Identifying and growing potential leaders can be tricky. You may not know what to look for or what you can do to develop these up-and-coming leaders.
Despite this, you have to be able to identify and grow new leaders.
These new leaders will be the ones to take your organization to the next level. Who better to lead them towards this objective?
If you’re struggling to understand how to identify and then grow these leaders, this article is for you. We will look at five ways to identify and grow potential leaders.
5 Surefire Ways to Identify and Grow Potential Leaders
Create a Leadership Assessment:
Do you want to identify potential leaders? Look no further than a leadership assessment. You can find one online. However, I want to encourage you to think about creating a leadership assessment yourself.
By creating your own leadership assessment, you are using a tool that is specific to what you want to look for in new leaders. Create the assessment around the goals and desires of you and your organization.
Have your team take the assessment. Review the results. Start picking out potential leadership candidates.
Make time for one-on-ones:
Making time for one-on-ones can kill both birds with one stone. One-on-ones give you personal time with your team. You’re able to talk about what’s happening in your team member’s life, where they see themselves going, and what you can do to help them.
Conducting one-on-ones will be one of the best uses of your time.
Ask open-ended questions:
Part of one-on-one meetings is the ability to ask your team members open-ended questions. I shared a few questions above. However, you can dive deep and let your team members go.
Some open-ended questions could be:
- What do you consider to be successful leadership traits?
- How are you developing your skills and talents?
- What tasks make you come alive?
- Can you share how you dealt with an unexpected setback?
- How are you coming up with new ideas?
- People are going to disagree with you. How do you deal with these people?
- What risks have you taken? Are you willing to take new ones?
- How would you encourage your direct reports to continue growing?
Use these questions and more when talking with your team members. Listen to their answers. Their answers will tell you whether or not there is potential within!
Nurture potential:
Now you know who has great leadership potential on your team. You’ve assessed their skills, conducted multiple one-on-one meetings, and asked great open-ended questions.
It’s time for you to step up to the plate and grow the potential leaders you’ve identified.
You’re going to find it tricky, at first, to nurture the potential within these fantastic people. But you can do it.
Expose them to leadership opportunities:
You have to take the training wheels off of leadership development at some point. What I want you to start doing is to begin exposing the people you’ve noticed leadership potential to leadership opportunities.
Exposing your people to leadership opportunities could be giving them the chance to run a business meeting (Toastmasters is also a great way to help them understand how to run a meeting). Or you might consider allowing the team member to decide how the production floor is run. You let this person change how the floor is laid out, who goes where, and more.
Give people the chance to lead and you may be shocked at how well they do it!
