Developing the Next Generation of Leadership

As the leader of your organization, you have a responsibility to safeguard the business. One key area is planning and developing your next generation of leaders. This will drive value to your company and prepare you for the future.  

As generations shift upwards in their career, it’s time to teach the next generation of leaders how to develop into high-performing leaders and mentors for the incoming generation behind them.

In looking at the Millennial leader, it is essential to realize that millennials are not all job-hoppers, contrary to popular belief.  A recent Capital Group survey discovered that only 30% of millennials have held three or more jobs in the past five years.  A millennial employee primarily desires a robust work-life balance. They are dedicated to achieving company successes; however, they are not necessarily willing to sacrifice the health of their personal lives to get there.

Your Millennial leaders are idealistic. They want to provide an environment where anyone’s ideas can be heard. They value ideas. So, to unlock the potential of this generation, a strategic plan to develop your high-potential employees is critical.

It begins with starting with the end goal. As you work to develop your leaders, determine an end goal – what business goal are you trying to meet, and what challenges are you working to overcome. Those answers may be low productivity, sales growth, poor existing leadership, or perhaps being proactive with your succession planning.

Measuring the ROI of your leadership development plan is critical. By identifying specifics KPIs – key performance indicators – you will have a sense of direction for your leadership development program. 

Finally, take the time to identify the qualities and behaviors that make your existing leadership team successful. The challenge is to develop the steps and then teach those behaviors to your next generation of leaders.

Enter Mentorship – mentoring can be a staple of leadership development.  

The effectiveness of mentoring does not change with a new generation of leaders. Also, one-on-one coaching, combined with other learning methods, is a powerful plan of leadership development.

Millennials do experience more distractions from getting work done than previous generations. Knowing that and embracing that will make developing your custom plan easier. Microlearning is an excellent training method for addressing this challenge.  

According to a survey by Gallup, 59% of Millennials say opportunities to learn and grow at work are extremely important.  Short bursts of content pack a punch, plus microlearning does not require an employee to be off the job for an hour or more at a time, which helps maintain the critical work-life balance they’re seeking in their careers. 

Know the unique expectations of your future leadership, then customize your development program to address the skills gaps the unique leadership needs you would like to cover. In doing so, you can successfully prepare your organization for the next generation of leaders.