Building a Strong Leadership Pipeline for Great Teams
Great leadership needs a constant flow of strategically developed personnel to keep it filled in almost every organization. It is essential to give advanced plans for how key management and leadership positions are filled in your organization. Much like a sales pipeline, a leadership pipeline includes your database of employees at various stages of becoming leadership ready. As your company grows or transitions occur by attrition, reduction of workforce, or death, you can search your pipeline of people to promote or move cross functionally to fill the gaps.
Strategic managers recognize that their organization’s leadership skills gap continues to widen. They have considered a plan for how they will solve this critical issue. Focusing on their leadership pipeline where they currently have talent that can fill gaps is the key. Looking at their inventory of people, they can immediately recognize areas they need to either develop skills or hire additional talent.
Employee Groupings in the Leadership Pipeline
A simple but effective thought process develops a leadership pipeline that lists all your employees and placing each employee in one of four groupings:
- Executive leadership: continual learner, communication skills, strategic thinking, business acumen, forward thinking, coaching and mentoring skills, role model for others.
- Middle Management: sharpen fundamental skills of leadership, strong planning skills, business acumen to ensure they are prioritizing efficiently, performance management to ensure clear responsibilities and answerabilities, decision making skills to move up to the next level.
- Entry Level: Focus on fundamentals of leadership, often promoted to this position due to excellence in technical skills but have not been developed in leadership skills, they need to be mentored and see what good leadership looks like from above.
- Team Members: The future of your management and leadership team; start them in a mentoring program that can later lead into a more formal leadership development program.
Identifying Key Leadership Competencies for Growth
The skills gap can be identified in 9 specific leadership competencies that are weak or missing in terms of future leadership needs and current skills. As you work with your team to identify and coach your team, look for these qualities to help fill the gaps more effectively for a great leadership mindset.
- Managing change
- Inspiring commitment
- Leading employees
- Taking initiative
- Building collaborative relationships
- Having a strategic perspective
- Knowledge of strategic planning
- Embracing participative management
- Being a quick learner
Development programs to consider in developing your team may include:
INDIVIDUAL COACHING
- The relationship between the coach and the participant is built on a foundation of trust and requires a good personality match. A coaching firm seeks to match the coach and the participant for greater development.
EXECUTIVE COACHING
- Consists of meetings to bounce ideas, or an in-depth dive to address an area of development which may include a 360-degree assessment. Examine the challenges that are holding back your key leaders?
KEY CONTRIBUTOR
- Perhaps a star performer has one area that continues to hold them back and with the help of a coach, they could achieve their full potential.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
- Helping a challenged employee turn around can be a worthwhile investment, it demonstrates your commitment to contributing to a leader’s success.
NEW LEADER ASSIMILATION
- Short version – Newly promoted leaders face special challenges. Onboarding coaching provides support to leaders moving into a new position to ensure a smooth transition.
- Longer version – Executives who take on a new position, whether promoted from within or hired from outside, find that the honeymoon is over quickly these days. Expectations are on the rise while the window for achieving results is narrowing. Assimilation coaching is one of the most effective means of compressing the learning curve and enhancing the probability of success for those taking on new roles.
The best leaders and companies keep the pipeline full of leaders and potential leaders. It is essential to think through your pipeline and develop a plan for your people if you truly want to create a great leadership team.
Ready to Build Strong Leadership? Contact Us Today!
Are you ready to empower your organization with a dynamic leadership pipeline? We offer tailored talent and leadership development programs to bridge the skills gap and foster a culture of excellence. Reach out to us now to learn more about our solutions for building great leadership teams. Your journey towards success begins here!
