From Potential To Practice: How The Channel Can Develop Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

Within the channel ecosystem, business growth outpaces leadership development – and it shows. Whether you’re scaling from a one-person break/fix shop to a full MSP or MSSP team or leading a regional distributor looking to evolve your service strategy, the need for intentional leadership is always pressing.

In her talk entitled “Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,” Sara Ehrich, partner education manager at Pax8, challenged attendees to rethink how we define leadership in the ecosystem. She stressed the importance of how we build leaders, emphasizing the ways leadership begins before a title change or promotion ever happens.

The message was clear: leadership isn’t a reward, it’s a practice. And in a people-first, service-based ecosystem like the IT channel, getting this right is not optional. Getting it right provides the foundation for a clear and profitable culture.

Leadership Isn’t A Title. It’s Discipline.

“Leadership isn’t about having all the answers,” Enrich said in an interview. “It’s about knowing how to ask the right questions. Ones that help others find their own solutions.”

That simple shift from being the problem solver to being a facilitator of growth is the central hallmark of modern leadership, according to Pax8.

The technology marketplace giant reiterates that in many partner organizations, the tendency is to promote high performers: those who are technically proficient, client-savvy, or great in a crisis. But those attributes do not always translate to leading people well, building culture, or navigating internal organizational conflicts.

According to Ehrich, the best leaders:

• Publicly recognize where others shine.
• Acknowledge their own weaknesses, seeking support for their improvement.
• Stop answering every question that comes from their team, replacing them with better ones.
• Shares credit and takes accountability.

This mode of leadership doesn’t require a big team or a fancy title. It requires a mindset that can be practiced at every level of an organization.

Why Core Values Must Guide Promotions

“If you’re willing to make an exception to your values for a promotion, it’s not a value; it’s a hope,” says Ehrich.

It’s a hard pill to swallow for fast-growing companies that need people to step up quickly. However cutting corners on values misaligns teams, causing cultural rifts, sending the message that performance overrides integrity.

To counter this, Ehrich recommends:

• Building organizational core values into hiring, reviews, and promotions.
• Evaluating values alignment quarterly, not just at performance review time.
• Saying “no” to promoting individuals who do not exemplify your company’s non-negotiables even if they are strong in other areas.

Again, according to Ehrich: “Your culture is built by what you reward and eroded by what you ignore.”

Mentorship: A Secret Weapon For Leadership Readiness

Ehrich strongly advocated for mentorship as a strategic, not soft, investment. She shared her own experience encouraging her team to seek mentors outside of their reporting lines or even outside the company altogether. This gives employees “someone they could be raw with. Someone who didn’t have a stake in their promotion or performance review,” she said. “That made all the difference.”

Mentorship in the channel doesn’t always have to be formal:

• Encourage team members to network at events and ask for information-based support.
• Connect rising leaders with peers or executives in the broader MSP, MSSP, and VAR communities.
• Normalize mentorship as part of professional development, not just an optional perk.

For resource-strapped partners, even 30-minute quarterly check-ins with experienced peers can drive exponential growth. And, as Ehrich noted, “Real mentors are honored to be asked.”

Feedback And Grit: How Culture Builds Leaders

Leadership development does not thrive in a vacuum of silence. Ehrich emphasized that structured, supportive, and consistent feedback is how teams grow and maintain leaders who stick.

She suggested partners do this by

• Holding Weekly 1:1s where employees bring their own roadblocks or decision points.
• Post-project “lessons learned” reviews, whether the goal was hit or missed.
• Clearly articulated bumper lanes and KPIs so team members know what is expected, and where they can fail safely.

“There is no grit without self-care,” Ehrich added. “We are not building martyrs. We are building people with stamina to lead over time.”

This also means protecting time for leaders to reflect, recover, and grow. If feedback is constant but always corrective, burnout quickly follows. Instead, focus on feedback as a form of investment rather than one of critique.

Your Next Step Starts Now

Ehrich closed her session with a challenge for leaders in the room: what’s one thing you can do now to develop better leaders tomorrow? The call to action in the form of a question was answered in four suggestions:

• Ask your team: what is working and what is not?
• Join a peer group or industry cohort.
• Complete surveys and feedback loops within the organization.
• Use a simple, 12-month leadership calendar to introduce one new practice per month.

According to Ehrich and Pax8, the channel doesn’t just need more leaders – it needs better ones. People who not only hit their numbers but ones that build teams. People who embody their organization’s values when no one is watching. People who grow others alongside revenue.

Leadership development requires more than departmental commitment. It requires a healthy culture. And it starts, as Ehrich reminds us, with a single, courageous question:

What is one step I can take today to lead to a better tomorrow?

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