More and more companies these days are seeking for help from various firms that offer leadership development. This is because they believe that the trainings that they give would be beneficial not only to their individual employees but for the betterment of the company in general.
Leadership development is very important for a company because it helps the employees and its leaders to be updated on how to make the company stronger in terms of strengthening its human resources. It is also important because the activities during leadership development reintroduce the employees various concepts that will help them adjust in the company and how to deal with its leaders.
New trends in leadership development training
As defined, leadership development pertains to activities that aim to enhance the skills of leaders of individuals or those that belong in an organization. It is usually categorized into two that include individual leadership development or collective leadership development. Individual leadership training focuses on the behavior of the leader when it comes to achieving the goals for the company and in interacting with employees.
The collective leadership development on the other hand refers to the entire process of enhancing leadership skills. This involves not only the leader him or herself but also include those that surround that person including the people that he or she works closely with. Here, interpersonal skills, social skills and networking skills are assessed to gauge the effectiveness of the leader.
Before, leadership development is conducted through traditional setting which is formal and more on theories on. These are usually through seminars wherein participants usually sit down the whole day listening to lectures and jotting down notes from Powerpoint presentations prepared by the speakers.
Now, there have been drastic changes when it comes to leadership development because it is less formal and more interactive. Aside from prepared presentations, leadership development these days are more personal because it focuses on the issues that hinder the person from bringing out his or her inner leadership skills.
Successful leadership development training
To ensure the success of leadership development training, an effective program is needed. It should be designed in way that integrates a range of developmental experiences over a given period of time. The program should also include monitoring scheme and gathering of feedback.
In making leadership development training effective, it should also combine experiential classroom style programs and business school style coursework. It should also include reflective journaling, executive coaching, and well as continuous mentoring. It should also involve goal setting that should follow an assessment of key developmental needs. Then, the evaluation of how goals can be achieved after a given period of time.
An effective leadership development training should include not only have the component of experiential learning but should also focus on self efficacy which include the right training and coaching as well as visioning which aims to develop the ability of the leader to formulate a clear image. This image should reflect the aspired future of the organization based on skills of the leader that heads it.
Leadership development is one of the keys to keep leaders of a certain organization moving. This is one thing that helps them achieve goals that they have set for themselves and for the company.
However, not all leaders of companies realize this early on that is why they are having problems with other heads of the company. To be able to maximize the potentials of leaders in an organization, experts say that it is very important for employees—especially the heads of each department—to undergo training on leadership development.
Key to effective training
People who are in the field of leadership development would agree that leaders who want to be effective should realize how big self-motivation can create in their lives. Studies show that although there are countless advantages of self-motivation, it's saddening to think that many leaders still don't know how to adhere with it.
For those who would want to get started in effective leadership development training, here are some strategies that you can use:
- Tell your participants to think one step ahead. If they are able to do this, they now have the best foundations of an effective leader and it would be easier for them to take tougher and bigger problems or challenges along the way. By thinking one step ahead, they can also plan carefully which will create lesser room for mistakes.
- Encourage the leaders to know themselves. This would enable them to take note of their weaknesses and find ways on how to overcome, manage, and deal with them. The same works for their strengths because they might even find a way on how to improve them.
- Ask them to find time to share and help others. Being a leader directly involves other people for it to become effective. Leaders will know if they are effective if they can find ways to share their experiences as well as the ideas to others so they can influence them.
- Persuade them to continue learning. Effective leaders don’t stop learning new things because this enables them to acquire new skills that can help them achieve the goals that have been set by the company or their fellow leaders. During leadership development training, you can encourage your participants to learn different things so these will open up their world to other opportunities that they never thought that exist.
- Encourage them to have positive thinking. Leaders are usually burdened by negative thoughts and feelings. Because of these, they are easily swayed and would eventually commit mistakes. During leadership development training, you can help your participants to develop positive thinking by telling them that it is not healthy to dwell on things that are beyond their control.
These are just some of the strategies that you can use to make leadership development effective. Although majority of these are proven, the overall success will also depend on what type of clients and participants you have and how cooperative they are when it comes to the training proper.