Developing Next Generation Leadership

As you consider the future of your organization, what are your main priorities? Perhaps you think of your long-term budget projection, future expansions, or new capital investments. How much time do you spend considering your successors or future partners in leadership? Are you putting enough focus on cultivating the next generation of leaders within your organization?

Developing leadership skills among your team members should be a top priority if you want to ensure the longevity of your organization. Keep reading for some helpful tips on how to identify and cultivate future leaders within your company. 

Start Early

Cultivating leaders starts with your mindset. You need to make a commitment to actively evaluating your team to identify future leaders. If you do not make a conscious effort to do this, it will fall by the wayside. 

Does this sound complicated to you? It does not need to be. Getting started on cultivating future leaders can be as easy as performing two key steps:

1. Establish a clear picture of your company’s leadership needs and the requirements for being a leader within your organization.
2. Present what you have developed to your team and ask a simple question: “Given that these are the requirements of leaders in our organization, who is interested in pursuing this path?”

Provide Leadership Opportunities

Allowing your employees the opportunity to exercise and flex their leadership muscles is key. There are many good strategies for cultivate leadership skills, including:

• Creating leadership career paths within your organization and offering team members the opportunity to pursue them
• Offering education opportunities
• Assigning new or unfamiliar tasks and evaluating how your employees handle them
• Allowing the opportunity to work in different positions and learn other parts of the company
• Giving employees some power then evaluating how they handle it

Create Opportunities to Interact with Current Leaders

Establishing relationships between your workforce and the members of its leadership group is key. Consider creating a shadowing or mentoring program to help connect future leaders to current leaders. The many benefits of programs like these include creating deeper relationships among your team, strengthening team unity, and, of course, identifying and cultivating new leaders.

Encourage an Investment Mentality

It is important that your organization’s future leaders feel invested in the company. In order to grow loyalty and commitment, consider these strategies:

• Establish an open-door policy
• Be open to listening to and implementing your team members’ ideas
• Avoid micro-managing

When your employees feel trusted and valued, they become more committed to the organization. They feel as though they can truly make a positive impact. This can turn them into future leaders.

Learn to Identify Leaders

Throughout the course of implementing the strategies listed above, be sure that you are observing and evaluating to determine which of your team members display leadership potential. For example, make note of which employees take you up on new opportunities. Keep an eye out for team members who demonstrate a firm commitment to your organization. After you spend some time focusing on these strategies, you will know where to put your focus when it comes to training the next generation of leaders for your organization. 

Jeremy Watson, CPA, CVA, has over 20 years of accounting industry experience. He is dedicated to his audit and business valuation clients and is passionate about mentoring early-career staff at the firm.

Areas of service include: Employee Benefit Plans, Non-profits, Financial Institutions, Manufacturing Insurance Underwriters.