As we near the end of 2017, is your organization thinking about enhancing its learning and development programs to better prepare new managers for their roles? If your company is like most, the commitment to talent development is huge. Acquiring and keeping a reputation for properly managing talent can help your company compete for the best employees.

Over 500 L&D professionals participated in the 2017 Workplace Learning Report just published by InLearning with Lynda​.com Content and gave their opinions on talent development. These findings are important to consider within the context of employee readiness for management roles as discussed by Val Matta.

In particular, over half, 52% of surveyed organizations, say the most important skills they need to develop in their employees relate to leadership and people management. While over 58% of larger organizations give the development of leaders and managers top billing, smaller organizations aren’t far behind at 51%. Under the leadership umbrella, survey respondents said the following skills were at the top of the talent development list:

• Coaching 57%
• Leadership communication 51%
• Teams and collaboration 42%

Val Matta points out that promising staff members training and support in these key areas isn’t always enough to convince them to take on management roles. Team members may worry that they aren’t ready for more responsibility.

In these cases, you may need to start slowly with a strategy designed to build their confidence. Ask them to lead meetings or manage projects from start to finish. In doing so, they’ll build confidence in their ability to collaborate and they'll have practice, unofficially, in providing leadership. Younger employees, and those who show signs of burnout, may benefit from this approach. The next step is to show rising stars how they’ll learn new skills and embark on long-​term career paths when they agree to take managerial positions.

When you combine this strategy with sufficient training on how they’ll need to coach and communicate with their team members, you may find that more people are willing to give leadership positions a try.