Many successful businesses thrive because they have happy and motivated staff who feel valued and believe that they are very much a part of the company’s vision for future development.
The task for these companies and those that aspire to emulate them is to build a system and philosophy that encourages workers to take leadership roles and grow their role within the business.
Here is a look at some proven strategies that will help to encourage and create strong leaders within your company.
Destined for success
In the past, large employers used to rely on tools like IQ tests and skill aptitude tests as way of identifying someone who might have the skills they need or might not be up to the job in the first place.
Now the trend is towards using what is referred to as big data and rather than rely on something rigid like a fixed set of exam questions with a narrow set of responses. There are resources like the Enneagram Test which helps to determine the personality traits of each worker by undertaking a psychological profile through a set of carefully crafted multiple-choice questions.
The benefits of using something like the Enneagram Test is that employers can identify what type of leadership qualities they have in them, recognizing that not everyone can become a leader in exactly the same way and helping you identify how to utilize their individual strengths and skills in the best way possible, rather than try and fit someone into a role they are not ideally suited to.
Education and training
There are many tangible benefits attached to providing ongoing education and skills training for employees.
Using established resources such as simplilearn.com will provide workers with not just the skills and attributes that will be useful to your business, but it will allow employees to feel that they are being nurtured and valued because you are investing time and money into improving their chances of furthering their progress within the company.
If your business in an investor in people and can provide a career path and leadership opportunities, you are more likely to retain these key people, who will often want to play a part in helping the business continue to grow and evolve.
Mentoring
Forwarding-thinking employers have adopted the strategy of giving employees first-hand experience of what taking a leadership role will involve, by allowing them to shadow current leaders.
Formal training and education are part of the preparation involved in grooming employees for a future starring role within the business but in addition to providing the required management training programmes, it also works well if these employees are given the chance to shadow existing leaders, so they are ready and more comfortable taking on a leadership role themselves, when their time comes.
Rotation
Another innovation that has proved successful for those companies that have already tried it, is the idea of employee rotation.
Employee rotation has proved a great way of engaging with other parts of the business, understanding how they work and what skills the team members in that area have.
By giving someone the chance to acquire new skills and knowledge through rotation, you are giving that person a chance to extend their boundaries and also creating an employee who can be a useful team member as they are able to step in and cover for someone else at short notice when needed.
Embrace the passion
A strong characteristic of many leaders is their ability to inspire others by their passion for the business and encouragement given to others to emulate them and use their enthusiasm productively.
If you can succeed in developing a sense of passion within your employees you will almost certainly experience a strong uplift in the positive atmosphere within the business and this will often be transmitted to customers who notice the passion and take this is as a positive sign that you are a good business to trade with.
Challenge and support
Your business should try to encourage all employees to operate outside of their comfort zone and better themselves as a result, but this needs to be done with the right level of support.
Make sure you have a system in place to give workers the proper support when assigning new tasks to them and this also means giving constructive feedback and evaluation of their work, so that they can succeed in acquiring these new skills, safe in the knowledge that you are there to support them and provide them with the guidance they need.
Some people believe that leaders are born not made, but there are plenty of successful businesses that prove that theory wrong, by investing in their workers and reaping the rewards of that commitment.