Finding your team’s next great leaders doesn’t mean you have to look outside your organization. Often, leaders are hidden in plain sight on your existing team, waiting to fulfill their true potential.
According to Gallup research, large organizations have approximately one manager for every 10 employees, and one in 10 people possesses the inherent talent to manage. Therefore, there’s likely already someone on your team with the potential and skill to be an effective leader.
This guide offers the following tips for identifying these new leaders, building their skills and confidence, and ensuring their ongoing effectiveness:
- Identify which types of training leaders would benefit from most.
- Create a leadership pipeline.
- Plan a leadership retreat.
- Provide ongoing feedback.
- Set leaders up for success.
These tips will help you build a leadership pipeline that increases employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
1. Identify which types of training leaders would benefit from most.
Leadership development training should be tailored to your organization’s most pressing needs. Creating a customized training process will help maximize your time and resources.
Consider whether new leaders at your organization could benefit from ongoing education in areas like:
- Fundraising training. For example, perhaps your nonprofit’s current focus is building your base and mid-level donor strategy. You can develop a custom training plan to help new leaders become more prominent in the mid-level donor stewardship process.
- Advancement operations training. If expanding your technology and data management capabilities is a priority, you can train staff members on proper CRM usage, analytics, and business intelligence.
- Campaign readiness training. Major campaigns, like comprehensive and capital campaigns, require skilled leadership support to get off the ground. Equip new leaders with campaign-specific training to effectively manage every stage, from major donor cultivation to campaign-related event planning.
Many consultants also offer role-specific training for your leaders’ unique needs. For example, you could invest in dean training for your university, board member training for your nonprofit, executive coaching for your business, or physician training to support healthcare campaigns.
Keep your long-term goals in mind when working with a consultant or your organization’s top leaders to design a training program customized to your unique needs.
2. Create a leadership pipeline.
Building a leadership pipeline offers multiple benefits to your organization. You can develop skilled leaders who will support your mission at a higher level, driving more value and revenue. In addition, you can maintain high employee satisfaction and retention, reducing turnover and increasing continuity and stability in your organization.
In fact, according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, employees at companies with internal mobility stay almost 2x longer.
Show employees that you’re dedicated to their growth by taking these steps to build a sustainable leadership pipeline:
- Ensure employees are aware of growth opportunities. Share information about how employees can grow in their roles and advance their careers at your organization. For example, provide employees with an organizational chart showing opportunities for advancement, such as opportunities to become senior members on their teams, take on independent projects, or join your management team.
- Identify potential leaders regularly. Ask your organization’s managers to consistently watch for employees who go above and beyond and exhibit potential leader characteristics. These characteristics include effective communication, independent decision-making, and creative thinking.
- Foster potential leaders through mentorship. Create an employee mentoring program for up-and-coming leaders to get advice and guidance from long-time leaders at your organization. To set your mentorship program up for success, give pairs an outline of discussion points to cover in their meetings and training resources that mentors can share with mentees.
Employees will feel more motivated to do their best work when they know they can be recognized with leadership opportunities. However, your organization may still see some natural turnover due to some employees not feeling like the role is a good long-term fit for them—that’s perfectly normal. Over time, you’ll be able to move forward with empowered, passionate leaders and weed out employees who don’t feel as inspired to grow in their roles.
3. Plan a leadership retreat.
Plan a leadership retreat to help new leaders feel comfortable in their roles. This event doesn’t have to be a multi-day training extravaganza—it can be as simple as a few in-person or Zoom training sessions where leaders can get to know each other and set shared priorities.
Use your leadership retreat as an opportunity to:
- Align expectations for leadership. Share any new expectations for leaders set by your organization’s top leaders. For example, you might want to change the scope of your leaders’ decision-making powers or involve leaders in more brainstorming and ideation sessions that help your organization innovate.
- Set key priorities and create a roadmap to achieve goals in a timely manner. Make the most of all of your leaders’ presence by setting goals for the upcoming year and creating a calendar or schedule for completing those goals. Assign key projects and set check-in deadlines for leaders to update the entire team on progress toward different objectives.
- Determine essential metrics to track progress. Set specific, metrics-based targets to work toward with your leadership team to ensure you make tangible, measurable progress toward your goals. Examples of metrics include a particular number of new employees you want to recruit, a total fundraising amount you want to reach before the end of the year, or the total number of new major donors you wish to bring on board.
During the retreat, emphasize the importance of leaders to your organization’s mission and overall success. Thank them for their hard work and recognize areas where they’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty to drive value for your organization.
When leaders feel appreciated for their work, they’ll return from the retreat much more motivated to continue putting their best foot forward.
4. Provide ongoing feedback.
Your organization’s top employees (and future leaders) want to know how they’re doing in their roles. They crave consistent, actionable feedback to give them a roadmap to help them reach new heights in their careers.
According to Gallup research, employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to do outstanding work when their manager provides daily (rather than annual) feedback. Instruct your organization’s leaders and managers to deliver at least two points of feedback per week (one positive and one constructive) to their direct reports.
Your organization should also hold performance reviews at least once a year to deliver bigger-picture feedback and identify potential future leaders. These conversations should cover topics such as employees’ successes, challenges, new opportunities they’re interested in, and skills they want to develop.
5. Set leaders up for success.
Leadership and development professionals are currently prioritizing finding innovative ways to support leaders and grow their capacity. Respondents to Harvard Business Publishing’s 2024 Global Leadership Development Study report that their current leadership training programs are being designed with the primary goals of:
- 50 percent – Implementing automation/robotic-based projects
- 43 percent – Incorporating GenAI/machine learning into business practices
- 40 percent – Strengthening corporate culture
- 38 percent – Building capacity to innovate
With these goals in mind, we recommend setting your leaders up for success with the following elements:
- Manager support. Ensure employees feel supported by their managers and managers feel empowered by regularly collaborating with and learning from their fellow managers. Foster a culture of open communication and teamwork within your organization to create a more cohesive, supportive work environment.
- Technological investments. Focus on investing in solutions that help your organization streamline manual processes, grow fundraising capacity, and enhance your ROI. For example, according to BWF’s guide to predictive AI, nonprofits use predictive modeling tools to “increase their fundraising return on investment (ROI) by making data-driven decisions based on information they know to be true about their donors.”
- More staff. If leaders are swamped with work and don’t have time to focus on big-picture topics amid the hustle and bustle of their daily tasks, it may be time to consider adding more employees to your organization. Bringing on new staff can help free up your leaders’ time in the long run to focus on the larger projects and priorities that will help your organization scale up.
Ask leaders for feedback using surveys to understand whether they feel supported by your organization and what top leaders could do to help make them more effective in their roles.
Today’s motivated and skilled employees are tomorrow’s effective leaders, so your organization should prioritize finding meaningful ways to connect with these staff members and grow their leadership capabilities. These tips will help you set current and future leaders up for success and create a reliable leadership pipeline to support your organization’s growth goals.
