Preparing young professionals for leadership before their first management role

Preparing tomorrow’s leaders starts long before the first promotion. By recognising potential early and creating structured opportunities for growth, organisations can build leadership pipelines that drive long-term success.

Attracting and spotting talent early

Organisations should also take some time to reflect upon whether they are seen as an attractive proposition for the potential stars of the future, and this can be assessed by looking at the quality and quantity of applications that they receive. As part of their employer branding, being able to tell stories about how leaders have progressed their careers within the organisation can help to recruit future talent.

When recruiting early career professionals, part of the selection process may include an assessment on whether they have potential to grow to a manager in the organisation. For this to happen, recruiters need to have a clear understanding of what an effective manager looks like – what are the characteristics that might suggest potential? Spotting talent early can reap many benefits in the future.

The role of line managers

Training line managers to spot potential with new talent is a crucial step as they will have the deepest insights into the performance of their team members and identify those that may have potential for the future. Sometimes this requires a bit of culture change so that managers see this as an important part of their role – and don’t see it as an exercise to recruit their own replacements! The HR team can work with them to ensure that they have a good understanding of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are desirable for future leadership positions.

For many early career professionals, they won’t necessarily understand the diversity and scope of roles that may be available to them in the future. This means it is important that there are some examples of clearly defined career pathways so that they can identify the one that they would feel most attracted to.

Leadership doesn’t need to mean leading people

Whilst early on in their career it may not be appropriate for them to lead teams of people, consider opportunities that would help them to develop their leadership skills – perhaps in the form of projects. Working on projects allows an assessment of how they work collaboratively with others and the extent to which they are able to demonstrate strong and effective communication skills. Providing exposure to working in different areas of the business could also help to identify where they could add the most value in the future.

Another key area to expose future talent to is the art of decision-making, this may start by them experiencing all of the different elements and processes that are involved in making decisions. As they progress their career, giving them chances to feed into decision-making processes may help to engage them with an ultimate aim of them being in a position to make their own decisions on key projects.

Nurturing your future talent

Particularly within the gulf region, the importance of cultural and emotional intelligence shouldn’t be underestimated and fortunately these are skills that can be developed through professional development activities. The HR team can work with line managers to identify where interventions that will allow them to identify and enhance their levels of cultural and emotional intelligence.

Providing structured development opportunities is important so that they can develop new skills and knowledge, as well as working with different groups of people. Many organisations find that setting up official fast track leadership programmes can act as a high motivator to colleagues and gives both parties the opportunities for reflection.

It is important that they receive constructive feedback on their performance at regular intervals, identifying their strengths as well as areas for further development. In preparing future leaders we need to build their confidence as well as confidence so flagging triumphs is valuable. Poorly constructed feedback can be worse than zero feedback, having a structured way to share comments is important.

Not everyone wants to be a leader

Many good employees eliminate themselves from applying for management roles as they have a particular view of what a manager looks like – and in many instances the rhetoric and reality may not be the same. If you are finding that not many early career professionals are putting themselves forward it might be interesting to conduct some research into why this is the case, as debunking myths might be an easy task! In some instances people may be concerned that they will lose their technical skills and abilities if their job moves into management mode so having clearly articulated examples of what the roles can look like will be helpful.

To conclude, there is a clear business case for the early identification of early career professionals who have the potential to rise to leadership roles in the organisation. Organisations should consider how they can support these people to address their strengths and weaknesses and provide opportunities for them to develop themselves so that they will be well positioned for future senior vacancies.