Today’s Employees are Tomorrow’s Leaders: Here’s How to Nurture Them

Our mission as business leaders, owners, and managers is not just to run the business day-to-day, or even year-to-year, but also to educate and train the next generation to set that business up for long-term success. It’s not just about succession planning, it’s about an entire approach to leadership, and the best leadership is by example. The way you lead today will set the stage for how your employees lead in their turn. Here are six areas in which I believe leaders can make an impact on the future leaders of their businesses.

Encourage a growth mindset

A positive attitude towards work is an important quality in an employee. Even more so is the belief that these attitudes are malleable.

Last year, 77% of CEOs reported that the number one threat to their business was a lack of soft skills. Finding people who show agility, flexibility, and curiosity is a big challenge — these are the skills of the future. They’re hard to hire for, so it’s up to leaders to cultivate and develop the mindset needed to untangle the problems of tomorrow.

Rather than training for technical skills (although they’re important too), leaders must nurture a growth mindset throughout their organisation. That is to say, encourage employees to approach problems with a can-do attitude and the belief that the problems can be overcome. A growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset (the belief that you can’t change or grow), is a key motivator for employees and predictor of success.

Teach them to be team players

When your employees are team players, you’ll see a raft of benefits. It builds complementary strengths, fosters creativity and learning, builds trust and empathy between team members, and promotes conflict resolution. Each of these are essential soft skills that, in the short term, create better outcomes across productivity and day-to-day activities, but also builds a long-term relationship between employees, making them more likely to be motivated to perform well. Together.

To encourage team players, the first step is to be a team player yourself: work on communication skills and facilitate non-work activities to bond team members together and foster collaboration. In order for this to happen effectively, you need to create a supportive workplace culture and actively combat toxic environments. This is one of the of the greatest assets a future leader can acquire.

Help employees build a network

Research has shown that successful leaders spend up to 70% more time networking than less successful leaders. Leaders with a strong peer group and network of mentors and mentees tend to be more efficient, better informed, and have more creative solutions than those with less well-developed networks. So in order to pass the torch on to the leaders of tomorrow, they must be thoroughly networked within the organisation, as well as within their wider profession and industry.

Help them create their own ‘business persona’

In order to grow from employee to leader, high potential employees need the opportunity to build their own personal brand within the business, as well as within their wider profession and industry. This includes attending networking events, speaking and writing, and representing the company. Some ways to facilitate this include:

• Encouraging them to publish regularly on LinkedIn by sharing business wins, updating their profile with awards, and building expertise in their area.
• Helping them find events that they can attend to meet others in their field or industry — conferences, networking evenings, and internal company events.
• Offering them speaking opportunities, whether they’re within your team, within the business, or at external events, and giving them support and advice to help them build their confidence as speakers.
• Suggesting they join professional bodies and become active with their peers from other organisations.

Give praise and feedback

Both praise and feedback are essential to helping a leader grow. Giving praise both publicly and privately acknowledges a job well done and inspires employees to continue to put in their best efforts. And don’t just praise outcomes: praising someone’s process, efforts, strategy, improvement, and perseverance also shows that you value other elements of their work. Young generations are addicted to that, the immediate “like” behavior is something they expect to see at work as well.

Feedback is the other half of the praise coin. Not every project goes exactly to plan, so actionable feedback is a valuable tool to help people develop in their roles. Creating a culture of dissecting results and learning from mistakes is invaluable. Take for example Amazon’s approach to failure: as a company, they embrace failure as a way to learn and get better, not as a mark of shame.

Mentorship

All of the above falls under the umbrella of mentorship. A critical part of leadership development, mentoring employees creates huge benefits for both mentees and mentors. Whether you embark on a formal process of mentorship (that is to say, a structured and intentional mentoring relationship) or a more informal approach, mentoring encourages growth, reflection, self-development, and confidence — all important parts of building a leader.

The best part of this approach to leadership development is that it’s also a great way to engage and retain all employees, even if they don’t stay in your business long enough to become leaders. Leaders who address the whole person and their career will reap the benefits now and into the future.