An emerging leaders program is a training initiative designed specifically to focus on high performers within an organization who may be considered as potential future leaders. Emerging leaders programs are strategic initiatives that are designed with the purpose of developing leadership skills and to fast-track younger talent for higher responsibilities to foster more creativity and revenue generation. When organizations experience change like never before, focus on building future leaders remains a critical success factor.
Aimed at developing future leaders, an Emerging Leaders Program is an organizational learning initiative that:
An emerging leaders program is a strategic initiative that involves a process of selecting a group of employees that are deemed to be potential future leaders. Finally, using the development plan, coaching and feedback, job challenging, special assignments, and courses, orientation and training prepare emerging leaders for more complex roles by enhancing their career management knowledge and skills.
Emerging leaders programs are typically of a duration of 6-18 months and are often nominated or applied for. The participants are selected by the senior executives to have the potential of being nurtured for promotion. It is important to note that through enrolling in an emerging leaders program an individual gets attention and influence from the leaders within organizations.
Components of an Emerging Leaders Program
Needs Assessment
Each of the emerging leaders has to undergo a comprehensive analysis of their key competencies, areas of improvement and self-motives that make it possible to map out a suitable development plan. These evaluations tell us what we cannot see and where to focus to attain leadership readiness.
Mentorship
This ensures that the emerging leaders are provided with knowledge and career advice from the senior level project mentors. They use challenges and become advocates for high potential mentees.
Job rotations and stretch assignments
Challenging emerging leaders to move laterally or take on more responsibility with a new project enables them to broaden their learning. Stretch assignments accelerate growth.
Leadership Training
Structured education prepares up-and-coming leaders with guidance and tools to unleash their leadership potential and move to higher positions with additional authority. Training may encompass change management, presentation skills, strategic thinking, business acumen, emotional intelligence, influencing, among other topics.
Networking and Visibility
High potentials should be introduced to leaders, directors and the executive management as a way of creating visibility and connections that fuel career advancements. Managers press for the young and upcoming talent.
Action Learning
Peer groups work on actual business cases confronting them with client needs to come up with the most innovative solutions. Managers and senior staff members receive updates and reports from the teams. This is somewhat critical thinking and presence.
The Benefits of an Emerging Leaders Program
For the Organization:
– Recruitment, selection and training of quality employees
– Develops bench strength for succession planning in leadership hold
– Encourages a quicker rate of promotion of various, high-achieving employees
– Improves the continuity of operations for leadership transition
– Develops leaders for the future needs of business environment
– Leads to innovation by source new ideas
For Emerging Leaders:
– Enhances skills acquisition by providing new experiences
– Has one-on-one interaction with the trainers and gets the necessary instruction and guidance.
– Develops connections and brand awareness with key personalities
– Promotes self-confidence to be given more responsibilities
– Develops leadership skills and careers
– Fosters interest and commitment to the organization
Implications of Emerging Leaders Programs
The rate of change and disruption requires that companies sustain streams of innovative leaders throughout organizations. Promoting learning agility, cultural sensitivity, creative thinking, teamwork and learning orientations will become key to developing emerging leader programs.
The new generation of workers is the millennials, and by 2025, 75% of employees are expected to be in this category, which means that emerging leader programs must embrace new forms of experiential, self-directed, and technology-based learning. Leader development journeys for the next generation will be driven by gamification, mobile technology, hackathons and user generated content.
Globalization also means that new programs emerging will also go international. Look for more global parity in pairs of mentor and mentees, cultural role plays, AR and VE and virtual interactions to match the growing globalisation of business environments.
Challenges and Considerations
Some of the common issues with programs are that objectives are often not well-defined, there is variation in the extent of program implementation, and there is a lack of program sponsorship and support from senior management. If high potentials cannot be accurately identified against well defined talent requirements, development initiatives go astray. Some emerging leader alumni also feel uncomfortable with no job mobility or promotion after the program. Ongoing talent reviews help.
Another factor that may thwart program success is inadequate funding, limited resources, and absence of program management. Calculating and reporting the ROI has always been a concern. Measures such as evaluations of the levels of leadership bench, rates of internal talent promotions, and talent retention levels can be used to determine impact and make enhancements.
Another area that needs to be managed effectively is the perceptions of bias. For instance, transparency on the criteria for nomination and policy communications helps to avoid negative impacts on morale. Stressing that opportunities are earned, not granted, ensures greater engagement from people in the organization.
Conclusion
Despite these challenges, emerging leader programs offer significant value with solid executive sponsorship, choosy identification of high potentials, tailored development planning, and post-program talent management. Building the next generation of the strategic enterprise leaders is beneficial for many years in terms of the leadership pipeline and organizational performance. Investing in emerging leaders means investing in the future of the organization and its success.
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