By: Courtney Beam

3 Reasons Why You Should Offer Development Opportunities to Your Emerging Leaders

Many organizations today agree that development is no longer just a benefit but a necessary investment. However, we generally see when development dollars are spent, it is on leaders at the management and executive level. Why should organizations offer development opportunities to their emerging leaders? They are typically your top performers, culture champions, and future managers – it’s critical that you develop them, and here’s why.

So that they stay. Companies spend thousands of dollars on recruiting, hiring, and training employees, but what about efforts to retain them? Development programs improve employee job satisfaction, and when your employees are happy, they are generally more likely to stay at the organization. While the number one reason employees leave is because of a bad manager, a close second is lack of career development and growth opportunities. If you are fortunate to have high-performing, future leaders working for your organization, demonstrate that by investing in them.

So that they lead better. The benefits of improved leadership skills extend beyond job satisfaction. Many organizations wait to invest in development until years after their employees have been promoted, and by then it can be too late. You run the risk of losing top talent to another opportunity or, even worse, giving them time to create bad management habits that can be hard to break and wreak havoc among their teams. Developing emerging leaders, even before they have the title, will at the very least benefit them on a personal level. Then, when it’s time to move them to a management role, they’re more prepared. Further, by implementing development practices at the emerging-leader level, you’ll also foster a culture of positive development experiences instead of fix-it cases, changing the appetite and general attitude toward development for leaders at any level. Imagine the influence they can begin to have if you give them the power to do so.

So that they don’t cost the organization money. Ill-equipped leaders tend to cost the organization even more money than development investment itself. To put it simply, between the risk of losing your top talent to the competition and the wasted dollars that stem from poor leadership, this is an investment designed to protect your organization’s most important asset, your people. Providing leadership growth opportunities for your emerging leaders does not have to cost a fortune or take them away from work for weeks at a time. We would love the opportunity to customize a leadership development solution for your emerging leaders that is effective, designed for the modern leader, and budget-friendly – contact us!