09 Oct Why Building a Leadership Pipeline Is the Key to Next Year’s Success
With the end of the year in sight, the demands of Q4 are thoroughly upon us.
And, your team is surely focused on a variety of steps to prepare you as the new year approaches. From inventory and operations to marketing and new goals, the flip of the calendar comes with a whole collection of new concerns and new resets.
But too often, we see organizations forgetting about a critical part of their future: Building out their leadership pipeline.
It’s imperative for companies to intentionally develop, implement and maintain a plan to retain and nurture their current and future leaders.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always come naturally, and there aren’t always existing processes in place to ensure that you’re supporting and developing your leaders.
So how can you ensure that you make next year a year of real growth? Here are three key steps:
Implement a Behavioral Analytic
At the heart of all the people- and talent-oriented decisions we help companies make, you’ll find behavioral analytics, a powerful tool for any organization that can improve your culture, hiring, productivity and much more.
A behavioral analytics tool can be the foundation for your future. It provides insights into how you can maximize your team and better understand what your people need, and it can help you chart a course forward.
At Talent Suite, our preferred analytics tool is The Predictive Index, which uses science-based methodology to measure a person’s motivating drives and needs in the workplace.
But no matter which tool you use, it’s crucial to embrace the idea of making decisions backed by data. This helps our clients find the right people, inspire their employees and build more well-rounded, high-performing teams.
Without implementing data in this process, you’ll struggle to objectively identify your future leaders — let alone develop them.
Equip Your Current Leaders to See Your Future Leaders
Once you’ve set a baseline of objective data to build from, you need to equip your current people leaders to recognize the potential and talent that exists among the rest of the members of their teams.
In many organizations, some or many of your top-level leaders will have developed this muscle in varying strengths. Whether they take lessons from their own development or have taken leadership workshops that teach them, they may already be identifying leaders.
But often, Talent Suite works with companies whose mid-level managers have simply never been taught these skills, and aren’t sure how to spot potential or develop and support new leaders.
A great way to get these managers involved in the process is to put a specific line item into each department’s budget reserved exclusively for talent development.
That doesn’t mean budgeting for a one-day, one-size-fits-all leadership course that checks a box while the team snoozes through a presentation that they’ll never use again.
This is about empowering your leaders with leadership development— backed by behavioral analytic data — to see what their individual people need, and then give them the support that will take them to the next level.
Create Measurable Metrics for Success
In the same way that behavioral analytics give you an objective grounding for talent and drive, you want to turn leadership growth — which can be nebulous and subjective — into a measurable, tangible process.
Your leaders need to know that they are being evaluated by their ability to identify the next level of leaders. It’s not enough for them to simply lead. They need to give those future leaders the support and development that will set them up for growth and future success.
Fortunately, with behavioral analytics at their disposal, this shouldn’t be an issue.
If they’re willing to learn how to interpret that data and use it to understand what their people need and how they can excel, your leaders will be able to identify and support the people who will be leaders in the future of the company.
Great organizations create a self-sustaining pipeline where experienced leaders guide and lift future leaders, repeating the process as people grow, change and even leave.
At Talent Suite, we know that this process can be daunting. You might even be starting from square one!
But that’s OK. It’s never too late to start building and refining your pipeline.
So whether you need help starting from scratch and implementing behavioral analytics, or you find yourself running into a wall with your executive leaders, we can provide a helping hand.
Start by reaching out to us today to see how we can help you achieve your goals and get your talent pipeline in place.