Much like how transplanting a young tree without proper support and care can cause it to fail, identifying employees with leadership potential and then promoting them without adequate training can lead to frustration for everyone involved.
Setting your high performers up for success calls for structured training, mentorship and opportunities to take on additional responsibilities before assuming a new title.
Developing Your Future Leaders
When preparing your promising team members, start with structured training and pairing them with a mentor.
“Both are important,” says J.T. Price, CEO of Landscape Workshop, based in Birmingham, Alabama. “Structured training is useful to make sure everyone has the basic knowledge and understanding of our processes needed to succeed; mentorship is useful because leadership is learned through apprenticeship and the examples you see around you.”
Jay Rotonnelli, vice president of strategy and business development for Piscataqua Landscaping & Tree Service, based in Eliot, Maine, says they are building out Piscataqua University, which will take employees through not only all the necessary technical skills they need to know but how they can interact with clients and team members and become a good leader. They also send their future leaders to various events and use their monthly education budget to invest in them.
Price says they have formal training programs for their associate account managers, account managers and general managers. For more senior roles, they have individualized training, and this winter are sending a number of high-potential employees to the NALP Executive Leadership Program, in partnership with the UVA Darden School of Business.
Rob Miller, CEO and visionary of RPM, based in Hammonton, New Jersey, says he’s found mentoring particularly beneficial as employees can gain knowledge from those who have already been there. He says it’s also key to be flexible to different employees’ learning styles.
When coaching future leaders through various technical skills, it’s important to slow down and explain things if they didn’t get certain elements right. Miller says he did this recently when teaching an employee about estimating.
“A year ago, I would have just done that myself and moved it on, but that’s not going to help me a year from now, or help the business,” Miller says.
Providing Practice Before Promotions
While an employee may be successful in a current role, this doesn’t automatically mean they will thrive in a leadership role, which is why it’s a good rule of thumb to give them opportunities to practice before promoting them.
The best way to do this is to provide some form of additional responsibility whether it be serving as the safety champion for a branch, having more client interface or letting them run a specific meeting. These may seem small but can help push the employee out of their comfort zone.
“Give them some ownership in the yard,” Miller says. “Like, ‘Hey, we got to load these four trailers up, get it done,’ because you can tell a lot by that stuff. Then coach them afterward, the goods, bads, try to really praise them if they did a good job.”
How Do You Know They’re Ready?
Rotonnelli says they look to see if the employee is taking accountability.
“When there are people who continually try hard but would have their hand up to say, ‘Hey, I’m not sure if I did this right,’ or ‘I’m looking to do this’ or ‘I’m just looking for some feedback,’” Rotonnelli says. “‘I think when you see those people and they’re genuinely interested that’s a good telltale sign that they’re ready, or they become really autonomous with the work that they’re provided on a regular basis, and the quality is really good.”
Similarly, Miller says he knows a team member is ready for the next step when they show initiative with problem-solving and ownership when things go wrong.
“Can I trust them to represent our culture when I’m not standing there?” Miller says.
Price says two good questions to ask are: “Are they showing up and trying hard and performing in their current role?” and “Do they treat others with respect even when they are pushing for performance?” He says if the answer is yes to both, these are great indicators someone is ready to manage other team members.
How Long Should Development Take?
Miller says they spend around a year training their leaders, and Rotonnelli says it takes them anywhere from a year to 18 months. However, there is no set timeline to determine an individual’s readiness to move into a leadership role.
“It mostly depends on the individual’s performance, work ethic, hunger, and in some cases a willingness to relocate,” Price says. “We have one regional vice president who was leading one crew 12 years ago. We have another who was an account manager 10 years ago.”
Miller says his goal is to become the most unimportant person in the company because then he will know he has built a team of people who can do the job without him.
“If my business cannot operate without me, then I haven’t built a company,” Miller says. “I’ve built myself a job.”
