Developing and Growing Future Leaders - by Paul Fein - paulefein@gmailcom

The Challenge is to develop and grow future leaders in virtual and more disconnected learning environments.

Critical will be to find ways to enhance capabilities of evolving leaders and to drive their personal growth mindset.

The skills and competencies must concentrate on………….

·      Building long-term business strategies

·      Establishing a company mission and vision

·      Driving clarity and purpose of the organizational core values

·      Developing innovative operational solutions and outcomes

·      Growing team collaboration and group partnerships

Dynamic and effective future leaders need the right skills and capabilities so that they can successfully drive business processes and procedures. They must be able ……….

v To build strategic objectives and set priorities to achieve strong performance.

v To grow abilities to address complex issues and difficult challenges.

v To enhance strengths, impact, and accountability to drive improvements.

v To use insights and feedback to build long-term potentials.

v To create relationship connections that have the abilities to influence change.

v To use coaching and mentoring to drive collaborative opportunities.

v To find ways and abilities for self-reflection and to connect with learning experiences.

v To grow out of the comfort zone and learn from mistakes as well as failures.

v To drive the ability to recognize and reward successful contributions.

v To accept and build on outstanding decision-making and problem-solving.

v To enhance an optimistic and positive organizational environment.

Building, growing, and developing future leaders truly requires a more strategic approach. The challenge is addressing soft skills and connecting philosophically to long-term business needs as well as the corporate vision. The learning “experiences” must be able to shape leadership attributes that are based on totally unique requirements. The development backbone must be established on genuine future leader curiosities and desires, as well as on the initiation of innovative approaches to drive relevant business successes. To become an effective future leader, an individual must enhance their behavioral and human relationship skills along with abilities to manage conflict, communicate openly, strengthen self-awareness, and build capabilities to motivate others. The key challenge is that all personal growth will need to be done through more virtual / digital / remote development activities as they become the expected distance learning practices and interactive content change norms.

Five Primary Future Leader Learning Categories / Components

So, there are five primary future leader learning categories and potential growth experiences. There is a real and required move from face-to-face activities, engaging workshops, and group learning events, to virtual development connections. There are many positives associated with this shift to remote activities, such as easier program attendance, flexible scheduling, and improved costs associated with travel as well as time requirements. Critical and challenging will be to make remote learning effective, value-oriented, impactful, and practical application driven. The classic face-to-face development workshops usually have higher levels of direct involvement as well as open-sharing dialogues, all based on human contact, impacting quality results. With virtual learning by future leaders, there is a need to enhance interactions, deliver creative video screen time, and use pre / post work assignments. Distractions and emotional disconnections potentially can be minimized by fun and games as well as customized skill activities.

The five potential components must support the development and growth of future leaders, all concentrating on the necessary skills and attributes for leadership success. 

The needs are clear – to build connections with people, to gain greater intellectual

self-awareness, and to raise the levels of humanistic behaviors. 

There must always be a core focus to drive………..

·      Performance – enabling the discovery of valued problem solutions

·      Relationships – building quality and authentic connections

·      Experiences – finding value and application of business acumen learnings

·      Career – growing current role and activities for the future organization

Learning Component One – Leadership Mentoring and Influencing Growth

To build future leaders there is a need to identify high potential and talented individuals, and for leaders to support the development through both informal as well as more structured formal mentoring relationships. The new challenge is to conduct personal connections in the more virtual environments. Traditionally, the one-on-one encounters have always been focused on developing soft skills and critical competencies to groom the mentees professionally. And key is to make the mentoring connections based on targeted interpersonal capabilities such as team building, negotiating, resolving conflicts, and having effective conversations. The leader mentor engages with others through active listening and by influencing the learning experiences, encouraging personal discoveries. Mentorship is not coaching but a more voluntary, frequent, and deeper partnerships. Ultimately, this mentoring process drives the development of future leaders with the enhancement of business acumen and a strategic mindset. And these connective mentoring activities need to be very collaborative, heightening the personalized learning and integrated growth that can be highly creative as well as inspiring.

Learning Component Two – Leadership Coaching and Motivating Growth

Creating future leaders can be one of the collaborative processes that is based on targeted listening. And it reinforces strong behaviors and critical skills by providing constructive feedback. These courageous conversations and connections can be done remotely, recognizing that these discussions always go beyond consulting and counseling. Yet, ideally, some face-to-face sessions may have greater impact and value to the coaching client. This learning component can help future leaders become more motivated to take risks, accept failures, and to try new innovative business approaches. Through the active listening process without any form of judgement and serving as a sounding board, the learning individual can find real problem solutions and become a true leader. By identifying barriers to jump, plans for success can be identified – all part of the future leadership growth and discovery journey. Via the coaching relationship, - dynamic behaviors, key competencies, and personal self-awareness can be enhanced and deepened.

Learning Component Three – Leadership Stretch Experiences and Personal Growth

Future leaders need to become personally more self-aware to be able to communicate effectively and to successfully make outstanding decisions. Learning can be achieved through stretch business assignments that are reinforced by core activities. The development of human-based skills will need to be based on authentic and engaging experiences that will enhance professional acumen, powerful judgement capabilities, and extensive self-insights. The challenge now is providing these leadership development interactions in more remote, even virtual environments. Leaders need to find different and creative ways to build connections and provide far-reaching assignments that will boost personal growth.

Learning Component Four – Leadership Virtual Learning and Competency Growth

Future leaders can have greater potential impact to make a difference in driving business performance by enhancing collaborative relationships and leadership capabilities. Well, in the past, face-to-face and engaging workshops have been carefully facilitated by highly competent “teachers” that provided the opportunity to observe the participant interactions and to drive intriguing discussions. The diversity of experiences of the learners made the creative engagements special and memorable growth steps. The exercises, team activities, and the hands-on actions supported the formation of partnerships and discoveries. Even the breaks and lunch connections provided time for informal sharing and open discussions. There clearly are issues associated with effective virtual development programs, regardless of the values associated with the activity ease, speed, and convenience. So, going forward, the new approaches are built on shorter sessions, larger group inclusion, and various learning techniques, such as breakout sessions. Virtual learning needs to include telling stories, using games, creative drawing exercises, and even movies. The beneficial reinforcement of the new leadership skills can be further forged through the utilization of pre and post assignments and practices, along with interesting and strength-oriented follow-up connections.   

Learning Component Five – Leadership Formal Education and Professional Growth

Critical for future leaders is to build in-depth business knowledge and to learn to utilize analytical data in all decision-making as well as problem-solving. There must be a move from professional seminars, university programs, and trade show experiences, to more on-line learning approaches. Work-from-home is based on the distant office that requires individuals to utilize new college learning programs, that have a strong leadership focus on people and purpose. The evolving remote learning world is becoming the norm for building skills and business intelligent competencies. Critical is to grow future leaders that are in-sync with the corporate vision and philosophy as well as with a commitment to the business of tomorrow. 

Closing Remarks

Building future rising leaders requires the commitment by the organization to effectively grow potential individuals through quality development activities. Future leadership champions need to be readied for new roles, capable of going beyond their comfort zones and using new

strengths as well as emotional connections. These evolving leaders will impact long-term business results along with exceptional influence on positive outcomes. Their new job

responsibilities will cultivate critical value to organizational performance, enhancing interactions that can drive attitudes and behaviors as well as raise the new leader’s contributions.

These future leaders need to adapt to challenges associated with the rapidly changing environments, higher levels of ambiguity, and evolving business complexities. They need to lead with conviction and purpose, and to lead with clear direction amidst confusion. Learning and growing will become more virtual with a need to translate these development activities into real action-orientation strategic targets. These future leaders will enable organizational transformations through their coaching, mentoring and development growth-oriented learnings. Creative thinking, agile mindsets, and reactive behaviors will become the new norm.

So, future leaders will always need to…………..

v Inspire people through honesty

v Foster meaningful work along with trust

v Build relationships and courageous partnerships

v Establish financial resilience

v Enhance diversity and unity

v Focus on a creative future and higher levels of normalcy

As per Jack Welch, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. 

        When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”