Some technical employees excel when it comes to performing tasks that are technical in nature, but when you put them in a leadership role they disappear into it, becoming a less valuable member of a company.

It’s important for a business to be able to identify those technical employees who can go on to succeed in management roles. Promoting employees with technical skills leads to having staff continuity, greater loyalty, higher employee morale and a management staff that understands the technical nature of the job. Identifying internal leaders also acts as an insurance against a potentially crippling leadership vacuum.

Finally, technical employees promoted into leadership roles already understand your company’s structure and workplace culture. Use these tips to help identify technical employees with leadership potential.

Identifying Personality Type

According to popular school of thought in psychology, there are 16 different personality types, and while people with any one of these personality types can go on to success a few of these personality types are predisposed to succeeding in leadership roles.

Women and men with an Extraversion Intuition Feeling Judging (ENFJ) personality type are natural leaders because of their superb ability to understand the needs of others. They tend to seek out contributions from everyone in a team setting and tend to be highly principled.

People with the Extraversion Sensing Feeling Perceiving (ESFP) personality type enjoy working on projects and tend to bring a sense of fun and enthusiasm to the proceedings. These spontaneous folks are always ready to adapt to an unexpected situation.

Extraversion Intuition Thinking Judging (EITJ) personality types are natural leaders due to their uncanny ability to spot waste and inefficiency. These employees will enjoy long-term planning, setting goals, expanding their knowledge and passing that knowledge on to others.

Being practical, organized, committed and decisive gives those with the Extraversion Sensing Thinking Judging (ESTJ) personality type natural leadership abilities. These folks enjoy getting results as efficiently as possible.

Find Those with Passion

Natural leadership ability doesn’t mean anything if someone with that capacity isn’t driven to succeed. Potential leaders in your company should be going beyond their normal purview to offer solutions and suggestions. They should show a vested interest in making the company succeed, even if comes across as a bit self-serving.

People with passion are also making things happen around them. They aren’t content to stand on the sidelines and wait for instruction.

Character Is Important

Many people are great leaders but have major character flaws. These people might make great politicians, but they have no place in your company.

Potential leaders in your organization aren’t afraid to take responsibility for failures, helping others is important to them and they want to build personal connections with their co-workers.

At Cornerstone, we connect companies with both leaders for today and potential leaders for tomorrow. If your company is in need of a custom staffing solution and wants to identify candidates with leadership potential , please contact us today.