Leaders often grow their company to a point where business growth stagnates and hits a plateau. Successful leaders can take three steps that position them to break through that plateau, even higher levels of success. The first is developing a culture of leadership development in which everyone on the team knows how important it is for them to be confident and comfortable with leading at any moment. The second step is developing strategies to keep their team aligned by ensuring communication channels are clear, strong, and practical, so there’s a shared understanding of what needs doing when. And thirdly, successful leaders create and follow effective communication strategies with their team.
A culture of leadership development is crucial to guiding and cultivating the future leaders on your team. The more people you develop as potential successors now, the easier it becomes when your growth requires adding new leaders to the team.
There are several ways you can approach developing a leadership development culture in your organization. Start with a clear-cut strategy for cultivating potential leaders by identifying the qualities you’re looking for in future leaders and then implementing programs to uncover those qualified individuals through leadership development workshops.
Another critical step is making sure all of your current employees are ready to lead when called. Test out your team’s leadership potential by giving temporary leadership assignments. This can include anything from leading a task force to leading the company holiday party effort.
You can also create formal and informal leadership training. Some companies provide access to leadership courses or reimburse employees who pay to take them. If you’re concerned about cost, you can also buy leadership books and create internal book clubs for discussion.
Another critical step is to keep your team aligned. Ensure that everyone’s on the same page by creating clarity around vision, strategy, and priorities. When your team isn’t aligned, they focus only on their area of responsibility, creating a stovepipe mentality.
The first step is to get clear on the vision of the future of the company. With your company’s future in mind, create an action plan for the near term. Ensure each member of the leadership team creates their plan in alignment with overall goals and objectives. The crucial, and often missed, next step is to make sure each team member’s plan also aligns horizontally with their peers. This avoids stovepipes and ensures cooperation.
As you make progress, be sure to meet with your team regularly and take note of any challenges they may face. Allow them the space to ask for help if needed, plan so that roadblocks don’t become an issue down the line. Having a monthly meeting focused solely on progress toward annual goals will allow everyone in leadership positions to identify problems before it is too late!
With all the plans in place, it is essential to communicate with your entire company. It’s time to spread the word about what you’re doing and how that’ll take them closer toward their goals.
Communicating the plan is not just about informing people. It’s also about making sure everyone knows how their role contributes to it to be more engaged, productive, and satisfied with what they’re doing; this will reduce turnover across your organization, which helps contribute towards a leadership development culture, as we discussed earlier.
Again, a scheduled monthly meeting where the leaders communicate the vision, progress against it, and the overall state of the business go a long way to aligning your team and moving the organization further, faster.
As companies grow, we all know that it becomes more challenging to continue the same growth rate. This is why many business owners hit a plateau or even fall back in their progress when they think they are ready for business growth. But there are three key steps successful leaders take to break through this plateau and achieve new levels of success-developing a culture of leadership development, aligning your leadership team behind a vision, and communicating effectively across the organization. Contact me about my free master class, “From Accidental Leader to Confident Executive,” if you would like help breaking through these plateaus with greater ease!