How to Keep Your Future Leaders Where They’ll Do the Most Good

Last week I discussed how to identify current and future leaders inside your company. The tactics include observing colleague interactions and basic skill testing (but I encourage you to read the details if you haven’t yet.) Now that you’ve identified some potential leaders inside your organization, it’s time to put them through their paces.

The best leaders have been through a baptism by fire: refining their character, work ethic, and practical skills. You’re going to provide that experience—but in a nice way.

Bigger projects, more responsibility – Once they’ve proven themselves on tasks, move to a larger project.  Take your time to be honest and helpful: recognize the way you work with your potential leader is how they will eventually work with their own star employees.

Mentoring through failures – We’ve all had setbacks and failures. Leaders analyze those experiences, their complicity in the failure, and determine to do better. While a natural leader may work through the steps of failure intuitively, you can mentor a potential leader through the same steps.

My biggest challenge after I’ve identified a leader is not being able to keep them within the company. The best leaders will eventually turn and leave if they lack interesting opportunities and are not adequately recognized nor appreciated for their contributions. You are responsible for providing as many challenges as possible, and even more importantly, for recognizing your potential leader’s efforts.

Make it a priority to use daily, weekly, or quarterly meetings to call attention to your leadership stars. Communicate to other employees the qualities that made your honored employee into a leader. By sharing the reasons for recognition, other employees have the chance to deliver on the qualities you value most in your culture.

 Read Carina’s full story here.
Read Part 1 here.
Read more from Carina here.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carina Wytiaz

Carina Wytiaz

Carina Wytiaz is a professional writer and Internet marketer, with experience drawn from her time at FranklinCovey, Borders, ah-ha.com, Marchex.com, OrangeSoda.com, and several traditional marketing and advertising agencies. She loves helping employees feel more included and valued through exuberant appreciation experiences, and helping companies realize the incredible potential of their human capital.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

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