Build your pipeline of future leaders

Leadership programs of high-performing organisations are specifically designed to ensure there is an ongoing talent pool, ready to step in and continue to take the business to the next level.  And the richest pool of talent is always within your own organisation - if you’ve had a deliberate plan to nourish that talent in a disciplined program. 

Following on from our previous article on Leadership Development Programs, here we’re looking at the major components BREWYD sees top organisations implementing to build that internal pool of future leaders.

Someone GOOD owns the program

The number one thing required to build a successful program for future leaders is having a senior successful person from within the business own leadership development.  Gone are the days when this role was given to a junior person or even worse, a low performing leader that was told to “go off and create a training course”. 

Whilst leadership programs might sit in the HR department or a specific business unit, it is vital to have a leader who has done the role - and done it well - championing the program. 

Having a great example lead the charge ensures the knowledge, skills and coaching gained from the program is much more likely to stick.  This implicitly tells participants the program is more than academic; it also negates any ideas from the broader team that the program isn’t appropriate for certain individuals.  In other words, you’re broadcasting that this is what the path to success look like - invest in your development if you want to be a leader.  No one is so busy they can’t spend time expanding their knowledge and skills.

Implementing a rotation of top leaders through the role of champion is also a powerful signal to the organisation.  Not only do those who lead the programs go back to the field as better leaders, they end up being more successful once they’ve had a few years coaching coaches.  It sends a strong message that successful leaders come in all shapes, sizes, colours and strengths.  As the saying goes, people can’t be what they can’t see.

Tailor the programs to your business

You can open LinkedIn on any day and find a plethora of leadership “experts” with fancy graphics and motivational quotes from high-performers.  What they are not, is an expert on your business. 

Whatever methodology, provider or courseware you decide on, it needs to be steeped in context that anyone in your business can see that this program is about your business.  You may also need to look at each of your leaders to understand through quantitative and long term qualitative (ethnographic research) analysis, what is actually making some leaders successful and others not. 

With this in mind, the next step is to apply this context and understanding of your leaders to the methodologies that you bring in.  You don’t want to start training your leaders on concepts that just don’t fit - because they won’t stick.

Where do you start?

Once you’ve done the review of what great leaders look like in your business, future leaders should be identified during the Individual Contributor (IC) interviews.  At BREWYD we use Red Bull’s Wingfinder assessment for identifying the personalities of your top leaders, it’s definitely worth checking out. 

And whilst you will never be 100% accurate at identifying leaders in this early stage of people’s careers, it is important to start talking about identifying leadership and potential pathways early on.  Candidates will know you’re serious about developing leaders and they’ll be able to see a clear intent from the organisation when it comes to future leadership roles - even if the career path itself is not that clear.  This is also a great lever in your talent retention toolkit.

Ground future leaders in the strategy

Leadership programs should focus on some key components:

• Understand the purpose and values of the organisation – What are we all aiming for, how will we behave and what won’t be tolerated?
• Understand the strategy of the business - Including how we make money or deliver citizen outcomes
• Understand how we “get shit done” across programs - The fundamentals of execution that deliver on the strategy
• Understand the processes - The methodologies and the language we use to communicate across the organisation

What we’re really looking to do here, is create leaders across the business in individuals before they’re promoted.  This is how to scale strategy and execution and importantly, get voices across the business to help you on your journey to achieve the company purpose, vision or mission.

Experience, Exposure and Aspirations

It’s important to know the three main buckets for future leadership development: Experience, Exposure and Aspiration, or EEA. 

Experience is ensuring that future leaders are given tasks to lead certain initiatives, programs or enterprise communications to give them real world experience in leadership within the organisation.  Whilst their front line experience is the primary consideration when setting them up for leadership, it’s important to give them tasks that will be fulfilled in a leadership role as well.

Exposure is providing future leaders with access to other parts of the business, whether that’s sitting in certain meetings, observing processes or even exposing them to rotational roles.  An important part of exposure is not just giving the individual visibility of different aspects of the business or leadership, it’s also about giving people within the organisation exposure to those in development programs. 

Over time this will provide more leadership opportunities, and also has the added benefit that if and when people are promoted, there’s a much higher rate of acceptance of them as a new leaders within the org.

Aspiration is the element of future leadership where things change based on the individual’s life circumstances.  Aspirations can change as people develop or life’s priorities change so it’s important to engage in regular check-ins as part of your program to understand what (or if) anything has changed in terms of the individual’s aspirations. 

Don’t ask people to apply, develop the ability to identify talent

An essential element of any future leadership program is the organisation’s confidence in its ability to select future leaders.  Whilst you want people to have the aspiration to lead, you also want to be in a position where the organisation is choosing leaders based on defined criteria, rather than asking people to apply when opportunities arise.

There are two ends of the spectrum here:  those who feel they are ready and those who don’t have the confidence in their experience or exposure – yet.  In BREWYD’s experience, it’s typical for females to have a view they’re not ready to lead whereas males tend to think they are. 

The best way to solve for this is and negate the issue, is via a selection process partnered with a check-in on aspirations and clear ways for people to understand their progress.

Measure the person AND performance

As you start to measure performance it’s important to have a blend of measuring business performance and understanding the person.  Business performance is easier to measure, but ensuring you have a datafit model is key to limiting the number of metrics you’re tracking – you also need to relate the measures to the skills required in their current role. 

Whilst it’s impossible to just include exact qualitative measures, it is important to limit the number of qualitative measures that could be subjective.  Using resources such as Red Bull’s Wingfinder to measure the qualitative aspects of a person is essential. 

These tools help create a development plan that:

• Identify strengths in the individual
• Shows leaders how to take advantage of these strengths
• Make the leader and the individual aware of weaknesses - and possibly even showcase the benefits of coaching them to be average at these (controversial)
• Then leaders can take it to the next level and start to look at how they build teams around themselves, with the understanding of how the strengths of others might fill their gaps

Accelerate the careers of the highest potential people

On top of those selected for your leadership development program, there may be a requirement to accelerate the careers of certain individuals across the business, especially in accelerated growth environments. 

These programs should be a small cohort of individuals from different backgrounds or business units, that are closely developed at far regular intervals and given stretch tasks to ensure that they are always ready for the next role. 

With these people, you could expect to promote them at least 2 times over a 3 year period, so an in-depth understanding of high potential programs is required to make this work.

All leadership programs aren't created equal

Overall, a leadership development program needs to be purposeful in everything it does - from recruitment all the way through to the ongoing development of the people participating.  As discussed in our last article all leadership programs aren’t created equal, and whilst there will be common factors across all levels of development, fit for purpose development at each layer of leadership is vital. 

And if this all feels a little out of your comfort zone, we’re here to guide you through the evolution of transforming your leadership development programs, and guide you to becoming a high-performance organisation.