How happy are the employees at your company? Do you feel like you should be doing more to boost the morale at work? If you feel like your team isn’t operating at its highest level and you want to create a more positive environment, then the answer is to develop a leadership development plan for your company.
A leadership development plan allows your team to grow and move up within your organization. When your people feel like they have an opportunity to excel and take up leadership positions with your business, then they are happier, more productive, and more likely to stay with your company. When they see no room to move up and feel that they are not being challenged or developed to play a leadership role, they are going to start looking elsewhere fast.
You want a team that feels valued because they will do more to contribute to the success and growth of your business. Creating leaders is the way to get there, and you can do that by implementing a leadership development plan. Here are the five key parts that make an effective plan:
Clearly define what makes a good leader in your company
It takes zero skill to be a boss, but to become a leader takes skill, knowledge, and dedication. What are some of the key attributes of a leader, in your opinion? This can include the ability to be:
- Honest and ethical
- Communicate effectively
- Creative and intuitive
- Positive and confident
Once you have your list, ask your other team leaders to add to the list so that you have a clearly defined picture of what a successful leader in your company looks like. This picture allows your team members to know the qualities they need to emulate in order to be a good leader.
Offer development opportunities
It is not enough to just train employees. You need to offer some follow-up that allows your employees to implement the new skills that they learn. Great leaders need to be developed. To be effective, your development opportunities need to allow for:
- Mentoring
- Leadership shadowing
- Project leadership
- Job rotation
- Coaching
Learn to identify potential leaders
You can discover potential leaders at any level in your company. Know how to spot them and be ready to offer opportunities to all of them. Look for those who meet your list of attributes of a good leader. Use personnel assessments to help you pinpoint them. Remember that not all employees will make great leaders, even if they are some of your best performers. Also, be sure that the people you choose for development even have an interest in stepping into a leadership role.
Know how to measure results
You want to know that your leadership development plan is effective, so it is important to find a way to measure its success. You can base it on metrics such as:
- How many employees develop into effective leaders?
- How many employees complete the program?
- What leadership skills have they developed?
- What are the promotion statistics?
- What are the retention statistics?
Let your employees address issues
Give your future leaders a chance to meet challenges. The most effective teaching tool is hands-on experience, so let them step in and take action when there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Allowing your team to solve problems together will show you who your most effective leaders are.