When you manage a team, you need to be actively thinking about your employees’ growth and development paths. And while some may hope to advance as expert individual contributors, many will eventually want to become leaders like you.
However, as any experienced manager knows, wanting to be a manager isn’t enough to excel in the role. Certain leadership skills are simply essential, including having the strength and resilience to put your team members first and the maturity to recognize your accountability for their missteps. With 70% of the variance in team engagement determined by the manager, and more than half of surveyed workers quitting their jobs to get away from their bosses, per Gallup research, it’s clear that managers can profoundly influence employee retention and that not all people are equipped for managerial roles.
That’s where you come in. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to give your employees the tools and guidance they need to evolve into strong, qualified leaders. From helping them hone their strengths and spot their skill gaps to delivering meaningful feedback that will help them improve, to finding them opportunities to put their skills into practice, you play a key role in building your team members into strong future managers.
So, how do you help get them there?
Evaluate growth paths
First and foremost, it’s important to recognize that not everyone is meant to be a manager. Some of your strongest team members may lack certain qualities and traits – like the ability to empower others, lead with patience and empathy, ask the right questions, and balance multiple needs at once – that are fundamental to being effective leaders. In these cases, do your best to guide these employees to grow as individual contributors to ensure they still have meaningful and fulfilling career paths.
And in cases where you do see real managerial potential, it’s essential to align expectations with your team members, so that they really understand what the role entails. Make it clear that as a manager, you work for your team, and it’s your responsibility to help them reach their goals – when they succeed, they get the credit, and when they fail, you are accountable. If, after clarifying all of this, your employees still seem excited about this path, it’s a good indication that they could become great leaders.
Identify skill gaps
Try to identify the skills that your team members would need to develop in order to transition into a managerial position. Are they able to set strategic goals for projects? Can they think about the big-picture vision as opposed to just focusing on short-term goals? Do they seem hesitant when it comes to providing constructive feedback to others? Recognizing areas to grow and offering guidance when needed can help you pinpoint and tackle the specific leadership skills that your team members need to develop before they’re ready for a formal management position.
Practice delegating
Find ways for your team members to start practicing their managerial skills and taking ownership. Give them the chance to run group meetings and set agendas, lead large-scale projects and assign deadlines for key milestones, mentor new joiners, and delegate tasks themselves. And pay attention to how they handle these responsibilities. Are they providing clear instructions? Are they comfortable holding stakeholders accountable? Are they effectively offering their input at the right time? These experiences will enable you to offer relevant guidance and empower your team members to develop their leadership capabilities.
Assign cross-functional projects
Managers need to know how to collaborate with different kinds of people and navigate unfamiliar processes, so try to loop your team members in on projects that involve cross-team stakeholders. This way, you can expose them to various working approaches and problem-solving methods and enable them to hone their communication abilities. Doing so also presents a great opportunity for you to ask others for feedback on what it’s like to work with your team members so that you can provide your employees with well-rounded feedback on areas to improve.
Give direct, honest feedback
In order to help your team members become management-ready, you need to give them timely, honest, and authentic feedback. “Good job” or “I think you could have handled that differently,” doesn’t provide them with the direction or insights they need to improve, which is why it’s so important to reference specific areas where they’re excelling as well as where they seem to be missing the mark. Offer relevant examples, and when there are gaps, try to give them tangible suggestions for ways they could do better going forward. And remember, there’s a difference between giving critiques in a supportive way and trying to sugarcoat so much that you fail to actually provide any tangible feedback.
