Leaders often emerge from difficult trials and problems stronger and more successful. They are forced to sink or swim. Development assignments and bold challenges are always a little bit risky. The mentors and managers need to be able to take a risk in order to help and encourage their subordinates to truly develop.
To stretch is needed. You can’t always play it safe and take sure bets. Tomorrow’s leaders are created by today's leaders taking risks. Is it possible to develop your staff by stretching them with demanding assignments without taking too big a risk? You surely don’t want to jeopardize the whole organization by trusting a single individual way too much. A balance is necessary. Here are some tips on how to achieve it, brought to us by the smartblogs.com website.
1) Consider potential consequences
Don’t give impossibly difficult or problematic assignments. The tasks you give them should provide enough space to develop, explore and struggle a little bit. But if things do not work out, it must not have the potential to be disastrous.
2) Always calculate the risks
When you are committed to developing your subordinates, you need to judge the prospect’s capacity and capabilities. Examine past results the prospect has delivered. What challenges has he or she successfully dealt with? Assess what costs could arise should your prospect fail in the assignment you give him.
3) Reputation concerns
Consider the fact that you may get a poor result in case your prospect fails at the task and the learning experienced offered. Calculate if the possible failure is acceptable.
4) Accept necessary mistakes
Developers of leaders must make peace with errors and miscalculations. Learning can be messy.
-jk-