Companies need to identify talent and create a leadership pipeline, so people are ready for promotion when opportunities arise. At the same time, when employees are promoted into leadership roles, they must be provided with leadership training as more effective leaders create more effective teams and employees. Below are five ways to improve the capabilities and performance of your leaders.
1. Set better internal goals and priorities
First, define what it means to be a good leader in your organization and how your current workforce can get there. Your leadership goals should be clear and easy to understand, with objective performance targets. Good leaders are often willing to consider the company’s goals and what they can do to achieve them. Creating a list of priorities that you want leaders to undertake can help determine which individuals to choose when creating your team. It can also help you find leaders with direct expertise in prioritizing different business functions and leading others.
2. Invest in leadership training and development
One of the best uses for the company budget is leadership training. Once promoted, leaders are often asked to focus on processes and procedures and not trained on what it means to be a leader who empowers a team. Invest in executive education and leadership training programs that give growing leaders the experience, knowledge, and insights they need to perform better in your company. They’ll also get access to unique team-building and networking opportunities. Good leaders constantly strive to improve themselves, so feed that instinct by offering ongoing education and development. Encourage your leaders to take new classes to help them grow and implement cross-training and set viable paths toward climbing the corporate ladder to incentivize growth.
3. Foster a healthy work culture
A vital facet of any successful company lies in the working environment. A company will ultimately be limited in its successes if employers find the workplace unpleasant, negative, or stressful. The nature of your work culture can also dramatically affect your leaders’ ability to perform. Evaluate if the company’s work culture supports an idea of autonomy and independence. If not, you’ll need to trust your leaders to manage their responsibilities and empower every individual team member to be efficiently independent. A toxic or oppressive culture makes even the best leaders fail to perform.
4. Encourage a mix of different leadership styles
There are many leadership styles and no such thing as the right approach. Even if your overall work culture supports one type of leadership, a specific leader can bring value to your organization by having a slightly different approach. Allow different leadership styles to flourish in your organization and encourage diversity of thoughts. Employees thrive under different conditions, so the more adaptive you are, the better.
5. Collect feedback and adjust/acknowledge
Employee feedback has long been a cornerstone of effective management. But today, as the talent competition escalates, the ways organizations show how they value employees through listening have become more critical than ever. Make sure you’re collecting feedback from your employees. What do they think about their leaders? Do they seem to be doing a good job? An employee may seem adequate, but if all their team members are miserable and thinking about leaving, something is wrong. Find specific ways to improve here. And provide recognition to those leaders who motivate employees, set an example, and even help their fellow leaders perform better at their jobs.
Conclusion
Building an effective leadership team is essential for organizations in almost every industry. Investing in your leadership team presents an opportunity to retain employees, increase growth and improve internal processes. Learning how to build a leadership team is crucial if you want to increase productivity and motivate employees to optimize performance.
