Leaders are developed, polished, and honed over time.
Do you know that even the top business leader Steve Jobs had several mentors including Robert Noyce, founder of the microchip? Considering the fast-evolving business environment and demanding circumstances, the time-honoured belief that a leader is born is now losing its relevance.
The well-known business coach, Hugo Heij says, “True leaders continue to develop their leadership skills throughout their careers, through learning and development materials and activities.”
Fortunately, organizations are now realizing this truth and hence more and more initiatives in the form of management leadership training programs and workshops are being taken. Self-motivated leaders are also proactively participating in leadership development programs to maximize their potential.
Leading a team, department or even a company successfully is incredibly challenging. To expect a person to be born with all of the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to lead and navigate through complex work processes seems unpractical. The solution lies in creating a roadmap for building solid leaders through intelligent leadership training and development programs.
Why Leadership Development Programs are Important
Successful leaders add value creation and create efficiencies that take the organization closer to its mission. Leadership skills training opens up greater avenues for talented resources as they learn the art of creating a vision for their team, delegating tasks effectively, building trust, handling conflicts, and more.
Effective leadership training programs offered by top leadership training companies in India like Pragati Leadership help drive multiple benefits by encouraging managers and leaders:
- To develop and implement dynamic strategies.
- To develop capabilities that increase the team’s work productivity.
- To come up with ideas that help decrease employee turnover and improve team spirit.
- To identify skill gaps and embrace versatile and impactful leadership styles.
- To improve communication skills, negotiations, influence, and conflict management.
- To develop a more flexible mindset with the ability to offer constructive feedback and accept negative feedback with an open mind.
Steps to Create Management Development Program
Step 1 # Assess your company leadership needs
Evaluate your company’s short-term as well as long-term strategic goals. For instance, if your business is focused on a fast-track growth model, then your leadership development program should be aligned to create leadership skills that meet the priorities. Alternatively, if you need skill replacements for retiring leaders then the management development program should be designed accordingly.
Reflecting on what leadership means to your business is important. You should understand what firm values you need the most in your leaders. Dive deeper into this. Don’t settle for vague ideas such as “go-getting” or “perceptive.” Traits like integrity, unbiased attitude, and decisiveness are some of the most valuable attributes that a smart business leader is expected to possess.
Step 2 # Find the right coach
A leader’s ability to motivate, encourage and guide a team to the path of success takes more than just commanding or ordering. It calls for a sound understanding of human behaviour & emotions and the ability to manage different personality types. Select educators wisely who can be inspiring mentors to your talent resource. You can take the help of experts specialized in crafting result-oriented management development program modules.
Collaborate with these educators and define the key skills that your managers need to learn and work upon. Outline the strategies and tools that your organization will use to teach these skills. For example, managers can be given hands-on coaching by industry veterans on how to handle a transformation process successfully.
Step 3 # Make it exciting for the learners
Many a time investment in training programs fails to yield desired results due to the lack of enthusiasm of the participants. Marketing the program and encouraging greater participation and visibility is critical for a positive outcome. Programs should be made attractive for the respective candidates by using the right communication channels. Employ tactics to excite and encourage learners to see the relevance and value of the learning initiative. You can rope in senior members for the communication efforts and even allow internal influencers at all levels to promote and share an interest in the program.
Step 4 # Measure the results of the program
Measuring the effectiveness of the learning program is essential to understand what value it has added to the organization. This can be done by taking into account both qualitative and quantitative metrics that directly or indirectly link to your business objectives. You can adopt the following steps for the same:
- Keep track of the people who took the program and find out their reactions to the program.
- Assess course usage, completion rates, & course pass rates.
- Conduct surveys to find out how frequently the participants are using skills and competencies they learned. To conduct this, you must carefully craft questions to reflect the application of learned competencies and knowledge.
Once the assessment is done, you’ll be in a better position to know what’s missing from the program. For example, there could be chances of learners still lacking the ability to inspire a team or building team trust.
If you’re an entrepreneur aspiring to take your business to the next level then capitalizing on leadership qualities should be on top of your mind. Establish effective management development strategies or consider onboarding outside help to create leaders who can make a difference.
Partner with Pragati Leadership and make the most of Strategic Leadership Development Program customized to meet your specific needs. Upscale the skills of your dynamic leaders and help them turn into your organization’s growth drivers!
