With everything they have to do, it’s understandable that some mid-sized company leaders may think that training emerging leaders and high potential employees may be a near-impossible task.

With that said, The National Center for the Middle Market research shows a strong correlation between superior talent training and company performance. In the study, one company increased productivity by 30% within the first six months after initiating comprehensive emerging leader and high potential employee training.

The good news is that leadership development doesn’t have to be a pain… Strategic delegation can be the answer.

When a mid-sized company commits to training high potential individuals and emerging leaders, they create career paths that lay out new responsibilities that employees can aspire to. These companies believe in strategic delegation, assigning people to tasks they must master to rise in the organization. And these successful companies practice it at all levels of the organization so people are constantly learning, be they on a career path to leadership or as a technical expert.

They also take mentoring seriously, creating formal programs through which people can share their accumulated institutional knowledge among senior-level and junior-level people or between peers, offices, teams, functions, and departments. These enlightened companies track people’s progress and stand ready to help shore up the weak points in performance. Senior managers and leaders don’t have to do it all… they can delegate much of this as well.

Working on real-world problems within the business makes the concept of training less time-consuming for leadership. Plus, debriefing the experiences and additional challenges in classroom settings can significantly strengthen and further develop the skills and capabilities of emerging leaders and high potential employees.

Research has also shown that when a company takes the time to do individual skill assessments against the needed human capabilities of the company, they can tailor their people development to meet the most urgent business demands. This makes the time investment in professional development pay off big time. These companies’ professional development programs for high potential employees and emerging leaders may need to extend beyond the workplace. When the need arises, these companies also provide people with external training.

One way to track progress in strategic delegation is the use of the One Page Business Plan Company’s 90-Day Plan. This cloud-based tool helps these advancing individuals stay on track and keeps management informed and involved in the professional development progress.

So the upshot is this… you absolutely don’t have to do it all yourself!