4 Simple Ways to Develop Leadership in Your Team

As a small business owner, you have made your dream a reality. Part of that dream is finding the right team to help run your business. There’s a lot of value in being a mentor for your employees, and if you follow these tips, you’ll be able to foster a culture of excellence within your team.

Keep Communication Open

If you want to help your employees become leaders, you need to foster a culture of communication in your workplace. Your team needs to know that they can be confident bringing ideas, concerns, and questions to you.

You want to be firm, sure, but you should work on being approachable.

A good way to start encouraging a culture of communication in your small business is to hold a regular meeting, “town hall” style. This will be a time where your team can bring up concerns, ask questions, problem solve together, and share new ideas for the future. This meeting doesn’t have to be formal or lengthy, but rather gives your team a chance to highlight their accomplishments.

Be careful to keep everything on track, because you don’t want this meeting to feel like a huge obligation. Your team should be excited, not bored or filled with dread.

By knowing that they have a seat at the table when it comes to decision making and company processes, they will gain confidence and be able to handle more complex tasks.

Outsource to Encourage Growth

We mentioned the daily grind of your business. It’s incredibly easy to let developing your team fall by the wayside when you’re drowning in paperwork or endlessly answering the phone. This is why outsourcing is an excellent idea for small businesses.

The growing popularity of freelancing makes outsourcing easy. You get your pick of global talent for tasks like marketing, content writing, appointment scheduling, and reception. “Now more than ever, businesses are taking advantage of the global workplace to get the best freelancers to help their business,” SmallBizClub reports.

Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it on tasks that can be taken care of by cost effective, trained professionals. Your clients deserve to be taken care of, which is exactly what happens when you outsource. You are able to make your product or service the best it can be, while still investing in your team. It’s a win for you, employees, and clients.

Develop Opportunities for Learning

A great way to foster leadership within your team is to create learning opportunities. The day to day grind is obviously important, but if you aren’t providing ways for your team to grow, you’ll suffer in the long term.

These opportunities can occur in many different forms. Check out our article here on all the different ways you can educate employees at work.

Not only should you be educating employees on work skills with industry events and webinars, you should educate them on issues like diversity in the workplace.

If you want to help your team become leaders, they need to act with integrity in the workplace. It’s a common stereotype to treat sensitivity training as a joke, but it’s more important than ever that your employees are knowledgeable.

Create a workplace that actively works against racism, sexism, and homophobia, and your team will become better people and better leaders. This will also help your brand image, and attract potential employees; Glassdoor reports that 2 out of 3 people consider diversity important when deciding where to work.

Start Developing Leaders Today

You’ve learned a lot of lessons as a small business owner. It’s time to pass them on. When you foster leadership in your team, every process in your business improves. By encouraging open communication, outsourcing non-essential tasks, and developing opportunities for learning, your team will flourish.

Start developing leadership in your company today.