Grow Your Future Leaders
By: Tim Augustine
Show new and potential employees the growth opportunities in your business by building a program that cultivates leaders from within.
Seventy-six percent of the executives I surveyed said that it is better for a firm to grow their leaders rather than hire them externally. The executives surveyed felt that cultivating existing staff would provide opportunity for advancement, build loyalty and help maintain the firm’s culture, values and overall vision. However, of the 76% surveyed, only 25% had a dedicated leadership development program focused on growing internal leaders. These employees are often referred to as fast-trackers or high-potential employees. If your goal is to grow internal leaders, start building the programs today that will bear fruit two to three years from now.
For the intent of this article, let’s refer to the program that grows internal leaders as the High-Potential Program. Your High-Potential Program should identify and select those individuals who have the abilities and desires to develop into leaders. This program should assist in grooming your best staff for future leadership roles.
To develop your program, consider taking the following steps.
Step 1: Define your program.
What is your vision of the program? For example, your program should be for employees whom exemplify your firm’s personality and cultural fit, and have the potential to be a significant part of your company’s growth. The program should be designed to elevate the company’s awareness of key employees within the company, provide opportunities to learn leadership skills as well as provide one-on-one communication with the senior leadership in your firm.
Step 2: Develop a rigorous nomination and selection process.
Participants should be nominated by senior leadership with a goal of identifying a specific number of participants. For example, a firm employing 450 employees may consider selecting 30 people for the program. I have found that smaller groups more frequently increase group participation and teamwork. Develop a High-Potential Program committee that reviews the nominations and selects participants. Focus your selection criteria on the personality and cultural fit of the individual. (The actual skills of managing and leading are often learned by education and mentoring, but personality cannot be taught.)
To evaluate whether participants represent your firm’s values and culture, consider whether they exhibit the following qualities.
Strongly self-motivated
Conscientious
Exhibit persistence and follow-through on commitments and deadlines
Exhibit strong initiative evidenced by extra-curricular activities and accomplishments
Adept at helping and teaching others
Flexible and versatile
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Exhibit a willingness to work long hours when necessary
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Respond well to frequently changing demands or priorities
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Are willing to travel
Interested in continuing education
Find and overcome challenges and obstacles
Capable of working independently as well as with others
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Able to work with minimal direction from others
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Able to recognize priorities and act on them effectively
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Ability to work in a self-directed, team environment
Display the desire to improve processes in job, group, and overall company
Possess the desire to work in a cooperative vs. competitive environment
Exhibit integrity
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Demonstrate professionalism and trustworthiness
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Know the difference between right and wrong
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Display ethical behavior and honesty throughout personal and professional life
Have a professional appearance
Focused on achievement
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Demonstrate a strong drive for results
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Possess high standards for self and others
Are customer focused
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Able to develop and provide effective customer solutions
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Provide ongoing customer contact and support
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Display enthusiasm and excitement
Once selected, the participants should complete a leadership profile to establish a benchmark of prior education and career advancement. The leadership profile is, in essence, a living resume that documents work experiences, educational milestones, specific strengths of the individuals, and past roles and responsibilities the selected employees have experienced.
Once the program is ready to launch, a formal invitation and announcement should be communicated to the high-potential candidates as well as the firm, in order to congratulate the selected employees.
Step 3: Identify and develop content, facilitators and internal mentors.
As part of this program, I recommend conducting a 360-degree survey for the participants. Identify specific questions focused on competencies and skills, and ask the individuals, their supporting leaders, their peers, and their internal customers or suppliers for feedback. There are a plethora of tools that you can use to develop your 360-degree assessment. Just make sure your questions provide you with the guidance needed to develop training content, and identify skills or competencies valued by your organization.
Questions you use to develop this 360-degree survey should help uncover the employees' knowledge and competency in a number of areas, including:
Knowledge of the Company
History
Direction
Mission
Vision
Values
Understanding of its organizational structure
Products, Service & Market Knowledge
Product/service overview
Industry overview
Client relationships
Leadership Traits and Competencies
Personal Effectiveness
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Business writing
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Presentation skills
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Proposal writing
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Negotiating
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Interpersonal communication
Financial Knowledge
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Interpreting financial reports
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Strategic finance
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Accounting reports and analysis
General Leadership Skills
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Mentoring and coaching
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Team effectiveness
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Delivering feedback
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Conflict resolution
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Interviewing skills
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Delegation
Identify internal mentors or coaches for each of these traits, such as a financial executive to provide financial expertise or a marketing executive to provide product/service knowledge. In addition, identify and use outside vendors to supplement additional traits such as leadership, conflict management, negotiation etc. Executive coaches could also be leveraged on an individual basis.
Step 4: Provide structure for the program.
As you launch your program, make sure it is flexible enough to adapt to individual schedules as well as organizational fluctuations and conditions. The program should be a combination of one-on-one mentoring sessions with senior leaders in the organization, as well as group sessions to enhance interactive learning.
After you conduct your 360-degree assessment, meet with each participant individually to review your findings and begin to identify their skills gap. This meeting will also identify specific areas that mentors/coaches could be used. At Atwell-Hicks, we identified 10 of our senior leaders and scheduled two-hour individual monthly meetings for each participant. Each leader met with two participants a month to help open the lines of communications with the individuals and discuss their respective roles. In addition, we provided monthly opportunities for high-potential candidates to attend leadership and educational sessions. Finally, the training leader or human resources team should schedule weekly, monthly or quarterly touch points with the leadership participants to gather feedback and continually assess their growth.
The above is an outline of a proposed structure for a leadership program. However you determine to structure your own, make sure it is a blend of developmental opportunities as well as opportunities for participants to show their initiative and drive to grow.
