If you had asked us to tell you about leadership development a month ago, we could have told you a lot. We would have explained that the United States was dealing with an enormous human resource crisis. As of January 2020, there was a 1.3 million person deficit in the workforce, caused by the lack of human capital.
Now, things are different. As the entire world grapples with fighting COVID-19, businesses are being challenged in unprecedented ways. Technology is key to survival, many teams have gone remote, and all the consequences of the global pandemic are yet to be felt.
The truth is in the wake of all of that, leadership development is more important than ever. If you aren’t actively engaging and developing leaders within your team, your business is going to have a hard time adapting to the new normal that will emerge in a few months.
Get ahead of the curve and prepare now! Here are a few reasons why developing leaders within your team is the best idea— under the best and the worst circumstances.
New Hires Are Costly— Develop Internally
You know hiring is costly, but you might not know just how much a bad hire costs your organization. The good news is we can help you find out. Calculate the real cost of a bad hire with our cost calculator.
Was that number what you were expecting? Was it higher? We know a lot of people are unpleasantly surprised at the hidden costs of hiring to fill a seat. That’s one of the reasons why job benchmarking is so important. When you can use science to track and predict the demands of a job before you hire, it greatly reduces the risk of hiring the wrong person.
This risk obviously increases for your organization when you hire for leadership positions. A poorly selected leader can derail productivity and company culture. So why not reward a current employee and develop them into a more senior role? This improved employee engagement helps the bottom line. That's a win/win!
Right now especially, you have an opportunity to really examine your team and see who has risen to the occasion. Keep these people in mind for future promotions and opportunities, since you already have been able to see how they react under extreme pressure.
Retain Top Talent
Not only is leadership development cost-effective for your business, it helps you retain top talent in your team. Research shows that 63% of Millennials feel a lack of leadership development in their workplaces, which is a huge problem when you consider the human capital crisis.
Leadership positions aren’t being filled because employees aren’t being developed.
If you can’t give your employees the development they need, they will move on. This means you need more new hires, which costs you more as just explained, which puts pressure on you to hire quickly, which leads to hasty hiring that ultimately costs you more in the long run.
You get the picture, and it’s not pretty… Solve the problem before it really starts by investing in your team. Work with those potential leaders and give them what they need in their work environment.
The good news is that the turn around can happen fast. ATD shared that “81 percent of those reporting to recently trained managers said they were more engaged in their jobs.” That engagement is crucial for employee retention. Imagine how much happier your team would be if they were the ones receiving that training!
During difficult times, you might have to let team members go to make ends meet. While the jury is still out on the future of the global market, historic data and common sense dictate that keeping and developing talented employees makes the most fiscal sense.
Harness the Power of Assessments
So, now you know why developing leaders is so important, but how can you make it happen?
The key to developing leaders and improving communication starts with a strong foundation. That foundation can come from using assessments, like Talent Insights, to reveal, release, and realize human potential.
“Assessments give you the ability to leverage your team’s strengths and delegate what isn’t a good fit in the role,” said Kayla DeVault, a Customer Experience Coordinator at TTI SI. “They help you take stock of your internal ‘people resources’. When you develop internally, you save costs, period. You already have the commitment from those people and have their passion for your company, so why not use that resource that is readily available to you?”
By understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, you can pivot those weaknesses into opportunities.
TTI SI uses multiple sciences to progressively reveal more of the entire person — what they do, how they do it and why they do the things they do.
We also embrace a philosophy that measures both the presence and absence of behavior and acceptance and avoidance. We use a data pool of millions of individuals collected over several decades to further refine our assessments.
As a response to our current global crisis, TTI SI has developed a new assessment called The Working From Home Report. This assessment gives users personalized, effective tips to make working remotely easier, and offers communication tips for teams.
Understanding the full picture of a person gives you a roadmap to develop them into the leaders that your organization’s needs.
Develop Leaders and Advance Your Organization
The human capital crisis doesn’t have to hugely affect your organization! The solution is right in front of you— it’s your existing team. By working to develop leaders internally, retain top talent, and leverage assessments for success, you are way ahead of your competition.
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