.
Blunt the impact of these trends by developing a long-term employee retention plan. Show your employees why it’s worth their time to stay at your company and celebrate their achievements. Make sure they know they matter to you.
A strong succession planning strategy is a critical component of employee retention. Even as your organization constantly cultivates fresh talent, it should be mapping pathways for current employees to become future leaders. A solid succession plan secures your company’s long-term legacy while making each person feel individually valued as an important part of the plan.
Building Leaders from Within
The Accelerate Leadership Program (ALP) supports growing companies by developing emerging leaders in the organization and getting the most out of leaders at all levels. Each participant in the program encounters a leadership program that feels personalized and individualized as they build their knowledge and confidence.
In ALP, each person experiences a proven leadership curriculum that involves building interpersonal skills, gaining an education on emotional intelligence, benefiting from leadership coaching, and using Accelerate software to pursue leadership success. This is the secret to developing leaders in your company and helping them flourish.
Ready to see how much success your organization will achieve by developing future and existing leaders? Contact us for more information.
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Did you know having a low EQ could hurt your career? People with low emotional intelligence, which is commonly abbreviated as EQ or EI, often find themselves struggling to thrive in leadership roles.
Consider these facts from studies on emotional intelligence in the workplace:
- 85% of financial success arises from emotional and personality-related factors.
- 71% of hiring managers prefer candidates with high EQ to high IQ.
- 59% of employers wouldn’t hire someone with a low EQ, even if they had a high IQ.
In fact, one study found that throughout your career, having a higher EQ correlates to $29,000 more per year in income. People who are more emotionally intelligent tend to be hired into higher-paying jobs and make more productive choices to benefit their employers.
Here’s the best news of all: EQ is something you can control. Almost anyone can improve their level of emotional intelligence and any company can set the stage for emotionally intelligent leadership.
Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important in Leadership?
People who have high emotional intelligence tend to be good at navigating interpersonal relationships and resolving conflicts. They may or may not have formal leadership roles at work, but they often serve as de facto group leaders. Everyone feels magnetically drawn to them.
In everyday work settings, others look to high-EQ people for their opinions, advice, and feedback about how things are going at the company. These high-EQ leaders always seem to say and do the right things that help people feel motivated to work in cohesive units.
By contrast, when someone’s EQ is low, they’ll likely struggle to feel connected to their coworkers and lack the right ingredients for long-term career success. A study by The Center for Creative Leadership looked at “career derailments,” where people had tried and failed to make headway in acquiring leadership positions within their careers.
The study found that 75% of careers derail due to EQ-related factors. Low-EQ individuals displayed behavior like failing to manage interpersonal conflicts, providing poor leadership in crucial moments of difficulty, not adapting to change, and lacking the ability to foster interpersonal trust with coworkers.
Today’s companies place a priority on emotionally intelligent leadership because it dovetails with so many other common company initiatives like diversity, inclusion, sustainability, and ethical behavior. Company executives want their leaders to have the capacity to use soft skills like active listening, effective communication, and showing positive interpersonal appreciation.
Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important?
Emotional intelligence has become a highly-valued trait in modern society. It helps people stay connected in an increasingly digital world and allows them to nimbly navigate complex social interactions.
We’ve all experienced a moment of confusion over a text message or emoji that we couldn’t quite interpret. Someone with high emotional intelligence can usually guess what the sender might have meant, easing the flow of interpersonal communication. By contrast, someone with low EQ might struggle to understand what’s being said and begin to disturb the smooth flow of communication.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a whole new cascade of additional challenges for interpersonal interactions. Conversations that used to take place in-person within moments now extend into the digital world on tech platforms, stretching across time zones. Proper communication is an enormous challenge when it’s always at a distance.
As Forbes Magazine puts it, “Navigating the pandemic’s psychological, physical and economic effects is complicated and evokes a range of different – and often conflicting – emotions. Add social injustice and political unrest, and emotional intelligence is needed more than ever before.”
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?
A study by Johnson & Johnson found that in the average company, the highest performers were the ones with the highest emotional intelligence and the lowest performers had the lowest EQ. Among the highest-EQ performers, the J&J researchers found characteristics like self-confidence, initiative, achievement orientation, adaptability, self-awareness, and a desire for service-oriented leadership.
But the good news is that EQ isn’t a fixed or inborn trait. It’s a skill that can be learned and there are numerous proven methods for improving it. Through emotional intelligence education, almost anyone can discover how to build a talent for interpreting others’ thoughts, navigating interpersonal situations more skillfully, and resolving conflicts in a positive way that brings fresh opportunities for success.
Best Emotional Intelligence Training
Any company looking to improve the level of EQ among its employees and leaders can do so through emotional intelligence training. However, for companies looking to have meaningful, lasting guidance in support of developing high-EQ leaders, experts recommend true coaching and development programs as opposed to training programs.
At Leadership Resources, we offer the best emotional intelligence training to help companies identify emerging leaders and nurture emotionally intelligent leadership. When your company needs to implement an effective leadership development plan, we’re here to provide expert guidance and support.
Raising EQ With the Accelerate Leadership Program
The Accelerate Leadership Program (ALP) helps participants expand their leadership talent, confidence, and knowledge. Each participant expands their level of emotional intelligence while learning the essential skills it takes to motivate and inspire people. ALP is a personalized program that allows each person to build productive new habits in their own way.
Experts say it’s most effective to implement a full program that involves leadership coaching and individualized support, not just training. ALP’s coaching program goes far beyond basic leadership training programs because it uses a robust approach that incorporates a proven guided process, customized coursework, interpersonal peer connections, leadership coaching, interactive software, and an enormous archive of helpful resources to help them stay engaged.
This is the best emotional intelligence training, consulting, and support you can offer your employees. Let’s work together to identify your emerging leaders and help them take their EQ to the next level.
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Competent leadership lies at the heart of every successful organization. That said, strong leaders don’t appear out of thin air. While some individuals display a propensity for leadership at an early stage, their skills must be honed and directed towards the business’s long-term goals. When properly managed, a company’s top talent paves the way for its future, taking over roles left vacant by previous leaders who have moved on – two terms describe this larger process: talent development and succession planning. But while these concepts are closely related, they’re not one in the same. Understanding the similarities and differences between these two processes will help you figure out how to approach the ongoing development of your leadership team.
What Is Talent Development?
Put simply, talent development (also dubbed talent management) refers to an organization’s various processes dedicated to the assessment and advancement of their most promising employees. This process begins at the recruitment and hiring stages, wherein existing leaders seek the best candidates for particular roles. Once a new hire is on board, efforts must be made to retain this talent, especially in a highly competitive market. Talent retention and leadership development go hand in hand – when employees are incentivized to grow within an organization, they’re more likely to stick with it. There’s always a risk associated with talent development, of course, as this process also makes your employees more attractive to other employers. Generally speaking, the potential benefits of continuous talent development and management outweigh the risks.
What Is Succession Planning?
Whereas talent development takes a close look at individuals, succession planning first takes a close look at specific roles. Once key roles have been identified, current leaders must consider which qualities are required for filling said roles when they become vacant, and which employees are prime candidates (internal or external) for taking on these responsibilities when the time comes. If you’re wondering, “Why is succession planning important?” consider the pitfalls of losing a C-level leader without an adequate substitute for an extended period of time. Proper succession planning ensures that every vital position maintains strong leadership, securing the organization’s legacy.
How Talent Development and Succession Planning Interact
Succession planning and talent development are unique processes, but they’re inextricably linked. Without a thorough leadership development plan in place, you’ll have a hard time filling existing and new leadership roles in your organization. Likewise, without the incentive structure inherent in succession planning (i.e., major promotions and structural changes), your top talent may feel less motivated to grow within your company and stick around for the long haul. In other words, the best approach to both talent development and succession planning is one that understands the connection between them and facilitates a structure that cultivates leadership that propels the business forward.
Determining the Needs of Your Leadership Team and Organization
Different leaders within your organization’s leadership team will have different ambitions and needs. Budding leaders still have plenty to learn, but they also have a lot to teach their more seasoned peers. Leaders who have been around for some time might be preparing to retire, and others might be seeking employment elsewhere. Figuring out what your leadership team and your business needs requires strong communication and transparency. Leaders should promptly know when a vacancy is on the horizon and whether or not they’re in the running to take over the position. Everyone should also be kept in the loop regarding the organization’s mission and direction moving forward. And talent at all stages should continue to receive first-rate training and development to prepare them for whatever the future may hold.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease obstacles and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
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No one would argue against the importance of training. Whether you’re trying to get fit, learn a new skill, or form new habits, sticking with a training regimen is necessary for helping you achieve your goals and continue to grow. And yet, when it comes to training leaders within an organization, so many efforts fall short. Why is this? In this blog, we’ll explore why traditional leadership training models so often fail, and what you can do to foster more effective leadership development.
What to Know About Failed Leadership Training
Pitfalls of the “One and Done” Mindset
Training can take many different forms, but it always contains an educational component. As all students know from experience, some educational tools are primarily focused on delivering concrete answers that one can memorize and check off on a multiple-choice questionnaire – other programs, however, are rooted in cultivating a deep understanding of a topic and all its nuances. Leadership training too often falls into this former category, placing more emphasis on the completion of a course than on continued growth. A comprehensive leadership development program, on the other hand, recognizes that leaders never stop learning, providing foundational tools and support systems that help leaders adapt and grow throughout their careers.
Training Can Be Too Narrow or Too Broad
Leadership training programs often have another major problem: they’re either too hyper-focused on an organization’s specific operations or so broad that leaders struggle to apply what they’ve learned in any tangible way. Much like the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, the key to continued growth lies somewhere in between. The ideal leadership development program should offer a wide range of resources and tools, so all bases are covered – but it should also be customized to comfortably mesh with your organization’s vision and goals. At Leadership Resources, our Accelerate Leadership Program is multi-faceted in this way, providing integrated software, leadership content, personal and communal development processes, emotional intelligence training, one-on-one coaching, and more.
The Issue Is Systemic
There’s a bit of push and pull when it comes to training leaders within a particular organization. On the one hand, existing business leaders want to maintain a steady ship, so leadership training is key. On the other hand, cultivating new leadership can put this stability at risk, for better or worse. What often happens, then, is that training protocols become too restrictive. This stagnation is usually unintentional and systemic in nature. Simply put, if individuals aren’t empowered to make necessary changes to the existing system, the system will retain its power, preventing meaningful change. So, in order to unlock the true potential of budding leaders and foster ongoing leadership growth, certain structural barriers must first be overcome.
Overcoming the Obstacles of Leadership Training
The question remains, then: how can a business overcome its systemic issues and provide a leadership program that makes a lasting impact on the individuals and the whole? For starters, top-level leaders should re-establish the organization’s values and clearly define a strategic plan. From there, collect anonymous feedback on current management and training protocols to pinpoint key issues. To tackle these concerns, you may need to reconfigure roles and responsibilities and create new goals aimed at affecting real change. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure how well you’re achieving these goals and make adjustments as needed. Taking the time to dig into your business’ systemic failures and obstacles in this way will allow you to implement more effective leadership development processes. And as you cultivate stronger leaders, it will become easier to continue making these structural improvements, creating a positive feedback loop that propels your organization (and everyone in it) forward.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease obstacles and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
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What to Know About Leadership Team Development
What Is Leadership Team Development?
Leadership team development refers to initiatives, materials, and opportunities aimed at helping your leadership team hone existing skills and learn new ones. The best leadership development programs help uncover potential blind spots in your leadership team and form new habits that propel the entire organization forward – leaders also find ways to grow as individuals. Let’s explore five key signs it’s time to begin implementing a strong leadership team development program in your organization.
1. Team Members Aren’t Fulfilled in Their Current Roles
Ideally, each and every one of your employees will be well-suited for the tasks under their purview. However, as time goes on, some team members might lose interest in their current roles, and others might no longer perform as well as they once did, despite their previous proficiency. One way to resolve these setbacks is to provide new opportunities for your team members that allow them to explore other roles and take on new responsibilities. However, without proper leadership development, said employees might not be prepared for a promotion or even a lateral move. Therefore, it’s crucial to provide leadership team development resources for your people so they’re ready to accept new challenges and switch roles when the time comes. Otherwise, you may be left with dissatisfied team members and uncomfortable overlaps in duties.
2. Communication Is Faltering
Leaders and employees within your organization must stay on the same page in order to make progress – this requires strong communication. If team members begin to lose sight of the collective vision or establish different benchmarks for success, everyone will struggle to work toward common goals. Improper communication will also make it difficult to resolve issues, which can fester over time. The importance of leadership development programs in regards to improving communication cannot be overstated. The best leadership development programs prioritize transparency and consistency so that there’s little room for misunderstandings or long-term conflicts in the future.
3. You’re Experiencing High Turnover
If your business is having a hard time holding onto its best people, it certainly stands to benefit from leadership team development. Simply put, people won’t stick around for long if they feel they’re not appreciated or that they’ve run out of room to grow within your organization. Honing leadership skills in all of your employees improves retention rates by, 1) expressing how much you value their personal growth, 2) opening doors for promotions and other opportunities, and 3) keeping your business competitive. The stronger the leaders inside your organization, the more formidable and valuable your business becomes – and people will want to be a part of that.
4. Your Team Is Missing the Mark
Performance issues are another key indicator that your company needs to invest more heavily in leadership development. It’s important that your employees not only continue to meet their goals but also that they’re able to adapt to a shifting marketplace. Goals and benchmarks are bound to change, and everyone within your organization must be able to face these challenges and changes head-on. A comprehensive leadership development plan improves employee flexibility and proficiency, ensuring that your business’s goals are continuously met or exceeded, no matter how things change over time.
5. Your Organization’s Future Is in Question (Succession Planning)
Even your most loyal and long-term employees will retire or otherwise leave at some point. If you want your organization to stand the test of time, you must be prepared to replace existing leaders with new blood when the time comes. As alluded to earlier, these roles can only be properly filled if you have employees at the ready who harbor the experience, skills, and passion to move up the ladder. So, you must always consider who someone’s successor will be – if you struggle to find an answer, you must make a quick and concerted effort to increase your business’ leadership development initiatives.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease obstacles and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
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What to Know About Starting Succession Planning
What Is Succession Planning?
The most enduring organizations see many people come and go over time. These companies have remained successful for so long thanks to one generation passing the torch to the next. Succession planning describes this strategy of preparing key employees for leadership roles as existing leaders move toward other opportunities or retirement. You can find many succession planning examples by browsing the histories of many major companies. Properly planning to fill vacancies in your business is essential for ensuring an organization’s legacy. However, succession planning features a number of potential pitfalls that can lead to stagnation and frustration. As such, deploying the proper strategy is crucial. Let’s explore the top three ways to start business succession planning before it becomes detrimental to your team members and your organization as a whole.
1. Maintain Open Communication with Your Team
Transparency is always important when managing a team. While there’s always room for some discretion, withholding important information can damage trust and reduce your ability to plan for business succession. Simply put, your team should know when existing positions are preparing to open up. Not everyone in your organization will be a strong candidate for the role, of course. That said, failing to inform your team might cause certain high-potential employees to seek other opportunities, as they might feel they have no further room to grow within your business. By letting your people know what changes are on the horizon, you further motivate your team to maintain high achievement and consider their long-term involvement – this is good for morale, productivity, and longevity.
2. Remain Flexible
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for succession planning. Not only is every organization and role unique – each role within your business may be subject to change. For instance, an existing role might no longer be necessary due to changes in the market or technology; conversely, brand new roles may need to be created for similar reasons. Moreover, a high-potential team member might end up leaving before they can take over a role – without a backup plan, your organization can be left in a challenging position. So, if a leader is planning to leave in the near future, your succession plan might be more complex than replacing that one individual and role. Your plan should be flexible enough to adapt for these potential changes. As a general rule, reevaluate your current succession plan at least twice a year. Such a dynamic process deserves periodic updates.
3. Continually Invest in Leadership Development
You can’t implement a business succession plan if your people aren’t ready to take on new opportunities and challenges. By actively engaging your team in ongoing leadership development, you help ensure that the right people will be ready to take on new roles when the time comes. As mentioned earlier, not every team member will be capable of or interested in filling vacant positions down the road, but providing your entire organization with the tools required for leadership growth is essential for successful succession planning.
At Leadership Resources, our purpose is to make the impossible possible through people. We aim to do so by helping individuals develop patterns of success that will decrease obstacles and maximize productivity. Contact us here to learn more about what we do and how it can help your business succeed and grow at times like these when you need it most.
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