7 Promising Signs Someone’s Ready for a Leadership Position
Recognizing when someone’s ready for a promotion isn’t just about taking a look at their tenure or technical skills—it’s about identifying the qualities that signal leadership potential. The way an employee approaches their work, interacts with colleagues and overcomes challenges can reveal whether they’re ready to take on more responsibility.
As a leader, knowing what to look for can help you make thoughtful decisions about who is prepared to step up. Below, members of Business Journals Leadership Trust share the key actions, attitudes and skills they look for when evaluating employees for leadership roles. Their insights can help you spot leadership potential within your team and make more confident decisions about who is ready to advance.
1. Anticipating and tackling challenges
There are so many challenges in our fast-paced, rapidly changing business environment. We need leaders who can navigate, be innovative and solve problems. We need leaders who can look around corners, identify potential issues or challenges, rally the best talent, and create options to mitigate risk and conquer problems before they become distracting and disruptive. This type of proactive, resilient mindset is of significant value for all organizations. – Aviva Ajmera, SoLVE KC
2. Influencing without authority
When a person can effectively influence their colleagues to get results, I see someone who can lead cross-functional activities—even without absolute authority. This soft skill sets a leader apart from the pack. – Tracy Imm, Tracy Imm Worldwide, LLC
3. Taking ownership of their work
When someone takes full responsibility for their work—ensuring it drives results and aligns with team goals—it shows they’re ready to lead. Leadership is about accountability—not just managing tasks and owning mistakes, but ensuring every action contributes to the broader mission and measurable success. – Bill Rokos, Parsec Automation
4. Having strong communication skills
Someone with leadership potential will have a gut feeling when communication is needed. For instance, if a client, vendor or member of management is on the verge of asking about the status of a project, someone who has leadership potential will jump in and send a short note with a quick update. When things are not going well, they’ll pick up the phone or request a face-to-face meeting for an update—they know an email, text or off-camera Teams or Slack meeting does not cut it. When things are really bombing out, sharing frequent updates—even if it’s just to say there’s no new information—shows that someone understands the importance of communication and cares about the situation. Lastly, I’ve found it’s rare these days for team members seeking promotions to ask a manager what they can do to help. Do the work of the level above you to make the decision to promote you easy. – Scott Young, PennComp Outsourced IT
5. Being proactive
Being proactive is by far the most valuable trait a manager can quickly and easily observe and reward. Many employees are too scared or disengaged to think about being proactive, so those who take the initiative should be rewarded, even if the outcome isn’t ideal. You can coach a proactive employee to balance gut instinct with information-gathering to maximize positive outcomes. Conversely, it’s very difficult to coach someone to be proactive if it’s not in their DNA. – Kent Lewis, pdxMindShare
6. Driving client growth independently
Employees who independently develop strategies to grow client businesses without the need for micromanagement demonstrate natural leadership qualities and are strong candidates for promotion. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne Advertising
7. Leading with empathy and strategy
Someone who can lead a team and adapt to different personalities with empathy—while ensuring tactical and strategic goals are met—is someone I would consider for a leadership role. Someone who knows how to listen to their people and understand their motivations is valuable. Someone who knows how to explain the “why” behind a mission or task, instead of just saying, “Do this,” is a more effective leader. A team member who consistently demonstrates these qualities might be someone I would want as my “right-hand person” or even groom to take over my position should I need to step aside. – Zain Jaffer, Zain Ventures
