It has long been said that the best asset of any organization is its people. All organizations are trying to attract the strongest people, train them, and retain them. The key to long term continued success is a strong people development and succession planning strategy. The basis of this is developing your people through a sustainable process that can be repeated over and over. Your business leaders must know this process and execute it for your long term success. The true measure of success for a leader is not their individual success, is it the success of those under them. If you develop a strong team they will want you to be their manager and carry you to continued success. Be good to your people and they will be good to you back.

Human beings learn by seeing, hearing, writing, doing, and verbalizing. Experience comes from doing tasks in a repetitive fashion until the information is retained. There is an old Chinese saying that states;

“Tell me and I’ll remember for an hour; show me and I’ll remember for a day; but let me do it and I’ll remember forever.’

The most effective way human beings learn and retain information is by physically doing. This article discusses 6 steps to develop your people that will help you maintain a long term sustainable strategy for successful succession planning.

1. It takes a village to raise a child

The meaning of ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ refers to the many people a child needs to develop into a productive adult. This same concept holds true for a developing management person. It takes much more than just you to help them develop. The entire team must be involved and vested in their development. I have hired many young people into entry level management positions. They were talented, driven, and hungry. I had the pleasure of rotating them around into different assignments to build their skill set and experience. They were able to go from part time supervisor, to full time supervisor, and even up to manager level. All parties were involved in their progression, myself their manager, my boss, Human Resources, Industrial Engineering, Security, and so on. Everyone must have a hand in their development to broaden their knowledge and view of their organization. This is the key to true development and succession planning!

2. Expand their experiences – rotate to build skill sets

‘You can give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a life time.’ From the novel, ‘Mrs. Dymond’ 1885 by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie.

We have already stated that people learn the best by doing. If is imperative that you have a succession plan in place which includes possible rotations to expand your people’s skill set. People develop and learn by being allowed to venture out and perform other jobs to grow their experience and skills. The more experience they can obtain the greater value they become. Many organizations believe in relocation in order to broaden their peoples experience and foster opportunity. As you move around and work with different people you learn how to deal with multiple situations making your value increase. This also keeps people from holding positions far too long and stalling opportunity for those under them.

As a Senior manager I have been relocated multiple times around the country. These experiences have provided opportunities to expand my view of the world and positioned me to deal with many different situations in an effective manner. This is part of the development process that must be a part of your succession plan.

3. You Must ALWAYS Be Focused on Grooming Your Replacement

You are not going to be around forever. You must be replaced at some point one way or another. Who is going to fill your shoes when you move on? As a leader you must always be focused on grooming your replacement. Ideally you want to develop and groom your team so that one day they can take your job and beyond. This is the key to success for any organization.

I have seen managers in the past that actually would not move someone for development purposes because they did not want to have to replace them. This is a selfish short sited act and cannot be allowed to happen! If may cause you some pain but the persons development must always come first. NEVER stump a person’s development because you do not want to be inconvenienced and have to replace them. Put people development at the top of your list and it will have long term positive impact!

Ask yourself a question; who is going to replace me? Do you have an answer? Are you in the active process of grooming your replacement? If the answer is no then you have a problem to fix. You should always have your possible replacements identified and have a plan in place to groom them to the next level. This is your responsibility, embrace it!

4. Outside Education – Teach them Self Development

People need to be trained in the fine art of ‘Self Development’. This can be many things however typically this includes pursuing their 4 year degrees, MBA’s, etc. one of the leadership principles is that if you have a weakness you need to take action and improve it. I have learned so much from my college education while completing my Bachelors and MBA degrees. This tied with my practical experience has given me the tools to be successful. Your developing people need to be pushed in the same direction to pursue their outside education as well as their work place education to legitimize their skill set.

5. They Must Believe You Believe In Them

For your people to be truly vested and committed they must believe that you believe in them as a person. There is nothing worse then working for a boss that you believe does not support you. Have you ever been in this situation? This creates mistrust and animosity. You need to make sure your team members know you believe in them and support them. You team will make mistakes. You have to allow them the opportunity to fail and learn! This is part of the development process. Remember, ‘A boss fixes blame, a manager fixes mistakes.’ Anonymous.

Making mistakes is how people learn. The key is learning the lessons and not repeating them. If you do not learn from your past you are doomed to repeat it. The true meaning of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You must position them with the opportunity to make mistakes so they can learn from them and not repeat them moving forward. This is the process of work assignment rotations, special assignments, relocations, etc. Also, do not be afraid to share you past short comings with your team members so they can learn from your experience and not make your mistakes. Be their mentor and let them learn from your experiences.

As their mentor and coach you must spend time with your folks in many general reviews be it performance, personal, etc. Spend time with them and get to know what makes them tick. This allows you to focus on the individual and cater to their individual needs for development.

6. Accentuating the Positive

The key to developing people is positive reinforcement. The most effective way to do this is to catch them doing something right. Garry Ridge stated in his book, Helping People WIN at WORK,

‘It is important to remember that you should not wait until people do something perfectly right to praise them. Praise progress, because it’s a moving target.’

People need positive reinforcement to feel good about themselves and what they are doing. Truly driven people will be their own worst critics if they feel they are not reaching their goals. They will ignore the progress they are making and focus on their short comings. Your job as their mentor is to accentuate the positive and feed them positive reinforcement for the progress they are making which will motivate them to get even better and reach those goals.

Feedback is the break fast of champions! The closer feedback is provided a human being about a particular event to the time of the actual event the more impact that feedback will have on that human being. If lets say Julie does a good thing and I recognize her a week later, as opposed to doing it right away what is the impact? A week later she is trying to remember what she did, however if the positive reinforcement takes place right away it has long lasting psychological impact which is what you are after. This works both ways of course weather the feed back is positive or constructive. The key is to act right away for long lasting impact. Catch your people doing something right and use a regular diet of positive reinforcement as a tool to motivate and develop them!