Leadership Can Make or Break the Success of Your Business

Your leadership team can make or break your company. Recruiting and retaining the best possible leadership is one of the most important things you can do for your business.

But can you articulate what it takes to be a great leader of your company? When hiring for leadership roles, are you able to define your expectations? “Leadership” is a vague, conceptual word. Try breaking it down into the characteristics and competencies you know leaders in your business need. Do your leaders need to be organized? Willing to be on-call? Do they need specific technical skills? How about soft skills – do members of your leadership team need to excel at in-person communication? Defining the characteristics needed to be a leader in your business will help potential candidates and current employees understand how new leaders are selected.

Once you define and communicate which qualities you expect to see in a leader, it’s critical to hold members of your team and potential candidates with strong character and be highly competent to create an environment where their team can build trust and thrive. Assess your current leadership team. Who’s hitting the mark? Who isn’t? What do you need to do about that?

Finally, take a look at your leadership pipeline. What are the specific steps an employee needs to take to become a leader in your business? Define those steps, remembering that not everyone wants to be a leader. By taking the time to talk with your staff and understand their career interests, you’ll start to see clear internal leadership candidates. Create development accountable to those behaviours and abilities. A leader needs to show up opportunities to test the behaviours and abilities of these candidates so they’re ready to lead when the time is right.

Your employees are your greatest asset, and your leadership team is your greatest strength. Focusing on leadership development shows you care about the growth of your employees, and it provides career opportunities for those who want to grow with you. Without a strong, trusting leadership team behind you, your growth will stall. But with one, there’s no limit to how far you can go.