Having leadership skills is attractive in many situations and roles, even if they don’t involve managing a team. Many businesses seek to instill leadership skills in their employees to make them self-started and motivated. The business will benefit from employees that can solve problems, take the initiative, innovate and need little supervision. Here are some ways you can train your team to become stronger leaders.
Set Them Up for Success
There’s no quicker way to hurt a person’s motivation and engagement than setting them up for failure. Employees need to feel that they have the full support and faith of the company. Your employees will feel emboldened to take charge with the right blend of resources, training, and autonomy.
You’ll need to create efficient and organized processes to motivate your team to achieve success. Find a way to keep everyone in the loop and on the same page, so they can focus on executing and leading. You may adopt a collaborative approach that focuses on team communication and problem-solving like the agile methodology.
Instill Responsibility
In order for a person to be a leader, they must have something to lead. Instill a sense of responsibility and accountability, so your team members feel the urgency and importance of the work.
You must give the employee clear goals, instructions, and boundaries for fair responsibility and accountability. They need to understand that the win or loss will belong to them, which will make it easier for them to accept the stakes and rewards for their performance.
Give Them Purpose
Unite your team with a common purpose. You can start with your company mission or values; they are essential because they help employees understand why their work matters and the bigger picture of your company.
Find ways to convey a purpose that will resonate with your team. This may take several forms and iterations. For example, if customer satisfaction is a mission, then you can break it down into small, easy-to-understand tasks like a smile, immediate response to emails, or taking clients out for lunch. Break the bigger mission and values into something easier to understand and consume for your employees.
Offer Feedback
Give your employees regular feedback on how they are doing with leadership skills. Feedback should be a two-way street, so allow your employees to give the company feedback as well. With an open, transparent line of communication, both the employees and the company can learn from each other.
Employees need clear expectations, a roadmap to achieve expectations, and consequences for not meeting expectations. For leadership skills to grow, employees need to feel a sense of involvement and agency with their role in the company. When an employee meets expectations, the recognition and encouragement that follows will build confidence. Not meeting expectations can reduce morale, but if you coach the employee where they went wrong, they will value the experience.
Unclear expectations can give way to mistrust and the appearance of incompetence. If a leader doesn’t know or communicate a direction, then the team won’t be able to follow; if the team doesn’t meet the goal, then finger-pointing will ensue.
Employees also have to learn how to customize their interactions and communication according to the situation or team members in front of them. Active communication is how they will direct, motivate and build trust in their teams.
Education and Innovation
Offer training and educational opportunities to allow your team to learn and grow. A growth mindset is dependent on a person’s willingness to learn and create. They need to be willing to have honest evaluations on their strengths and weaknesses; there are assessment tools available that can assist. Once they acknowledge that, you can offer training and education to improve their knowledge and skills.
Also, give your employees opportunities to innovate and exercise their creativity. Creativity breeds out-of-the-box thinking that can reveal new solutions or opportunities in the market. You want your employees to go beyond their limits and not be discouraged by any barriers to success.
Leadership Leads to Leaders
Every employee doesn’t have to lead a team to utilize leadership skills; they can apply them to their work on any day. Employees that are confident, problem solvers, empowered, and motivated will give your company results. If you invest in your employees to turn them into leaders, they will become more attached to you and the company. So by investing in leadership skills for your employees, you can improve job satisfaction and staff retention.