Developing Future Leaders

As leaders we need to identify the strengths of the people we lead and assign them work they will excel at; work that is rank appropriate; work they will find rewarding and valuable, yet challenging and meaningful. We need to identify their weaknesses, along with areas for improvement, and provide guidance, coaching, mentorship, and rank appropriate training opportunities, while assigning new tasks, projects, and duty assignments that will improve their skill-set.

By taking these important steps in developing the people we lead we can reduce employee frustration, job dissatisfaction, and burnout while increasing their effectiveness, efficiency, professionalism, expertise, and feelings of accomplishment. This should be a participative process with each employee, so that they can work on setting professional goals,

As leaders, we need to prepare those we lead to assume the leadership positions we hold. We need to value their presence, allow for their input, make them feel important, and make them champions for the organization. If we don’t do these things there will be a shallow bench for future leadership opportunities in our organizations. That’s leadership 101.