Developing ‘Next Gen’ Leaders

If you want your business to thrive in the future, it’s vital to hire next-gen leaders who are passionate about shaping your industry. A leadership team creates a company’s vision, inspires staff, and develops commercial strategies that will ultimately determine whether the organisation is successful. With so much resting on it, it is vital that your leadership team is filled with next-gen leaders who can take the company to the next level as the industry evolves.

If you want to maximise success and mitigate risk in the future, take a look at these top tips for developing next-gen leaders now:

1. Hire People with a Global Perspective

When you’re looking for the next CMO of your FinTech company or a Marketing Director for your startup, be sure to select candidates who have a global outlook. It isn’t just in-house changes that will affect your company’s performance, but industry-wide, national, and worldwide issues. Due to this, business leaders must have a broad perspective and be able to identify global and sector-specific issues and opportunities that will arise in the future.

2. Ensure Leaders are Ethics Driven

Traditionally, companies took a power-driven approach to leadership, but this concept is already outdated. Now, businesses need their leaders to be ethics-driven and use their personalities to inspire staff and the brand as a whole.

As consumers place increasing importance on the ethics behind a brand, companies are realising just how important it is to have a strong foundation and ethical compass. As businesses strive to adopt green principles and become more sustainable, for example, it is easy to see how ethical issues are more prevalent than ever in the world of business.

3. Create a Diverse Leadership Team

Attracting diverse talent should be a top priority for all businesses. Not only does a diverse leadership team help to promote industry-wide inclusivity and ensure that everyone is treated equally, but it also allows your business to benefit from a broader range of opinions, approaches, and experiences. Furthermore, creating a diverse leadership team helps to ensure that diversity and inclusivity are promoted companywide. When you have diverse talent at the top, it will encourage teams at all levels to champion inclusivity and lead to a more diverse and potentially more successful workforce as a whole.

4. Focus on Emerging Tech

In the world of digital marketing, successful professionals don’t just need to be aware of emerging tech; they need to be at the forefront of it. Whether your new Head of Growth Marketing is helping to spearhead new software for your HealthTech firm, or your Marketing Director is simply proactive about embracing the latest innovations, hiring leaders who are passionate about using emerging tech can have a positive impact on your business performance.

Technology has already revolutionized every industry and it will continue to do so in the future. By ensuring your leadership search focuses on finding people who are dedicated to using new tech strategically, you can ensure that your business has the potential to outperform its competitors by increasing automation, streamlining workflows, and optimising results.

5. Encourage Adaptability

Adaptability is a key life skill and it is certainly a characteristic that successful leaders tend to have. When your company can adapt quickly to external and in-house changes, you stand a better chance of not just surviving, but of thriving.

As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, the businesses able to adapt to market disruptions fared best. While we may not be able to predict the future, knowing that you have an adaptable leadership team will enable your business to respond to changes in the marketplace, industry, or supply chain.

6. Choose Collaborative Leaders

While leadership teams once operated from a position of authority, today’s leaders are already taking a more collaborative approach to their roles. In the future, increased collaboration is likely to be the order of the day, so it makes sense to hire leaders who are already promoting a collaborative ethos.

To be successful, leaders must be able to motivate and inspire. While likeability can be helpful, a leader’s ability to unite the workforce and realise the company’s strategic vision will ultimately determine its success. When your Head of Performance Marketing can collaborate seamlessly with Sales Directors, COOs, Marketing Managers, and other members of the workforce, you can ensure that your organisation benefits from a companywide style of leadership and management, which leads to a more cohesive, holistic environment.

Hiring Next Gen Leaders

If you want to hire leaders who can safeguard your company’s future and facilitate optimal success, it is vital to take a strategic approach. After all, your leadership team is the guardian of your company’s future legacy, so you need to ensure that you hire the best people.

Regardless of whether you are recruiting a distributed team, building a company base in New York, London, or Paris, or operating from regional hubs, you’ll need leaders with the characteristics, skills, and attributes that embody the next generation of business.

When you are looking for your next generation of Digital and Growth Marketers, focus on hiring for the future and not just today. At Acquire Digital Talent, we are committed to finding the best candidates for our clients. Whether you are launching a FinTech startup or planning to scale up a DTC e-commerce business, The Acquire Method can help you to find next-gen leaders who will shape your future.

Developing Your Leadership Team

Encouraging your leadership team to continually develop their skills helps to ensure that they’ll consistently progress as individuals and as a team unit. While in-house professional development is critical to long-term success, hiring the right people with personalities that suit your company’s ethos is arguably even more important.

To find out how we can help you to hire and retain the best digital & growth marketing leaders, why not talk to our team today? Contact Alex Marriner (Founder & Leadership Search Consultant) on +44 (0) 7583 648 612 or email [email protected] and begin shaping your company’s future now.