By Chad Counts
A good test for people you see as future leaders is to give them opportunities to lead.
Creating a Climate for Potential Leaders
You will not grow your company – especially in chaotic times like today – unless you are able to grow people. As you reevaluate your workforce, possibly after laying off or firing employees due to the current crisis, it is critical you have people who will grow with your business. Even if you are to go into the marketplace to hire an experienced manager/leader you will still need to provide a climate and culture that allows them to grow into their new position. The author John Maxwell put it this way – The only thing leaders do is to influence.
Your climate or culture is created by your leadership model. You may not be able to describe your culture, but make no mistake about it, you have a business culture either by design or by default. If your desire is to have a certain business culture or climate the best way to do that is to live it. Other leaders in your business will follow what you do, not what you say.
Look for the Gold and Not the Dirt
What you have to do when developing future leaders in your business is look for the potential in those people and emphasize the strengths you see. They should also be a good performer in their area and show that they are on board with where the company is trying to go. Another thing is to look for is with whom they spend the most time. Who are their influencers?
A good test for people you see as future leaders is to give them opportunities to lead. It could be as simple as coming up with a better procedure that requires them to include others in their team to contribute and implement. Are they able to get others to follow their lead?
If you have leaders in place now make sure that they are developing future leaders. You can only grow so far with your present group. If you want to continue to grow and take advantage of future opportunities or obstacles you need to be prepared. In mature businesses people do retire, or get ill and leave employment. Other times people leave for another opportunity. In either case having someone groomed and ready to plug in keeps the business moving forward.
Take Ownership
The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. When you ask a leader, manager, team leader what went wrong they do not immediately place blame. They acknowledge a mistake was made. They take ownership and they develop a plan to win the next time. If you expect perfection and you go ballistic when mistakes happen you are going to be a very unhappy owner.
This is incredibly difficult to do, but necessary if you are going to develop leaders that will do more than just play it safe. To maximize growth, you must have some risk and risk does not come without the chance of failure. Most new enterprises fail many times before they ultimately succeed. Likewise, most new managers who are go-getters will make mistakes. For the right manager and owner this is a great time for growing their leadership skills.
No Success without a Successor
One final thought. One of the things I see is that many owners are still trying to do a major task such as buying. You cannot achieve your ultimate growth goal because you cannot focus on both buying and leading the company forward. If you can’t develop someone in your company to do the buying, how are you going to develop someone to help the company grow?
Counts Business Consulting, experts on demand, offering consulting services to the automotive recycling & tow industries. Online all the time with the experience needed to increase your company’s performance. Contact Chad Counts at 512-963-4626 or crcounts@countsbusinessconsulting.com.
