Handing over the reins – developing up-and-coming leaders
Managers often ask, “How do I develop a high-potential employee into a strong leader?”. While it might seem like a complex topic, actually a few simple steps (revealed below) will put you well on your way to success.
First, give the person a chance to lead. Let them take on responsibility for a small project team and learn by doing (running meetings, steering to completion, etc.). Coach (guide, don’t prescribe) them through the project. They won’t be perfect on the first try, and that’s okay. Mistakes with feedback generate learning. Obviously, you’ll want to intervene to prevent any major disasters, but their occasional “dropping the ball” when the stakes are low, combined with your informative feedback, will set them up to know what to look out for in the future.
As they gain skills and confidence (and you see that you can trust their judgement), give them a more complex, higher-stakes project to facilitate growth. If they have the innate talent, and your guidance is effective, then after a few projects you should have a strong leader capable of bigger things.
The types of assignments well suited to “introduction to leadership” include:
allowing the person to manage 1-2 people before taking on a larger team
having the person lead a challenging customer engagement or problem resolution
assigning them projects with cross-functional team members (to broaden their exposure to other functional activity)
having them present at an industry symposium or large company event
having them take on a department-wide initiative
Leadership isn’t developed in a vacuum – as managers, we need to foster the development of leadership skills and give people opportunities (and support) to thrive in challenging positions. We’ve used this approach successfully for many years in different organizations. It takes a little courage to hand over the reins (they won’t do things the same way as you, and probably not as well, at least at first), but it’s well worth it!
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Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
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