7 Effective Ways to Build Leadership Development at Work

Effective leadership development can help your team gain new skills and boost productivity. It can increase employee morale, prevent skill shortages and reduce turnover costs.

If you’re a CEO, CFO, business owner, managing director, or leader at work it’s essential that you learn how to navigate your team. Keep reading to learn seven effective ways to build leadership in your business.

1. Looking For Leadership Potential in Your Staff

Gaining leadership skills is the key to unlocking your business’ potential. You need to obtain the leadership qualities that can keep your company competitive.

But leadership development is an investment. Whether you’re investing in you or your employee’s growth, it should bring positive returns. This is why you should track leadership potential in your company to mentor the right people.

Some of the leadership signs to look for in an employee include:

  • Ability to bring ideas and solutions to the table during meetings and conversations
  • An employee who takes responsibility for their actions or project outcomes
  • People who can keep calm in adverse situations
  • Great communication skills
  • Someone who praises and supports others
  • Open-mindedness to leadership development and willingness to seize growth opportunities
  • Great or active listeners
  • An individual that goes the extra mile or can do more than required

You want to spot the employees who have the highest leadership potential. Consider experience, technical and interpersonal skills, as well as strong leadership attributes.

2. Fostering Leadership Development

It helps to create an enabling environment before launching leadership development. As a leader, you need to be intentional about leadership development every minute.

Create leadership awareness and help employees understand the value of their growth. Provide regular and positive intentional feedback to help your team grow. Assigned leaders should take the role of mentors to help their mentees grow.

Another great way to nurture leadership development is to delegate leadership roles. Ask your growing leaders to lead low-risk but challenging projects. This way, you can help the less reluctant build their confidence. It also gives the inexperienced ones some room to prove their leadership skills.

Your goal is to develop a culture of leadership development. Make everyone feel engaged, empowered, and independent to develop.

3. Tailored Business Leadership Development

A crucial part of effective leadership development is practical and effective peer learning. The top CEOs need new leadership skills to cope in a changing business environment. Business owners as well need to grow their skills to scale up their businesses.

Leadership skills are more in demand at all levels due to technological changes. You need innovative, proactive, and initiative individuals across your organisation to stay competitive. Peer learning is the secret to sealing the skills gap in any work environment.

But you can’t provide a one size fits all coaching program when you want to help individuals improve. Leaders at various levels face different challenges and have varying goals. You have to understand each leader’s motivations, style and goals before coaching.

At 2020 Exchange, we have leadership development programs tailored for you. We have a variety of peer advisory boards for CEOs, CFOs, COOs and small business owners. Join an advisory board that encourages peer learning and networking.

4. Finding a Business Mentor and Plan for Employee Mentorship

As an entrepreneur, it helps to find a business mentor whom you can turn to for tips. A mentor can help improve your leadership skills and advice on potential challenges.

A mentor can teach you new business strategies and connect you to more business partners. They can also be your confidantes when things get tough. A great business mentor can help you become a more effective business leader.

While looking for someone to mentor you, also consider an employee mentorship plan. Your team leaders need inspiration and someone to give them hope. If you want to unleash their potential, make sure they’re under someone who watches their steps.

5. Implementing Peer Learning Programs

Do you remember how group discussions at school could help you master a topic? We tend to have a better mastery through sharing our thoughts with others.

Peer learning fosters mutual learning and can be helpful in leadership development. As a leader or business owner, your peers can impact you with invaluable skills.

A great way to introduce peer learning at work is to encourage reverse mentorship. This can help individuals learn from the experience and skills of their seniors. Junior staff can also empower their seniors with up-to-date skills and fresh ideas.

Small group coaching can also boost peer to peer learning. As a leader, you can gain new skills from the coach and also learn from your peers. The coach fosters learning─ and by sharing you can develop key connections with some of your peers.

6. Measuring Success and Acknowledge Progress

People need to know whether they’re making progress if they’re to improve and become better leaders. By measuring success, you can help individuals understand when to change behaviours. You can also figure out whether your processes are working.

But don’t just measure program success and stop at the results. Congratulate program participants and openly praise outstanding leaders. Encourage people to talk about success, their goals and the help they need to achieve them.

Encouragement can motivate budding leaders to improve and pursue more leadership opportunities. It can provide clarity on goals and help leaders tap into the participants’ energy.

7. Putting Change Leadership Forward

With rapid technological advancements, adaptability has become a core leadership skill. Organisations today need to learn how to adapt to change and build agile processes.

Instilling change leadership is the new way of bringing change preparedness in a business. Reaction to change is no longer a company’s responsibility alone. Every member in your organisation needs to be ready for change and able to lead when change knocks.

You and your staff are now agents of change and not subject to it. Staff have to grow an intrapreneur mindset and take charge when it matters. They need to talk about change and also come with ideas and solutions to combat potential threats.

Change leadership may also mean everyone taking leadership development into their hands. At some point, those who have lost their groove need to rebrand or re-launch their careers.

Instead of feeling outdated, they need to take more responsibilities or refresh their skills. We recommend the 2020 Exchange; reboot, rebrand, rebound program for leaders who think they’re stuck.

Leadership Development Programs Can Propel Your Business

Whether you’re a new or experienced leader, you need to develop your leadership skills. Always make sure you have the up-to-date skills to drive your company forward.

You can start investing in leadership development today. Check out our programs to get started on becoming an effective leader.