Do you have a plan for how you will fill key management and leadership positions in your organization? Much like a sales pipeline, a leadership pipeline is your database of employees at various stages of becoming leadership-ready. As your company grows or transitions occur, you can refer to your pipeline of people to promote or move cross functionally to fill the gaps.
Many company leaders and human resources managers recognize that their organization’s leadership skills gap continues to grow, but most do not have a plan for how they will solve this critical issue. Focusing on your leadership pipeline will help you begin to determine where you currently have talent that can fill gaps and what areas you need to either develop skills or hire additional talent.
To create a leadership pipeline, make a spreadsheet that lists all your employees. Place each employee in one of four categories:
- Executive Level: improving communication, strategic thinking, business acumen, future-oriented, coaching skills, role modeling for personal growth
- Mid Level: sharpen fundamental skills of leadership, strong planning skills, business acumen to ensure they are prioritizing effectively, performance management to ensure clear responsibilities and accountabilities, decision making skills to move up to the next level
- Entry Level: Focus on fundamentals of leadership, often promoted to this position due to excellence in technical skills but have not been developed in leadership skills, they need to be mentored and see what good leadership looks like from above
- Team Members: The future of your management and leadership team; start them in a mentoring program that can later lead into a more formal leadership development program
The Crestcom Bullet Proof® Manager program provides a 24 modules taught over 12 months and will develop managers of all levels into leaders of tomorrow.