Your team needs leadership in your absence. How can you groom them to step up?
Empowering your team to step up when you're not around means fostering a culture of independence and responsibility. Here are some effective strategies to ensure they're ready:
How do you prepare your team to take the lead? Share your insights.
Your team needs leadership in your absence. How can you groom them to step up?
Empowering your team to step up when you're not around means fostering a culture of independence and responsibility. Here are some effective strategies to ensure they're ready:
How do you prepare your team to take the lead? Share your insights.
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Strong institutions need strong leadership teams, it is important that the decision making skills are adequately delegated and responsibilities are adequately shared. This will ensure smooth leadership transition and continued institution building. dt 17.12.2024
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I’ve had notable success with this approach, and the concept is straightforward. Whenever a new person joined the company with potential to offload me of some responsibilities, I make it clear that my goal was to make myself redundant in that responsibility and if they had aspirations to take up and fully own it, I invested my time and energy to provide the exposure and support they needed to advance and take on greater responsibilities. This involved setting clear expectations, giving team members the freedom to tackle challenges in their own way, and trusting them with autonomy. This approach not only empowered them but also built a culture of growth and self-reliance.
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I have often said to my team, my job is to ensure that I mentor and equip you so that you can take over from me. I have gone on to say, I would have failed as a leader if they asked someone to replace me from outside the team to replace me. How can we groom people: Effective delegation: not of tasks that you don’t like but of tasks that make an impact on the bottom line, whether financials or team performance. Provide feedback: ensure that after each delegated task you provide feedback so that the individual can know if they are on the right track or not. Career development: approve their training as a means to augment their skills and will allow for networking with others in the industry.
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One experience that I have that really stood out is full empowerment when covering for my manager's absence. I was required to sit into meetings and make decisions in my manager's capacity. This exposure directly builds my thought process at the next level and provides the uplifting and visibility. This requires the next level up in the hierarchy to fully embrace that you covering for your manager to pass you that responsibilities.
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everyone has leadership qualities, provided one should encourage them to demonstrate, self-driven team is key to the success of any organization I usually divide the task into key important points/ small small task and assigned the same to each team members, each team members feel more involved and important in this manner, even their task involved the support from other team members and vise versa this helps to encourage more collaboration and coordination in between them a healthy work environment wherein every team member first feel involved and important will lead to a great self driven team
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Grooming your team to lead in your absence involves building trust, empowering decision-making, and fostering ownership. Delegate meaningful responsibilities aligned with individual strengths, ensuring clarity in expectations. Provide mentorship, guiding them on problem-solving and stakeholder management. Encourage cross-training for seamless coverage and confidence-building. Share insights on handling challenges, offering real-world examples. Recognize efforts, reinforcing accountability. Create a safety net — let them know mistakes are learning opportunities. Celebrate small wins to boost morale and ensure open communication channels for guidance. A prepared, self-reliant team is your legacy of leadership.
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Accountability! Accountability, in its most effective form, is an attitude. The individual desires to perform an assigned task as expeditiously and thoroughly as possible for the best outcome. - Teach your team to be accountable at all levels, not just who will lead in your absence. 1. Must know precisely what job they are charged with in performing - (don't hint - spell it out) 2. Must have the capacity to do the job - (what of their can be delegated?) 3. Must understand your standard for acceptable work 4. Must have the tools/authority (don't expect them to do it all, but not give them the systems access) 5 Reach commitment between all parties These are the five steps to accountability.
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Here’s what has worked for me: Prioritization: Ensure they can differentiate between urgent, important, and tasks that can wait. response time expectations: Establish acceptable response times to avoid unnecessary escalations. Reinforce business first: Highlight the importance of supporting business needs while adhering to policies, standards, and procedures. Identify champions: Empower team members to handle specific topics or domains. Define an escalation path: Clearly outline when and how they should escalate issues, including when it’s appropriate to contact you after exploring all other options. Leverage mentorship: Use situations as opportunities to mentor your team. Explain the reasoning behind your decisions.
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Leader always Start by shedding responsibilities that others can do just as well as you can do it yourself b By Challenge the assumption that you have to keep doing things just because you’ve always been doing them. Delegate sone work which do not required your time and presence.
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Over 24 years of leadership experience, I will 1000% say the very best way to groom a team is to let them lead in your presence. When they win let them own it. And if they fail; work with them to fix it.
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