6th March 2025
As a leader, you should never feel threatened by the best workers in your team… you should only ever celebrate their existence.
A study from 2019 found that approximately 33% of all leaders feel insecure about the work they do, reporting feelings of jealousy toward their employees.
As a result, rather than looking to uplift those around them, researchers found that hard-working team members were ostracised by the self-conscious leader, noticing that:
Combined, these consequences eventually lead to significant damage to the dynamics and strength of a workplace – reducing productivity, emotional wellbeing, and trust between team members.
Is that a risk you want to take?
There’s a lesson to be learnt. You need to be really careful about a sub-conscious bias forming, directed toward the employees around you.
When you have incredible individuals who are going above and beyond their line of duty and demonstrating significant potential, they don’t need ostracising… they need encouragement.
At the end of the day, it’s a leader’s responsibility to support the professional growth of their team, even when it comes to employees that you may otherwise feel intimidated by.
“With people leaving their jobs in droves and searching for more fulfilling career opportunities, the way we used to work is no longer working. The focus for company success now needs to shift to prioritize retention.
Old-school CEOs might baulk at training employees who, perhaps, might take their learned skills to other companies, but the value career development provides your company is invaluable.” – Forbes
In order to start offering the right opportunities to an employee with strong potential, you need to be conducting regular performance reviews.
This will allow you to:
During these 1 on 1 meetings, take the time to evaluate skill progression, experience, passion, dedication, and creativity.
Any one of these attributes will show you where to invest time and energy, identifying which employee will be your organisation’s next leader.
Although it might sound like the easiest route forward, simply pledging yourself to mentoring a high-potential employee isn’t enough to give them all the tools required for leadership.
You also need to:
When your employee is learning, they’ll be more engaged with their work and be able to perform at their very best. Give them time and resources to pick up new skills, generate experience, and gain confidence in their ability.
Depending on how high up the career ladder you want them to go, ensure that the employee enjoys a role by conducting trials. Leadership isn’t for everyone, even if you think they would make a great candidate.
If you can, set up some fake scenarios and measure their response to crises. This will either identify a weakness that needs to be worked upon or reassure you that they are ready to move on and be promoted.
Once they’ve got the experience and skills required to be a leader within your organisation, it’s time to extend a job offer to them that is both fair and rewarding. Expect to negotiate certain aspects of the role with them, as they might prefer to work from home or reassign a specific responsibility.
Ross Clifford & Associates is an innovative recruitment agency that knows how to recognise the potential of our candidates. If you’ve been looking for a new position lately with no success, contact us today.