Your team is struggling to develop leadership skills. What can you do to help them?

To effectively assess your team's skills, it is important to weigh it against expectations. Sometimes we assess team members against a set of skills that is not in line with their passion or strengths. It is critical to have this conversation first, otherwise, the return on investment on either side is not useful and can lead to bad outcomes. Once aligned, there are a few things you can do to help them build skills 1. Refer them to training opportunities 2. Give them internal and external mentorship support 3. Give them problems that can help them learn those skills (with minimum guidance at first) so they can develop for real-world problems and can self-manage on subsequent iterations.

Whilst not everyone is a natural leader, leadership skills can indeed be nurtured and developed. There's an array of programmes available to choose from, each designed to enhance different facets of leadership. However, these skills do not develop in a vacuum, nor do they flourish overnight. It's a gradual process that requires time, effort, and encompasses confidence building. The crux is to dedicate time and provide steadfast support to both individuals and the team. Collaborating closely, encouraging mutual support, and ensuring engagement can significantly aid their learning journey and evolution as leaders, fostering a culture of continuous development and growth.

The best way to address this is by asking and finding the answers to the (N)*Why questions and going into the root cause. There is no, one size fits. Corrective action has to be taken depending on the root cause, taking action with the team and/or the Management/Org Culture. Action with the team will include actions like motivation (Recognition/incentives/financial), setting clear expectations, training, and planned team outings with HR consultants. It's important to place members in Thomas-Kilmann Instrument and then take a decision if training and other actions are enough or if the team needs to be reformed/reshuffled.

In my experience, pairing them with a mentor who is a senior employee gives them an opportunity to learn from people who have a lot of experience in the industry as well as experience in managing people. Part of the biggest requirement for Leaders is to be visionary and have a flow of ideas taking into account several scenarios and plan ahead for risks both in terms of utilizing opportunities and/or identifying threats and mitigating them. Hence, to cultivate this culture - I also try to create an environment for my team to be able to voice their opinion and guide them with opinions as to how you can change your way of thought when faced with certain scenarios.

One of the tools that I have found helpful in assessing strengths is Gallup’s Strengths Finder (formerly known as Clifton’s Strengths Finder). It’s been said that people don’t need to be well rounded, but teams do. Tools that help you understand and assess strengths so that you can the right team members in the right places are extremely valuable.

To help a team struggling with leadership skills, prioritize leadership development through tailored training, workshops, and mentorship. Encourage open communication, feedback, and provide opportunities for team members to lead projects. Lead by example, empower team members to make decisions, foster a culture of learning from mistakes, and recognize and reward leadership efforts to motivate and inspire the team.

Eric helped our team grow with the use of this tool, helping us understand strengths and opportunities to put together the right pieces of the team. It’s is also a great development tool for all users. Mark Hastings

Having one-on-one conversations that will evolve into a general meeting in a semi-formal setting will help understand the root cause(s). Then assessing their strengths and weaknesses to know how best they fit into certain responsibilities will build their confidence and morale for leadership roles. Encouragement and reward even if it's as small as having drinks or writing appreciation notes will help the team.

Assessing your team members strengths and weaknesses is important first step. 1) Assessment Process: - Patiently gather insights over a specific period, allowing for a comprehensive understanding. - Make observations in various contexts, such as team meetings, project discussions, and individual tasks. - Document strengths & weaknesses objectively, avoiding bias or preconceptions. 2) Utilizing Tools: -Implement tools or methodologies designed to help individuals identify their strengths & achievements. e.g. Use Teams "Praise" feature -Offer resources like personality assessments, skills inventories, or feedback sessions for self-awareness. -Encourage team members to reflect on their own performance and seek feedback from peers and mentors.

After collecting strengths & weaknesses, the next step is to let the individual know, that you trust them for their skill X and expect them to start putting their skill X to work for achieving team goal. Don't forget to highlight and articulate how their contribution will help individuals to smooth career progression with achieving the desired outcomes on all the ends (Organization, Team and Individual)

Acts 8:31 31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?”. It's an old bible sentence that can be related to this situation you can't just let your team fall without having the guidance and the necessary skills and tools you need to have the backset and let them try but even tho you need to keep an eye on them, so if there anything went wrong you can be there.

Clear expectations are necessary for every member of the team. And every member needs to understand their role and the roles of others in the team for a successful final outcome. Constant updates on a mission's progress will illuminate which members are ahead and which are behind. Assistance can then be given so that all members are in step towards the end goal. A leader will help facilitate all the member activities and help members fill in when assistance is warranted. Break projects into small achievable tasks with milestones and provide frequent updates and facilitate open communication amongst the members. Provide assurances for safe expression of ideas that could help with discover better solutions.

A leader will ensure safe communication guidelines amongst members to encourage them to ask for help when needed or to provide criticism when warranted. Recognition of those members doing exceptional work will motivate others as well as encourage the member to continue with their outstanding accomplishments.

Realiza seguimiento de los avances que hace el equipo y que cada integrante está focalizado en la tarea, generando conversaciones abiertas y dando retroalimentación en los aspectos necesarios. Se pueden enfocar dinámicas para favorecer estas sesiones de puntos de control y de alineamiento. Destaca las fortalezas y los logros y fomenta la formación continua para mejorar el rendimiento global del equipo.

feedbacks are always the best thing to do to evaluate the strengths and weakness points its needs to be regularly submitted to the team member to keep up growing because it's a processes of becoming the next leader, and I believe that being a good leader is by making team can work smoothly without you being there in every step

Absolutely. Work with them to create a development plan. Identify their weaknesses and pay special attention to these. Celebrate their strengths and encourage them to apply them within the team. Ask them to lead small projects to build their confidence in themselves. Create working partnerships where expertise, knowledge and skills can be shared, empowering team members to help each other to develop. Role and department rotation should also be considered encouraging new working relationships and knowledge sharing across disciplines. This will also encourage employees to find new ways to apply current knowledge as well as building on a more holistic view of your company as well as the specific functions of the departments within it.

The challenge is to identify, delegate, and mentor through through the correct tasks at the correct time. These can be more technical, more interpersonal, more operations/admin, or still other types of tasks - or some combination. This is inherently a risky step, and the magic is in the risk/reward balance. Provide feedback throughout and afterwards. Where safe and responsible, allow the possibility of failure (but flag and correct failure before it makes it into the final work product)!

If your team is struggling to develop leadership skills, you may not have enough role models. For an engineering team, this may be the time to bring in a staff of principal level engineer to help guide and develop the team. Outside coaches and training can help, but active role models on the team help more.

Leadership skills in the team are crucial. Here are the step to be taken to improve it 1: Asses their current skill level 2: Set clear goals. Goals should be SMART( specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound) 3: Offer training and development opportunities 4: Encourage mentorship and coaching 5: Promote self reflection 6: Encourage Networking 7: Recognise and reward them 8: Lead by example

Here is what I have discovered in my experience of being in leadership role and guiding other engineers- encouragement towards right goals, practical goals for each- depending on their habits, upgrading their skills, and most of all encouragement towards that area.

One other thing to consider is if your team is struggling to develop leadership skills, it might be your own fault by not exemplifying true leadership. One thing I've done is to assign a task to a team member who needs to develop the skill, set some expectations on how the skill needs to evolve, elevate them into a situation that requires them to flex that muscle, then support them in every way I can - offering public praise and private critique. A critical piece to this is allowing them to comment on your leadership skills and how you can do better in supporting them in developing their own. Leadership is an art, so it's important to bolster the idea that we're all practicing, all the time.

Conflict management and resource allocation with clear Roles&Risponsiility is the area of improvement for team building and team motivation!

Assign an important task for a team member and support him to finish it successfully. Let him feel how important is to help others.

One thing that is often overlooked is actually giving members of the team a chance to lead. Too many times people are given all of the tools to lead but are never given a chance to truly take ownership of something. Leadership is no different from any other skill. It takes practice to grow and improve. It would be crazy to have a pilot that has only read instruction manuals but has never taken a plane off the ground.

In some cases, leaders emerge naturally: Ensure these leaders have the skills, resources, and "senses" to be successful. In other cases, no leader has emerged naturally, but is needed. Having led a number of successful turn-arounds; 1) If you believe somebody should be that leader, find out why they are not. Often, this signals the culture and habits of the individual or organization that might need adjustment. 2) For people who have assumed leadership positions, but are not leading, it is often due to a lack confidence to; a) envision and/or express a vision, b) effectively communicate the goals toward success, and/or c) rally people to action. Learn what and why and address the issue. (Please connect for more detail on any aspect.)

Strict Dos and Don’ts .reversal of roles like Team player/Leaders , Build consensus in Decision making , conflicts resolving skills, Daily progress update Meetings , Empowerment, Justify deviations with substantial resoning, confidence building exercise

Bring individual feedback, opinions and prospective to understand where they are facing challenges utmost in terms of their own prospectives and how individual contribution can make decisive roles to overcome those challenges.