Developing team leadership skills in your business
The first thing you’ll need to do is identify who you think might be best suited to a leadership role. You’ll want to look out for someone who: communicates well; is highly organised; confident but respectful of others; is fair in the workplace; and ensures projects are always successfully completed.
Create a leadership culture in your business
Creating a culture in your business where leadership skills are acknowledged and rewarded will be incredibly helpful when it becomes time to promote. Recognise specific people for their work if they’ve displayed key leadership skills in a piece of work.
It doesn’t have to be monetary-based; simply saying well done or sending a congratulatory email will show your employee that their actions aren’t going unnoticed. It’s important to reward the team for a job well done, but if you’re looking to create great team leaders, you’ll need to single them out and acknowledge their work.
Offer support
If you know you’ve got a great candidate for leading your team and your business takes on bigger challenges, offer them your support. Speak with them and let them know that you think they could progress through your business and see whether or not they’d be interested in the position.
If they are, you can offer them support to develop any team leader skills they might be missing. This support comes in a wide variety of different forms, including mentoring and shadowing through to formal training.
Test their abilities
You can’t expect any of your employees to be a great team leader straight away. It takes time and experience to fully develop the skills they need to be able to lead effectively. Test these abilities before fully assigning them the role by allowing them to manage small projects. As your business develops, you don’t want to find that your team leaders crumble at their first big hurdle.
Formal training
There are lots of options available to you if you’re interested in developing team leader skills in your employees using formal training. A quick search will bring up various training businesses willing and able to transform your employee into a fantastic leader, so much so that it can be difficult to choose, especially with a limited budget for training.
With fully funded training supplied through Skills Support for the Workforce, you could get your team the skills they need without it costing you a penny. You can contact them directly or get in touch with our support team to find out more.
Let them grow into their new role
Very few team leaders have all the skills they need straight away. Give them a month or two to settle into their new role and to improve on the skills you’ve already identified and nurtured in them. However, try not to be too hands-off as they settle in, let them know you’re there to offer advice and guidance if they need it.
When you’re looking to develop team leader skills, nurture the abilities you’ve spotted in your employees. Let your employees test their skills with small projects, and offer your support and guidance as they develop. You can’t expect perfection from the word go, so allow time for your new team leader to settle in and continuously improve their abilities.
Articles
Talking Net Zero: Why does the accuracy of words matter to your business?
Do you understand the key climate change terms every business should know? Get to grips with net zero terminology and learn how you can use it to your advantage with our free resources.
Connecting businesses to support in Harrogate
Businesses in Harrogate have welcomed free drop-in days which are connecting them to support and friendly, local business advice specialists.
Successful female entrepreneurs prepare to pitch on International Women's Day
Six entrepreneurs, two angel investors, two chances to win up to £1000. That's the equation facing our successfully selected female founders on Wednesday 8th March at York Marriot Hotel.
Events
28th April 20239:00 am - 10:00 amFREE
28 Apr - How to make your Social Enterprise survive risks: the art of Horizon Scanning
Join Professor Jeff Gold online to find out why Horizon Scanning is an important tool to master for your Social Enterprise, and how it can improve your resilience and prepare you for future changes.
22nd May 20233:30 pm - 5:30 pmFREE
22 May - Social & private partnership development networking
This networking event will bring together private and social organisations so they can find out more about each organisation's needs and work together to solve some of our social and economic issues.
18th April 20239:00 am - 5:00 pmFREE
18 Apr - Harrogate Co-Lab: Business Support Drop-In Session
This free drop-in service based in Harrogate can help answer your questions and direct you to relevant business support, resources and programmes.
Resources
Glossary of Climate Change Terms for Businesses
A free digital glossary defining the key climate change terms relevant to businesses, to help you understand and engage with sustainability resources and support.
2022 Seminar Recordings
We have recently hosted a programme of in-person seminars and other events, some of which were professionally recorded and can now be viewed on our website.
Seminar Recording : Access to finance: Funding growth
This workshop will provide guidance on cost based pricing, calculating your costs before deciding an appropriate margin, as well as covering market based pricing asking questions such as: What value do you add? What are you worth? How do you position yourself?