MoneyMagpie › Money Matters › How To Train Up Good Leaders

How To Train Up Good Leaders

Moneymagpie Team 5th May 2023 No Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As companies grow, new leadership roles can emerge. You can hire new recruits with management experience to fill these roles. Or you can hire within by training up existing employees.

The latter option can allow you to hire people that you already know and trust. They will already have a decent knowledge of how your company works and will be familiar with the rest of the team. The only downside is that these candidates may not have leadership experience, and so you need to provide adequate training.

This post explains exactly how to train up great leaders so that your company is in safe hands.

Recognise those with leadership potential
Lead by example
Outsource professional help
Dedicate enough time to training
Don’t micromanage

Recognise those with leadership potential

Not every employee is likely to be suitable leadership material. It is important to identify employees that have all the right personal qualities. Ideal qualities to look for include:

A positive attitude
An ability to come up with ideas and make decisions on their own
Good communication skills
Good organisational skills
Empathy and an ability to get on well with all colleagues
Problem solving skills
An ability to delegate
Accountability

If there’s someone on your team that possesses all these personal skills, they could make a great candidate for a leadership position. Of course, such an employee also needs to be enthusiastic about getting a promotion. If an employee does not want to become a leader, you can force them to.

Lead by example

It’s important that you set a good example when training up new managers. Don’t try to teach your employees certain methods if you don’t adopt them yourself. Similarly, you need to be careful of inadvertently passing on bad habits such as leaving admin tasks to the last minute or hosting unproductive meetings. Make changes to your own behaviour so that any leaders you train up do not pick up your bad habits.

Outsource professional help

Sometimes it can be worth outsourcing professional help when training up new leaders. You could consider looking into executive coaching to teach employees leadership qualities. You could alternatively sign up employees onto courses paid for out of your own pocket.

Dedicate enough time to training

It is important that you are able to dedicate enough time to training up management and that you are not rushing training. This will ensure that your assistant managers know what they are doing and that they are confident in their new role. Before training up new leaders, try to free up some of your schedule.

Don’t micromanage

It’s important to give your assistant managers some autonomy. While you may want to monitor them closely at first, you need to slowly back off and let them take charge. Micromanaging your managers will put unnecessary pressure on them which could lead to a greater risk of mistakes. They may also resent their new role as manager if they have been given more responsibilities but not more freedom.

Disclaimer: MoneyMagpie is not a licensed financial advisor and therefore information found here including opinions, commentary, suggestions or strategies are for informational, entertainment or educational purposes only. This should not be considered as financial advice. Anyone thinking of investing should conduct their own due diligence.