Leadership should be part of everyday culture of your business. A strategic way to boost employee engagement and enhance productivity in the organization is by grooming employees at all levels, for future leadership roles. By doing this, you would be equipping them with necessary skills required to make informed decisions and lead the organization to achieve its strategic objectives.

The following seven tips would help in training your employees to become leaders for the attainment of organizational goals and objectives:

• Provide Opportunities for Growth – To ensure that employees are not stagnant in their roles (or worse, leaving those roles), provide them with opportunities to grow so that they can aspire to leadership roles within the organization. These growth can come in form of more significant duties, more impressive job titles, bigger offices (career); increased income (financial); attending conferences, professional courses with tuition reimbursement to sharpen their skills (professional); and encouraging them to pursue their personal goals (personal).
• Teach them to Network – Networking is not only fun, it is essential to individual growth and business development. Exposing your employees to networking events will help them develop the capacity to connect with strangers, confidently initiate conversations and close business deals. Start small by encouraging networking within the workplace during lunch hours or at after-work events, and eventually have employees branch out and network with industry professionals outside of the company.
• Act as a Mentor – As you help your employees gain leadership skills, you would naturally take on a mentor-mentee relationship with them; a natural progression that is a very beneficial tool to continue honing their leadership skills. To succeed in mentoring your employees, you should be ready to help them through guidance and counseling, develop strong and healthy relationship with them, teach and model them on ethics & values, and motivate and inspire them.
• Lead Courageously – Everyone, including your employees, demand courage in the people who lead them; they need to have total confidence in your willingness and ability to protect the business and make the right choices under difficult circumstances. When you lead by example and demonstrate courageous leadership to your employees, you will inspire employee loyalty and awaken their sense of courage.

• Be Honest & Transparent – An authentic leader is honest and transparent in all things, including in the personal face they show to the world. Employees should be groomed to ensure their actions align with expressed core values. Making transparency and accountability central to your organizational culture would help build leadership across your workforce.
• Encourage them to take Ownership of The Job – Since leaders take ownership when they assume responsibility, employees must be encouraged to internalize the need to assume responsibility. This strategy helps employee to be more intrinsically motivated about their work. Employees take responsibility when:
• Maintain Constant Communication – Continuous communication in the workplace is crucial to developing employees. This is necessary to measure and review employee performance in an effort to improve future productivity. Communication can be improved in the workplace by regularly meeting with employees in an informal, one-on-one setting. Meetings can also be organized on a quarterly basis to discuss individual employee goals and performance. This can further help employers identify opportunities for development, as well as tailor development plans around the employees. This will also:

• Make them feel like owners
• Make them have a sense of belonging
• Make the work, goals and purpose align
• Show that they are not being micro managed.