4 ways you can show your boss your leadership potential as a young employee

• Harrison Monarth is an executive coach and the founder of leadership-development service Gurumaker.
• Showing leadership potential as a young employee is a key way to impress higher-ups, says Monarth.
• To do this, show that you can learn quickly, be an active listener, and be assertive when you speak.

If you’re a young employee who aspires to a leadership role at your organization, it can be challenging to know how to showcase your “leadership potential” to senior management.

Metrics commonly used to determine leadership potential, such as educational achievement, emotional intelligence, ambition, and IQ, can make it seem like only people who graduated top of their class or are part of the workplace “in crowd” will be identified as future leaders. 

But while those are undoubtedly helpful traits, it isn’t necessarily game over for everyone else. Here are four ways to stand out and show your boss that you can be a leader.

1. Demonstrate your learning agility

Years before she became CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi was a young consultant hired by Motorola in the 1980s as head of strategy for their automotive electronics division. 

In executive-level staff meetings, Nooyi said she found herself completely out of her depth. 

“They were talking about two topics I was clueless about — cars and electronics,” Nooyi said in a commencement speech at Wake Forest University in 2011.

But instead of skirting by with a minimal understanding of cars and electronics, Nooyi hired two private tutors — an electronics professor who taught her from a massive electronics textbook, and an automotive technology professor who taught her about the inner workings of a car. 

As she learned more, Nooyi said, “I began to contribute more meaningfully to my job and my peers began to respect me — not for my position, but my curiosity and tenacity.”  

As Nooyi’s example shows, in big organizations where pretty much everyone is exceptional at a certain level, it pays to take initiative early and figure out what you need to do to succeed. 

2. Make your voice heard in meetings

Simply speaking up more can elevate your colleagues’ perception of your competence and confidence. Across different industries, being assertive is often a strong leadership potential indicator. 

Leadership is all about taking initiative, introducing new ideas, and then getting people to collaborate to make it happen. For some, the notion of speaking up and heralding your own ideas can be uncomfortable. But if you want to be a leader, you have to get comfortable with the attention that comes with standing out from the crowd. 

3. Build your confidence

When shyness gets in the way of someone contributing innovative ideas and solutions in meetings, it’s often rooted in a fear of negative evaluation.

To reduce that fear and build confidence over time, I recommend two strategies:

Rigorous preparation: Learn as much as possible about the biases, perspectives, and existing knowledge of others in the group, as well as the specifics around the problems that need to be solved. By doing this, you can tailor talking points in a way that’s thoughtful, makes a difference, and contributes clear value to a discussion. 

Repeated exposure: It’s virtually impossible to become more “comfortable” at any skill or new behavior without regular practice and direct and indirect feedback. Start by speaking up in small groups, even with two or three colleagues around the water cooler, and be more vocal and visible in virtual meetings, rather than remaining silent with the camera off. From there, you can slowly build up to more regular participation and eventually to leading discussions and shaping conversations.    

4. Develop strong listening skills

While speaking skills are important to share our thoughts and ideas, good listening skills help us develop those ideas in the first place.  

Colleagues who demonstrate poor listening skills are more prone to misunderstandings and more likely to make costly mistakes that undermine their leadership potential. 

By making a visible effort to focus on the meaning, not just the words, of what colleagues say, we end up more clear on their expectations and better prepared to ask insightful questions.

Tactical ways to be a more engaging listener is to avoid interrupting, leaning in physically and making eye contact, and nodding and offering vocal confirmation.

Companies will always be invested in identifying their next generation of leaders. And while each organization has its own set of expectations, being a quick learner, speaking up with confidence, and demonstrating good listening skills will take you far in any industry.