A friend of mine asked me – who is a good candidate for the Quad Cities Leadership Academy? She was trying to figure out if she should send current leaders in their organization or up-and-comers.
My answer to her and now to you is that I think the best candidates for leadership are the up-and-comers, the ones you see potential in. Sending your high-potentials helps them prepare for future leadership roles in your organization, builds your talent pipeline, and signals that you are investing in their growth.
This is exactly what it did for me. I was promoted to a supervisor role when I worked at Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center (now Impact Life), and they sent me to Integrity Integrated’s Quad City Leadership Academy, led by Ginny Wilson Peters. In the class, I learned skills I hadn’t learned anywhere else.
The hallmark of any good leadership development program is its stickiness – do the participants come away from the program with actual new behaviors that help them lead better? I believe that Ginny’s program gave me actionable skills that I still draw on to this day; that is my goal for the 2027 reboot of her program. With the case study approach we have planned, participants will walk away with new skills they can use right away, even if they aren’t formally leading anyone yet.
Imagine the organizational impact when you proactively invest in leaders rather than “waiting until they are ready.” Succession planning becomes clearer and you retain your high-potentials rather than losing them to the organization who recruits them for that bigger job. Not to mention, good leadership is good business. The Association of Talent Development reports that companies with multi-level leadership development outperform their peers financially.
I am so grateful that the blood center invested in me when I was an up-and-comer, and I can’t wait to pay it forward for the new leaders enrolled this January.
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