Transcript
Hi, I'm Sarah Turner, president at Lumino Leadership. And today I'm going to discuss building future leaders within your organization. Leadership development goes beyond identifying talent. It's also about helping them gain the skills and confidence to succeed. And in this video, we'll explore key leadership challenges, practical ways to develop, support and retain emerging leaders for long term success.
What does a strong future leader look like today, and how has that profile evolved over the past few years?
I'm a visual person, so I appreciate this question as I think most of us acclimate more successfully when we can see what our targets look like. This is also a tricky time to define high functioning in the leadership space, because we are in a time where change has never been faster, and what the pace of evolving as a business being so rapid, some of the current key characteristics of strong leaders should center around thinking upstream, embracing technology to the fullest, using high levels of emotional intelligence to make decisions and engage the team. Also embodying resilience and having an appetite for innovation. These are all factors required to embrace the pace of the world around us.
What skills, experiences, or leadership qualities are most important to develop in future successors before they step into larger leadership roles?
In the experience space I live in, sure, a good amount of exposure to cross-functional collaboration. You want to make sure that they have seen all aspects of how the business functions, and partnering with other teams for on projects outside of their designated responsibility is key.
Also, coaching and developing others is on a short list of skills to hone. Keeping your team sharp and engaged reduces unwanted friction and develops an ideal culture which is required for businesses to thrive. I would also add that carrying a stadium view, not just a front row lens to the challenges that they will see, is a habit you are going to want to build in your successes.
So often we default to seeing only what's right in front of us, or something that impacts our work alone, and we fail to look at the broader impact to other teams, to our customers, or to the organization as a whole. And that is a skill that you want to make sure is flexed and built over time.
What are some of the biggest challenges current leaders face when preparing the next generation to take on more responsibility, and why do those challenges often show up?
One of the biggest challenges when preparing the next gen of leadership is helping them to progress their influence from being a traditional doer to a delegator, and finally, a developer.
As a doer, your proximity to the work that you do is close, and your control over the day-to-day items that you're working on is typically very high. But as you progress your influence, you have to distance yourself from those granular layers to the business and trust that your team can proficiently accomplish the day-to-day tasks so that you can focus on more of those upstream strategic work items.
Getting the next gen comfortable, letting go, and not feeling less important when they are involved in everything is one of the most important things you can do on the path to preparing future owners.
How can current leaders better mentor and empower emerging leaders while helping them build confidence and work through self-doubt or imposter syndrome?
The path to being ready for the next tier of leadership requires support from existing senior leaders, and the few things that will make the ROI of mentoring go up is getting them comfortable being uncomfortable.
I'm a huge fan of the book The Invisible Spotlight, which presents a theory about leadership that is very common. It highlights that once you are in a place where others look to you for guidance, it's as if an invisible spotlight is shining down on you all the time. Meaning someone is always watching. The importance of our actions well beyond our words as a leader is powerful, and we have to work constantly to earn credibility in the eyes of others.
With that in mind, one of the concepts within the book is showing a pattern of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Recently, I was with an executive leadership team and as he talked about this concept as a key differentiator of high functioning teams, we were wrapping up the day and I asked each person to commit to something that they would do.
After the discussion, the president in the room said, I commit to making each one of you uncomfortable over the next three months on purpose with the intent to help us grow. And then he added, please do the same for me. I love that answer because it sets the expectation for two things. Number one, that being uncomfortable is coming, and two, that it should be an expected part of our culture now to grow that in others, you must work to push them outside of their comfort zone.
You need to constantly explore what else you can expose them, to challenge them, to try and then amplify their curiosity in that space. It's a highly effective technique.
For younger professionals who aspire to become future leaders, what should they be doing now to prepare themselves beyond just being good at their job?
I am always going to guide developing leaders to invest in emotional intelligence first becoming what I often call a strategic responder and being able to have an arsenal of tools in your kit to create productive outcomes, no matter the situation is super rare, and we've all been in a setting where someone said or did something, or maybe they didn't say or didn't do something that made them seem less effective.
In our eyes, what is often labeled as bad timing or poor judgment is really just a lack of developed emotional intelligence. It can drastically impact your credibility higher or lower, and is definitely worth building on purpose. A recent study showed that 95% of people think they are self-aware, but only 10 to 15% actually are. That is a huge disparity, and your goal, as you develop, should be to ensure that you are one of those 10 to 15%.
I always tell people that what we are unaware of, we cannot change. So ensuring you have a solid foundation of AI is a number one in my book.
As emerging leaders take on more responsibility, how can firms help them build resilience, confidence, and leadership readiness without becoming overwhelmed or burned out?
To help support leadership development without pushing someone towards burnout is a balancing act for sure. A key focus area should be getting them comfortable with adversity, change and failure. There has been a lot of research over the past two decades on mindset, and this falls under the category of building a growth mindset, or what I often refer to as a challenge mindset.
A few ideas of how you can build this mindset can include small things, like setting up a milestone approach for the readiness path, instead of looking at all the things you need to do to get ready for a future transition. Focus on going deeper in one area with a goal to reach sustainable, productive habits before layering in additional growth areas.
There's a lot of proof that our comfort and confidence builds when we can see and feel traction, which is more likely to occur when taking one step along a growth path at a time. As an executive coach, I often call these your pillars of focus. For a shorter window of time, maybe 6 to 12 months, and you work the muscles in just a few areas over and over, and then you shift your pillars every six months to something new thereafter.
It's a strong formula for successful growth. Another thing you can do is to establish an expectation of failure and celebrate the learning that comes from it. Years ago, I was reading an article about a company that had a process called Failure Fridays, and I always loved that idea. They prioritized gathering to admire those who had extracted value from a failure, and then they shared it with their peers as an honor, not as a punishment.
By normalizing that, we should expect it and embrace it. They excelled with more resilient team members who were quicker able to bounce back for any missteps that happened and made them a powerful ingredient for the company's success.
Thanks for watching. We hope this discussion has provided valuable insights into developing the next generation of leaders and future owners. For more resources and industry perspectives, be sure to explore additional content from Oak Street Funding.
