Everyone in an organisation should possess apt skills to become a leader. Fortunately, these skills can be attained through leadership training that offers employees a clear pathway to take up managerial roles.
Leadership development training is focused on enhancing the collective capacity of an organisation’s employees to effectively engage in leadership roles and processes. So, what should one really expect from leadership training programs?
Why is leadership development important for organisations?
Leadership development constitutes specialised activities systematically designed to improve leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities within an organisation. Leadership training is imperative for organisations for the following reasons:
- Establishing and keeping a competitive advantage as good leaders inspire subordinates to deliver excellent performance.
- To realise a positive effect on recruitment and retention of employees.
- To equip leaders with skills to help them improve the productivity of their teams.
- To enhance employee engagement with a focus on sketching out a clear path for employees who seek to assume future leadership roles.
- For succession planning and skills progression by equipping teams with relevant skills to not only advance in their careers but also to assume ever bigger roles in an organisation.
- To ensure that any leadership gaps are avoided in the face of change in the leadership panel.
- To ensure a positive return on investment (ROI) with profitable business decisions and strategies.
- To identify potential leaders capable of navigating through challenges in unpredictable business situations.
Overall, leadership development increases an organisation’s ability to deal with gaps in the talent pipeline, boosts employee engagement and minimises costs associated with turnover.
What can an organisation expect from a leadership training course?
Various organisations keep leadership development trainings to build leaders from within their existing manpower. The following are some results that can be expected:
1. Increased employee productivity
Trained professionals ensure greater levels of productivity and efficiency. This, in turn, leads to higher revenue and profit margins. Effective leadership training pushes employees to set new goals and reach new professional heights.
As a consequence of this desire for development, employees can recognise areas for growth and continually work to develop them. Thus leading to a more productive workforce.
2. Increased employee confidence
Unfortunately, not all employees have the same levels of confidence in their jobs and can shy away from giving productive input. In fact, some employees aren’t typically confident in their ability to step into leadership roles.
Leadership training courses can help give them the confidence to lead and handle any leadership challenge that comes their way.
3. Achieving leaders from within the organisation
Organisations need to always be strategic about nurturing and developing future leaders. Without a clear strategy, leadership roles are usually given to candidates with dominant personalities.
In practice, quality leadership isn’t only about personality but the right qualities, and the right training. As such, leadership training can help identify team members who have what it takes to lead and provide them with targeted leadership tools. Furthermore, the strategic nurturing of future leaders supports succession planning and further increasing retention.
4. Open communication and feedback
Comprehensive leadership training courses create a space for open communication and feedback within organisations. Promoting two-way communication between managers and employees by opening the floor for employees to easily ask questions and better understand a company’s leadership structure.
As a result, building organisational trust, fostering inclusion and creating better unity. Furthermore, employee feedback helps measure a leadership training program’s effectiveness.
5. Higher employee retention and reduced turnover
To save re-hiring and onboarding costs, it’s vital to always retain employees. Leadership training can help with engaging employees to increase the likelihood of them sticking around long-term.
The logic is that when equipped with development opportunities, employees are incentivised to take on more responsibility in the company, as needed. Overall, leadership training can create a sense of loyalty in employees, keep them vested in the company, and remain satisfied in the current work environment.
6. Enhancing the existing managerial skills of employees
Leadership training courses should ideally teach managers new strategies to improve their performance. And, in turn, this trickles down to the overall performance of the business.
Additionally, by learning new strategies, employees can become better aligned with their roles as future leaders. Consequently, employee engagement increases as employees feel more motivated by deploying new skills into their existing roles.
By the same token, managers also develop a sense of responsibility for their active participation as they enhance their talents and abilities in management.
7. Building a healthier corporate culture in the long term
Leadership training courses have been proven to substantially improve corporate culture by fostering an optimistic influence on organisations and boosting morale.
8. Understanding of team building
Team building is the usual end product of practical leadership training courses. This is because such courses convey to employees that they are valuable to the company.
In essence, employees who feel valued will feel more connected to their work. Leadership training thus helps engage employees to form an emotional commitment to their workplace.
9. Better decision-making abilities
Leadership training programs can result in better decision-making by helping leaders function at a high level of emotional intelligence. Consequently, existing company leaders attain the ability to make intelligent business decisions with a wider and more informed perspective.
What can employees expect from a leadership training course?
It is not just the organisation that benefits from leadership training. Individual employees also stand to gain in terms of skills and careers when undertaking these workshops. Here’s what the employees can expect to achieve:
1. Learning and using different leadership styles
From leadership training, employees can learn how to connect with others on similar career journeys as them. For example, discussing challenges or concerns which opens up their minds and widens their perspectives.
Such collective and intentional engagements facilitated by leadership training can get employees’ input to address and manage future issues that may arise.
Check out Leader Vs Boss: How To Transform Your Management Style For Success?
2. Obtaining a sound vision for organisational goals
Leadership training courses create an atmosphere for growth with discussions, debates, and the free exchange of ideas with others to strengthen a company’s vision. The insights gathered during leadership training exercises can offer insights and actionable feedback that can be challenging to come by when trying to develop leadership skills on your own.
3. Long-term success and career growth
Long-term success and career growth are the dreams of every competent employee. And this has much to do with marketing oneself to potential employers.
Leadership training courses help expose employees to skills that set them apart in the job market. As a result, they can have the confidence to shine through during job interviews, internally or externally, with accomplishments that surpass those of all other applicants.
4. Boosted confidence
Self-confidence is a survival skill, in the working world and social life.
Leadership courses can help build one’s public speaking capabilities with group exercises that build confidence in oneself and their opinions, even when faced with opposition.
Furthermore, in situations of conflict, leadership training courses can help teach essential skills to look at work challenges from a different perspective. Thus, adding clarity to difficult conflict situations whilst promoting wisdom and facilitating self-confidence.
5. New skill development
Effective leaders understand how to set direction, coach colleagues, design teams, deliver feedback, and build robust and trusting relationships with teammates.
Leadership training can help management to learn how to better influence and empower others whilst navigating stressful situations with employees. Additionally, managers will get a better sense of when to delegate tasks in a collaborative setting.
Read about: 14 Effective Employee Development Ideas For 2023
6. Improved peer communication
Leadership training courses improve how employees communicate within their teams, as some team members sometimes expect their peers to act and think as they do.
In fact, some leadership training course modules are designed to teach employees how to observe that different people respond, accept and act diversely to a single situation. As a result, employees become wiser and more skilled in how they communicate across different ages, backgrounds, traditions, and cultures.
7. Better emotional intelligence
Effective leaders possess emotional intelligence. The capacity to understand and control their own emotions, and the emotions of others, then respond to them positively.
In busy and stressful environments, emotionally intelligent leaders can handle the pressures of their jobs more effectively whilst meaningfully engaging and interacting with employees to empower them to overcome challenges.
8. Improved risk assessment
Business comes with an inherent risk of loss or failure. As such, it’s imperative to therefore train future and current leaders to risk management. Fortunately, effective Leadership Training Programs offer modules to teach strategic vision and risk management skills.
Key takeaways
In conclusion, leadership training is mission-critical for all businesses seeking an edge over their contemporaries. Its importance cannot be understated as the need for suitable leaders becomes dire and urgent with companies continually seeking exponential growth.
Furthermore, new challenges will also arise as old leaders leave and new teams emerge. This means that companies need to be equipped with mechanisms and pipelines of well-trained professionals to step in and take charge.
Fortunately, effective leadership training helps ensure that organisations sustain a dynamic pool of in-house talent to secure competitive advantage and achieve desired profitability results.
While leadership development can be complex and complicated, every forward-looking business should adopt a program that matches its business needs and culture.
Accredited institutes like GrowthAcademyAsia can help create customised leadership development training to suit the specific needs of an organisation and its employees.
Check Out Our Training Programs: Leadership Training Hong Kong | Leadership Development Program
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Co-founder and Managing Director
Stuart Harris, co-founder of Growth Academy Asia, has a vast background in corporate events and learning & development. As co-founder and managing director at Team Building Asia, Stuart has developed a large network of international clients over the past 20 years and brought an innovative perspective to the more traditional elements of team building, which lead to the founding Growth Academy Asia. With GAA, he aspires to disrupt the L&D industry with the immersive VR organisational and leadership programmes.