Sometimes, it feels like a mystery how certain individuals land leadership positions. In small businesses, it often feels like one of two things happens: either “day one” employees stick around long enough to the point where their tenure justifies becoming business leaders, such as team leads or managers, or someone outside the business who isn’t familiar with the company but has the necessary experience to qualify for managerial positions. But what if, regardless of how the individual became part of the team, future business leaders were nurtured for their role and moulded with the company culture?
According to Express Employment Professionals, some future business leaders are often overlooked because they appear to have less confidence or charisma, but still have the necessary competencies that you would expect for a leader. These exceptional individuals may feel undervalued when their potential isn’t recognised, especially when it also appears that growth is slow and there is no clear succession plan at the top.
But developing future leaders solves this.
Characteristics of Future Leaders
More than a person’s personality and confidence, technical skills are a vital part of finding the best leader – if you tell someone how to do their job, you must at least know how to do that job… The characteristics you look for must explain how this person thinks, relates, and responds under pressure.
Here are some examples of what to look for:
- Emotional intelligence, such as empathy, self-awareness and relationship skills
- Adaptability and resilience
- Taking ownership and initiative beyond their job description
- Strategic thinking, such as connecting daily tasks to a greater vision
- A hunger for knowledge and lifelong learning
Other important business skills shouldn’t be overlooked, but the above ones are vital for identifying a good future leader.
Current Leaders Play a Key Role
In your business, you play a key role. As the entrepreneur who owns or founded the business, you set the tone for what’s expected of your team leaders.
It is important to note that leadership, in the context of this article, mostly refers to identifying the individuals in your business who can become department heads, line managers, or your successor.
Because you are at the top of the company structure, you are responsible for defining the leadership competencies and determining where the business is heading. You also need to ensure that you continuously guide all employees towards the vision strategically. However, you also need to guide the individuals in leadership positions so they are able to understand the vision independently from you and exercise their responsibilities without continuously consulting you about the company’s direction.
Express Employment Professionals continues to elaborate that leadership roles are not the same across the board. Emerging leaders might need more exposure and mentorship, where middle managers require guidance on decision-making, and senior leaders have to set the example.
Ways to foster leadership in future leaders include:
- Allowing them to take charge of cross-functional teams
- Creating a loop of constructive feedback and self-reflection
- Recognising these individuals’ initiative and thoughtful risk-taking
- Encouraging collaboration rather than competition
The idea here is that leaders are developed when they are given authority with accountability, while showing guidance and support where necessary. This will look like affirming the emerging leader’s good decisions while providing recommendations for weak or unclear decisions.
Why Nurturing Future Leaders is Important
According to Accenture, neglecting leadership and the trust it builds within a company is not the only reason a business can suffer. In fact, sometimes it leads to disruptions in the economy and the business. However, where staff believe there is stability in the company, it also improves the overall turnover rate.
Principles of Leadership
Nadia Leita, Director at Leverage Leadership, believes that there are four pillars to leadership.
Connection
Often overlooked by those who believe that businesses are just decisions to be made, it is also working with your most valuable customer.
“In the workplace, interpersonal connections build trust, psychological safety and collaboration. Teams perform better when people feel seen, heard and valued. But meaningful connections cannot be manufactured through engagement surveys or check-in meetings alone. It begins with self-awareness,” Leita recalls.
It’s therefore important that leaders understand their own triggers, values, emotional patterns and blind spots, enabling them to respond with empathy and clarity.
Emergence
“Emergence recognises that leadership is not static. It is something we grow into continuously, shaped by experience, feedback, challenge and reflection. It asks a powerful question: Who am I becoming as a leader, and is that evolution serving both me and those I lead?”
At an organisational level, Leita explains, emergence invites cultures of learning rather than perfection. “It encourages leaders to experiment, adapt and remain curious in the face of change. This is particularly important in environments undergoing transformation, where old ways of working no longer apply but new ones have yet to fully form.”
Intuition
“Modern leadership places enormous emphasis on data, analytics and evidence-based decision-making, and rightly so. But an over-reliance on external information can disconnect leaders from another critical source of intelligence, intuition.”
According to Leita, intuition is not guesswork. It is the integration of experience, emotional insight, values and subconscious pattern recognition. “Leaders often know when something is misaligned long before they can articulate it in a boardroom presentation. Yet many have been conditioned to distrust this inner knowing, particularly in high-pressure corporate environments.
“When leaders trust themselves, they make clearer decisions, set healthier boundaries and lead with authenticity. Intuition strengthens ethical leadership, enabling leaders to sense when something feels right, or when it doesn’t, even in complex situations with no obvious answers.”
Surrender
Leita explains that surrender is perhaps the most misunderstood of the four principles. “It is not resignation, passivity or giving up. Rather, it is the conscious choice to release excessive control, rigidity and resistance.”
When leaders are deeply connected to themselves, open to growth and aligned with their intuition, surrender becomes possible. She says that it looks like trusting the process, empowering others, and accepting that not everything can, or should be controlled.
“In organisations, the need for control often intensifies during uncertainty. Yet paradoxically, this can stifle innovation, engagement and resilience. Surrender invites leaders to focus on what truly matters, to respond rather than react, and to create space for others to step forward.
“We see surrender as an advanced leadership capability. One that enables adaptability, collaboration and long-term sustainability. It allows leaders to lead with steadiness instead of force.”
If businesses intend to be sustainably long-term, it is important that business owners and entrepreneurs start thinking long-term. To achieve this, they need to start nurturing future business leaders early. One element of this is for succession; the other is to ensure you set up a business that has a strong structure of leaders across various levels of leadership that can help execute and build your vision.
