If you are responsible for recruiting and hiring new leaders in your organization, I highly recommend you keep two important things in mind:
- You shouldn’t wait until you need to fill a position to start looking for a replacement.
- You likely already have the talent within your organization to keep your leadership pipeline full.
It’s a funny phenomenon that even really well-run organizations experience all too often: A great manager announces she is leaving for a new opportunity, and the organization goes into a bit of a scramble to post the job and start interviewing. Then, even if a replacement is found quickly, the new manager and team work through a learning curve, where productivity, potentially morale and even quality of service can take a hit.
Organizations can prevent that kind of disruption by not seeing leadership as positions they need to fill, and instead commit to ongoing leadership development up and down the organization. Through regular coaching, mentoring and training, you can groom the next generation of leaders and create an internal talent pool that enables you to more easily replace leaders who move on.
Building the right skills for right now
No doubt, the age-old leadership skills, such as business acumen, integrity, communication, decisiveness, delegation and collaboration, are still critical skills every leader needs. They should remain part of any development program you offer. But we’re also seeing a shift in the workplace that requires another set of skills. Even prior to the pandemic that shuttered offices across the globe and made remote work the norm, organizations were becoming more agile, flexible and global.
With a talent shortage that experts expect may linger, organizations are realizing they need to focus on corporate culture and creating the type of environment that attracts and retains employees. When it comes to keeping talented employees onboard, quality managers and leaders rank high on the list of must-haves.
So, what skills should you focus on as you plan your leadership development strategies for the rest of 2021 and 2022? Here are our top recommendations:
- Change management. Leaders are dealing with a great deal of ambiguity right now, and teams need to shift priorities and goals continuously. Developing leaders’ ability to act—often with little information—quickly in an ever-changing workplace landscape is critical.
- Empathy. Being able to understand what others are going through and allow that to inform how you manage them has never been more important. Stress, fear, and uncertainty are at all-time highs right now, but they always exist. Family obligations and mental and physical health issues always exist. People need managers and leaders to understand that they are human beings with human problems and treat them as such.
- Inclusion. Diversity makes teams and organizations stronger, and the best leaders create an environment where everyone feels like they belong. Provide coaching around unconscious bias, addressing racism, ageism and sexism, and communicating across global cultures.
- Resilience. While most people believe “toughness” or “perseverance” is a character trait, we believe it is a skill that can be honed. Coaching that covers self-care and stress management can go a long way to preventing burnout. However, beyond that, coaching that guides leaders to be more effective at developing strategies, creating contingency plans and being able to adapt are essential to weathering periods of upheaval.
- Motivation. No leader is an island, and no matter how smart or qualified a leader is, without a team, he or she will never be successful. Leaders must know how to motivate their people to give it their all and get results. And it’s rarely about money or incentives. Offer coaching that teaches leaders how to recognize what their people need and how to keep them engaged.
Creating an organization-wide development strategy
If you need help assessing the leadership potential in your organization and establishing development plans, Jackson-Schmidt Consulting is ready to help. Read all about our services here. Or if you need a more custom solution, schedule a no-strings-attached consultation now.