Principle of Leadership 6: Develop Leadership Potential in your Followers

Whether you lead a team of two, 20 or 200 people, part of being a good leader is developing the leadership potential in your followers. If you don’t give your team members the opportunity to grow professionally they may instead grow restless or bored which leads to complacency and mistakes.

Developing leadership potential in your followers may be as simple as creating internal projects where junior staffers have the opportunity to lead their peers in an effort that won’t have far reaching implications in case they fall flat.

If you’re a more confident leader you’ll provide guidance and coaching to your team and give them opportunities to take centre stage in client facing or public arenas. The key with any leadership building exercise is to set a clear deliverable and keep the lines of communication open.

There are many benefits to developing the leadership potential in your team:

• Improved confidence
• Improved moral
• Improved skill set
• Leads to less micromanagement over time

The overall team will grow stronger as well which will enable you to be more productive.

Relinquishing control is part of the process and this is difficult for many people, so if fall into this category just ask for frequent communication and overtime you’ll feel more comfortable.

Has anyone mentored you in the past and developed you as a leader? Have you ever done the same for a member of your team? 

Read the other leadership principles:

1. Lead by example
2. Make sound and timely decisions
3. Seek and accept responsibility
4. Achieve professional competence
5. Know your troops and promote their welfare
6. Develop leadership potential in your followers
7. Train your troops as a team and employ them to their capabilities
8. Appreciate your own strengths and weaknesses and pursue self-improvement
9. Keep your team informed of the mission, the changing situation and the overall picture
10. Ensure your followers know your meaning and intent and lead them to the accomplishment of the mission