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Skip to main contentApril 14, 2025
Frontline leaders are the backbone of your company’s success.
As more organizations adopt agile structures, these leaders bridge the gap between senior teams and employees, transforming strategy into action. With 80% of the workforce looking to them for guidance, they have the power to drive performance—or derail it.
That’s why preparing individual contributors (ICs) to take on roles as frontline leaders needs to be a priority.
However, developing confident, effective frontline leaders isn’t easy.
It requires helping them to:
Adding to the pressure, some organizations have rushed to fill leadership roles, often promoting ICs who aren’t fully prepared, creating a significant skills gap.
So how can leaders set them up for success?
Here are four key steps to help ICs transition into management and lead with confidence.
When it comes to leadership development for individual contributors, the first stage is to clearly define what a successful leader looks like in your organization.
This can be done through Success Profiles. A well-defined Success Profile not only sets clear expectations but also helps ICs assess their own capabilities and motivations, identifying both strengths and areas for growth.
For instance, if your business goal is digital transformation, look for competencies like strategic thinking, network building, effective communication, courage, and resilience.
Remember that technical skills are still important though. “You're not going to promote someone into a frontline manager role unless they're already a very strong individual contributor,” says Korn Ferry’s Scott Erker.
But it takes more than technical ability to be a good leader.
Based on millions of assessments across industries, Korn Ferry research reveals that effective people leaders must:
The next step is to identify ICs in your organization with leadership potential. This isn’t easy.
Two-thirds of HR professionals say their companies miss high-potential leaders by not looking deeply enough internally.
To overcome this challenge, a more strategic approach is crucial. Here are three effective ways to uncover your future leaders.
Leadership potential assessments—including in-depth interviews, psychometric self-assessments, and business simulations—are effective because they:
These offer a clear view of an individual’s past performance, providing a baseline to assess how well they align with your Success Profile and leadership expectations.
Key factors to consider in a performance review include:
This provides a well-rounded view of a person’s leadership potential.
Managers typically focus on performance, while colleagues can offer insights into collaboration and interpersonal skills.
Other benefits include:
Most individual contributors aren’t fully prepared to step into leadership. They need training in how to become a manager.
But not just any training will do. It needs to be personalized to the individual.
The content should match their L&D needs, but how it’s delivered is just as important. No two people learn the same way, so the approach must be flexible.
“In the past, we’d pull people out of work for three, four, or five-day workshops and send them back. But we found the transfer of skills to the job just wasn’t happening,” says Erker.
“Now, we take a more action-learning approach, a more personalized approach. We give people small chunks of information, allow them to practice, and then apply those skills to their role. We also consider adult learning styles, providing a wide variety of modalities and tools for learning and application of skills to the job.”
AI training and development tools can help support this by delivering customized training experiences that adapt to an individual's preferred learning style.
Korn Ferry’s People Leader Development Program is an innovative solution for leadership talent development.
It combines talent assessments, personalized coaching, and leadership development frameworks. These targeted learning solutions equip individuals with the skills, behaviors, and mindsets needed to lead effectively and drive business success.
Coaching can play an important role in helping ICs develop the values and behaviors needed to become leaders.
“A coach can help us recognize behavior patterns, manage emotions, break unproductive habits, and stay motivated through challenges,” says Erker.
But coaching offers so much more when it comes to individual contributor career development.
Here are some other benefits:
1. Builds Confidence:
It can equip new leaders with the self-assurance to make decisions and guide their teams effectively.
2. Shifts Mindsets:
It can help a person transition from an individual contributor to more of a strategic thinker.
3. Improves Emotional Intelligence:
It can help a person develop skills to navigate relationships and handle challenges.
While one-on-one coaching is invaluable, peer-to-peer coaching can also be incredibly effective.
Peer coaching pods—informal groups where colleagues share insights and learning experiences—help reinforce leadership concepts in real-world scenarios and create a supportive, collaborative culture.
“And when we add an AI coach to the mix, we can provide just-in-time guidance that complements these human interactions, offering a powerful learning toolset,” adds Erker.
Help your people exceed their potential, so they can unlock yours
Frontline managers will continue to play a vital role in organizations, making it essential for leaders to identify talent early and focus on guiding them on how to grow into a leadership role.
But leadership development is a high-stakes exercise.
Discover the eight major challenges faced by L&D leaders and expert solutions to help you address them in your organization.
