Coaching Employees With Leadership Potential

You recognize leadership potential in one of your employees – what do you do next? In this video, I talk about employee growth and development, and I explain why mentoring and coaching employees is preferable to traditionally training them.

It’s great for everyone when an employee shows promise as a leader. If the employee is interested in advancement and driven to succeed, you get an ideal candidate for a leadership position, and the entire company benefits. How can you help your employee get ready to take on a managerial role? What’s the best way to nurture leadership potential?

When you think of employee growth and development, you may picture old-school training sessions where you introduce job initiatives and teach employees new skills to complete tasks you assign. But this scenario is wrong for developing an employee’s inherent leadership talents.

What’s the difference between training and coaching? Training employees is all about you – your methods, your rules, your insight from your own experience. Coaching employees, on the other hand, is all about your employees – empowering them to make their own decisions and contribute in their own unique ways.

As a mentor, you show rather than tell, and inspire rather than dictate. As a coach, you offer guidance and support, but you don’t spoon-feed your employee cookie-cutter answers. Instead, you encourage your employee’s self-discovery, foster individual thought, and help draw out and develop all the positive qualities and leadership potential you noticed in the first place.

Coaching employees through their own individual progress is the best approach to promoting employee growth and development. And it’s the most effective way to end up with successful leaders for your team!

Carrie is a frequent keynote speaker on HR and leadership topics and regularly conducts employee training and leadership development workshops as well. She is the author of the recently published book, Restaurant Operator's HR Playbook: Your Hands-On Playbook for Finding, Hiring, and Developing Leaders and Implementing Organized People Systems and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Restaurant News, Pizza Today and Independent Restaurateur.