If you run a business, you know that you cannot do everything on your own. This is why you employ managers, supervisors and team members to help ensure the success of your company.
A strong team is key to growth and advancement in your market.
But if your managers are poorly trained, it can result in disaster for your business’s wellbeing. The good news is that you can provide management training to just about anyone, and you can learn and benefit, too. With proper professional development through these effective training programs, your business is sure to prosper.
What is Management Training?
What is Management Training?Management training is a series of set programs that leaders and managers alike can participate in. They teach members of your organization new tools and techniques and encourage them to hone the skill sets they already possess.
By doing so, these programs foster a sense of responsibility and competency within your employees. This leads to a dynamic structure inside the company and promotes all of the many moving parts to function as a well-oiled machine.
Luckily for you, there are a ton of training programs that cater to your field directly. More on that later.
Even if you are a business owner, you function as a manager as well. No matter what your position in a business, these management courses work to serve you.
If you are new in a leadership role or need a tool to brush up on the way you manage and lead, manager training is the way to both learn to be the best and refresh your outlook.
The first step to help you rise above the competition and encourage competition within yourself to beat your own goals is to understand what type of manager you are. There are five fundamental management styles, each one with advantages and disadvantages. We lay them out for you in order from most authoritative in decision making to most open to suggestions from the rest of the employees.
Identifying which one you bring you to pinpointing your strengths and weaknesses. You should build off of your strengths and improve your weaknesses. If you find that you are unhappy with what type of manager you are, the training programs we talk about later serve as a powerful tool to become the type of manager you want to be.
First, there are autocratic managers. Autocratic managers serve as sole decision-makers by not acknowledging what other team members may think when faced with a decision.
Autocratic managers have an advantage over other types of managers because they could be seen as capable and quick on their feet, especially during an emergency. However, if you identify with this type of management style, you face a distinct disadvantage when employees begin to doubt themselves since they might feel like you are not paying any attention to their ideas.
Some characteristics of this style are that you:
- Like to make decisions by yourself
- Are known to be determined in your decision making
- Perform well in emergency situations
Consultative managers, however, give a little bit more credence to their team members. Your attitude towards decision-making is still business-centric since the end decision is still yours to make. But since their main interest is in the betterment of the business, the rest of the employee’s matter.
If you think that you are a consultative manager, your biggest strength might be that your employees believe in-group loyalty. Your biggest weakness, though, is that some of your employees lack autonomy and initiative since they constantly rely on you.
As a consultative manager, you might:
- Wholeheartedly believe in loyalty as an asset
- Favor teamwork
- Constantly involve yourself in group decisions
A persuasive manager is influenced by the ideas of their team. They are without a doubt still the sole decision-maker but might collaborate with a lot of their employees’ thoughts on a matter.
In being a persuasive manager, you can foster a strong team since everyone feels like their opinions matter. Unfortunately, this style assumes that all of your employees are equally capable in making quality decisions and provide helpful support, which is not always the case.
If you think that you might be a persuasive manager, you could:
- Consult your team before making all decisions
- Put a lot of trust in others’ ideas
- Come to conclusions slowly
Democratic managers consult with each member of the team to make sure there is a majority agreement in every decision.
This is a lengthy process, especially in a fast-paced business environment. Though it can be beneficial when making complicated choices,it can also be a distinct con to use this management style as it eats up a lot of time and energy that could otherwise be spent elsewhere.
You might be a democratic manager if you:
- Like group meetings for all decisions, no matter what size
- Consider everyone’s thoughts on the matter at hand
- Find yourself using an intricate process to make decisions in your personal life, too
Finally, the laissez-faire manager really sits back while they let the employees make most decisions. This sort of manager lets themselves be used as more of a tool for the employees if they need help, but otherwise leaves them to their own devices and trusts that they will come up with the best practices for each individual choice.
Particularly common within start-up and tech companies, you could be a laissez-faire manager if you:
- Avoid micromanaging
- Foster independence within your team
- Almost completely entrust your employees to make the right choices
Management Training vs. Leadership Training
You probably hear the words “leader” and “manager” being thrown around synonymously. And they definitely share common factors. However, they are by no means the same thing.
Specifically, the key difference is that all effective managers serve as leaders. But leaders do not all serve as managers.
Let’s elaborate.
Being a leader is mostly a trait while being a manager is a career that shapes your lifestyle. Effective management uses the traits of a leader to develop, grow and maintain both themselves and their business.
So leadership training is absolutely a benefit to you as a manager, but it would serve you even better to supplement your leadership development with management training.
Types of Management Trainings
The programs you will come across while completing your training come in a variety of forms. Virtual or active learning, simulations and role-plays and lectures or demonstrations are just a few of the many examples of what you can expect. Any of this training will also build off of the essential leadership skills you already possess.
Project Management
Project managers are an integral part of business management. They often have to be certified in project management and create something out of nothing.
It is constantly evolving, so staying up to speed with the ins and outs of this field through training is very important.
The numbers are there, too. Almost 10 percent of each wasted dollar within a business is due to failed project management.
An ideal training course for this will provide you with tools to address people’s problems, issues of resources, how to budget appropriately and scope creeping.
Risk Management
To succeed in risk management, there are many areas that need to be covered.
Risk managers need to constantly brush up on analytical skills and thinking, organizational detail, communication, mathematical skills, training and upkeep of new and existing software, financial data comprehension and spreadsheet use.
While that may seem like a lot of training, that is just the beginning. This is why it is so crucial to take part in risk management training and take corrective action when you feel as though you are falling behind. There are always options out there for you to stay at the top of your game.
Strategic Planning
There are two vital parts to strategic planning training.
Analysis of both internal and external business data comes into play constantly, so this sort of training teaches you when and how to ask appropriate questions to yourself and of your business to understand how to succeed.
Leadership training is important within strategic planning management training, too. Since your team is directly involved with reaching your project’s goals in this management path, you have to learn or relearn how to properly lead them.
Change Management
The general goal in change management training programs is to grow within the field so that you can grow your company and its reach. That starts with you.
Some of the many skills you need to employ in the workplace to succeed are those of communication and listening, research so that you can learn from others, strategy, leadership and analytical competence.
These all feed into one another. For example, when you understand how to analyze company progress, you can then actively listen to the concerns of those around you and then communicate how to implement change.
Financial Management
As a finance manager, you are an important employee for every step of almost everything that is happening at your company. Without the right finances, not much can be done.
Both accounting and financial knowledge are required of you. You need to comprehend and evaluate budget, cost and necessary forecasting. Since it can be hard to always be quick and aware of everything that goes into this, it will always serve you to cultivate these skills with a program.
Managing Talent
Talent management is very cyclical. You are with your prospect for essentially every step of the way, from recruitment to their ultimate success, and their ultimate success weighs heavily on you.
This is why you need to analyze their success, encourage their process and efficiently onboard the talent.
Talent management is also key to business advancements, so be sure to stay in the loop on the newest developments in your field.
Measurement and Metrics
If a business does not have someone studying the results of different processes, then they cannot know if any of those processes are successful or worth the time and effort.
If you work in measurement and metrics, though, you need to make sure that you are worth the time and effort so that each party prospers.
The best way to do this is to engage in measurement and metrics training. There are new models always emerging for you to adopt and a huge amount of original ones, making it easy to forget which way is best.
Performance Management
Hiring internally and promoting from within is beneficial to cost and time. But if you do not know who is performing well, this is a moot point. That is where performance managers come in.
By assessing the performance levels of internal employees, you give an equal chance to potential team member growth.
Additionally, you need to stay sharp at the skills associated with your management position. There are many complaints about these types of managers, so by training often and well, you can ensure that your company will value you.
Coaching and Mentoring
Coaching and MentoringCoaching and mentoring manager training gives you the tools to succeed in familiarizing new and current employees with company goals and expectations.
Not only is this skill set necessary to grow revenue and improve your population of dedicated employees, it can also be fun.
Sometimes you might feel jaded when you are mentoring and coaching employees who lack productivity. But these training programs can truly shift your perspective and give you a refreshing look at why you got into this field, to begin with.
Communication Training
As you probably noticed, communication is a skill required for all leaders and managers alike.
Though it may sound simple, it is easy to forget how to effectively communicate.
Compliance
Compliance management is, legally speaking, probably the most important training you can do.
It is, essentially, making sure that your company is adhering to the ethical and legal requirements it is bound by. Since statutes and laws are constantly changing, it is of the utmost importance to stay up to date.
You should also be changing employee guidelines to reflect these external changes.
Decision Making
Business performance relies almost entirely on the decisions you make.
Like we talked about earlier, the type of manager you are comes from how you make decisions. If you want to change what type of manager you are, you can work on changing your decision-making process to become the leader you need and want to be through this kind of training.
How to Pick the Best Management Training Program for You
By now, you should realize how much management training matters in the well-being of your company. We know that you now have an endless number of programs to choose from.
When you have reached the step where you are trying to actually pick, you can ask yourself some questions: which of these programs is directly related to my field of management? Which ones are broad, but will end up helping me? Which programs have the best reviews? What do I excel at and where can I improve?
Where you see room for improvement, you should see an opportunity for growth and choose accordingly.
If you are ready to grow, Selling Revolution is ready to teach you how. All you need to do is book a call with us and we will lead you to success.