As a business owner, you might have a lot of employees and top talent. Some might want to fill leadership roles within your company. It can be tough to know who the right fit is.
As a manager or team leader, you must ensure that you use effective leadership strategies. They guide your team. It’s difficult to balance all of your responsibilities with the need to be an elite supervisor.
The good news is that there is a solution for both of you.
Leadership training is a way to encourage strong management skills within your business. A top-notch leadership development program sharpens your managers’ skill sets.
There are a lot of inadequate training programs out there. So keep reading for 10 essential skills that your leadership training should offer.
What is Leadership Training?
What is Leadership Training?Leadership training is a program or set of programs. They foster professional development for your employees. It forces them to be accountable for their growth and job title. They also understand their day-to-day requirements. It shows them the value of big-picture thinking.
The idea of a “leader” is quite vague and has many potential subsections. On a broad spectrum, it includes any employee with a tendency towards team leadership. Think of these workers like team captains.
Let’s narrow it down. A leader is also someone with explicit powers and responsibilities. These roles are clear in your organization’s hierarchy. Here are some of those specific leader examples:
- The general manager of a restaurant
- A sales manager for an insurance agency
- The marketing department head for a marketing firm
- An office manager in a medical office
As you can see, there are a lot of different types of leaders. Like we said before, this means that there are a lot of leadership training programs out there.
We’re here to help. Below, we pinpoint 10 top skills that leadership training should address.
Is Leadership Development and Training Worth Investing in?
Investing in leadership development and training might feel like a massive organizational change. This is especially true if you use the same programs that you’ve used for years.
Some companies even use the same training courses for the entire life of their business. And believe us when we say: you can tell.
The business world is like a shapeshifter. It changes a lot, which can be confusing and hard to keep up with. But you have to make the best effort to keep up anyways. Your market doesn’t wait for you to catch up before it moves on.
Management training is an investment, but your business reaps the rewards. Some benefits include:
- Increased productivity and performance throughout the whole team
- Retention of top talent. They will realize their leadership team cares about the company-wide success
- Encourage entry-level employees to grow to be like their well-trained superiors
- You won’t have to spend more on training new hires. Your current leaders will feel engaged and valued enough to stay
- The ability to adapt to change and grow with it
At the end of the day, if you invest more in first-class leadership courses, that’s more money in your pocket. These programs should value leadership training. The training can’t end when the last module is complete. It’s an ongoing process that nurtures leaders throughout their careers with your business.
Top 10 Essential Skills You Need to Develop in a Leadership Training
Infopro Learning did some research. Only 5 percent of organizations have “fully implemented development at all levels.”
They also note that businesses spend a lot on leadership development. They spend more here than on any other aspect of professional education. But 71 percent of organizations aren’t confident in their leaders.
So what should you look for in management training programs that won’t let you down? How do you know these courses won’t skyrocket expenses to little or no effect?
Look out for the following top 10 essential skills that your programs should develop.
1. Communication Skills
Communication is key to success in all relationships. Your business, though, will fail outright if its members don’t communicate.
Your leadership team development curriculum needs to turn communication into an action item.
Do you think your top talent will keep this crucial skill after they watch a few videos? Will they excel at communication after they snooze through a lecture? What about when they speed-read a piece of literature? If so, you’re mistaken.
Communication is not a static concept. You have to actualize it. Some common examples of active communication include:
- Engagement in daily meetings
- Active listening during phone and conference calls
- Contribution to individual conversations
- Acceptance of constructive criticism
- Timely responses to emails
Whatever leadership coaching you use, it must enhance communication skills and tactics.
2. Conflict Resolution
Certain training seminars overlook the importance of conflict resolution.
The simple fact is that conflict will come up in the workplace. That is only natural. What matters is how you deal with it.
There is room for creativity with conflict resolution. Not everyone responds to it the same way, so leaders have to take that into account. If you do, you cultivate a stronger environment for internal employees. This environment motivates them to be their best. Conflict resolution also eliminates negative stress, distrust among teams, and anxiety.
Have you ever experienced that kind of environment? If you feel anxious about unresolved conflict, you don’t even want to show up to work. You already left that company. Others probably followed suit.
Pretend that you always feel threatened by conflict in a professional environment. If so, you focus more on other job opportunities and less on the tasks at hand.
Well-constructed leadership training faces this head-on. It provides tools for successful conflict resolution.
3. Dealing With Change
We said earlier that the business world always changes. Your niche market changes with it. Don’t forget that your internal organization changes, too.
Both internal and external factors contribute to change:
- Employee turnover
- Company size
- Organizational growth
- Shifts in the stock market
- Political transitions
- Technological advances
- And more
It’s endless. So you need to ensure that you have a leadership team that stands up to these changes instead of running from them.
Leaders should act as a solid brick wall in the face of change. They should anchor the rest of their team and show them that each one of them has support.
These can be small changes or big ones. But even the most minuscule changes pile up into an unfamiliar blob.
Powerful training courses teach your leaders to identify and manage change. That happens before the change does. Your program should offer leadership activities that tackle change management techniques. They should boost your leaders’ vision and confidence.
4. Problem-Solving Skills
Like change and conflict, there will be problems within any company. They come in many shapes and sizes.
An unexpected situation could come up with a customer, or you have a PR nightmare in the making.
A capable problem solver spots an issue from a mile away. They can proactively solve the issue. If for whatever reason the problem grows anyways, they take a step back to examine it. Then they fix it with a calm attitude before it gets out of hand.
Problem-solving skills have many facets. Indeed gives us some examples of what it entails:
- Active listening
- Creative thinking
- Research and analysis
- Strong communication
- Reliability
- Team building
A leader with intelligent problem-solving skills means a team that reflects that capability.
These skills are vital for every career path, no matter how high or low in your business’s chain of command. Your employees have to spend enough time with their managers. Then, problem-solving skills rub off on everyone around. Imagine a whole team of thinkers and problem solvers. It leads to a more dynamic approach to company success.
5. Building Trust and Respect
If you train your leaders well, they build trust and respect. It happens both within and without. It’s a multilayered skill to master.
Let’s look at an example.
First, imagine that you own and run a retail store. One of your ill-trained sales supervisors doesn’t feel confident. They haven’t made a big sale in a couple of weeks. They communicate this to you and other team members for the sake of full disclosure and to find support.
If you don’t address the problem as a training opportunity and you let it grow, then grow it will. You might find that team morale is low. Other employees might not respect the business they work for. They could distrust the supervisor themselves.
But flip it around. Imagine now that you enroll your supervisor in an online leadership training course. They have a bad sales day. They still communicate this problem with you and the rest of the team, but they use it as a learning opportunity. They reference their leadership training and improve the next day.
Here, the supervisor addressed the problem and shared valuable lessons from their training. Now, the rest of the team trusts in the process. They also respect their supervisor because of their candid communication.
Ensure that your leadership team development builds trust and respect.
6. Motivating and Encouraging Employees
The above example is also one scenario that motivates and encourages employees.
But there are a lot more.
You should train leaders on how to motivate and encourage their whole team. They can do this through leadership coaching.
They take the valuable lessons they learn in their course and relay it to other workers.
There are endless chances to coach everyone around them. In fact, these moments happen daily.
Pretend that you operate a full-service IT company. One of your sales reps has a tough time with customer service. They talk in a monotone to all your customers, lack interest, and emit low energy all around.
If you have a sales manager who is not trained well, they might not even recognize that there’s a problem. That low energy discourages the rest of the sales department, the manager included.
But say your sales manager is enrolled in outstanding leadership training. They now have tools and resources to boost that sales rep’s customer service skills. This motivates them to try again every day.
7. Time and Energy Management
Time management leads right into energy management. If you manage your time well, you can complete more work before it’s due and lower stress levels because of it. Poor time management depletes your energy.
With the right leadership training, managers assign the right priority to various tasks. They are masters of delegation and focus and have a stellar reputation. They know how to discipline themselves to get everything done on time.
Time management is an ongoing learning and training process. It’s easy to forget how to do it if you don’t practice often. Choose your training material with that in mind.
8. Responsibility and Dependability
The best leaders hold themselves accountable. They hold their team accountable, too.
Picture a cell phone company’s customer service manager. They know that the level of customer service their reps provide reflects back on them.
Ace leaders are responsible for the good, the bad and the ugly inside their department and they own that. This sort of responsibility allows others to depend on them.
9. Good Decision-Making Skills
Leaders are the primary decision-makers for the daily happenings in their departments.
When they make a decision, they are quick on their feet. Their inherent bias doesn’t blind them. They know what decision is the best choice for their organization and everyone in it.
Your leadership development program needs to address decision-making. It must offer tools and step-by-step processes for this skill set.
10. Great Team Player
10. Great Team PlayerAbove all else, we know that no man is an island. No business is, either. The very essence of the word “leader” implies that they have people to lead.
So your leaders can’t be authoritarians on the team. They have to know when to collaborate, take suggestions, and inspire their employees.
Power-hungry leaders make unhappy organizations.
Let your training teach them how to support and strengthen the rest of your employees. Then, your business climbs to levels you didn’t know were possible.
Conclusion
At Selling Revolution, we understand your needs. We know that leadership training is more than a couple of certificate programs. Instead, it is the catalyst to:
- Business success
- Growth
- Increased revenue
- A five-star workplace environment
We cater to your needs with solutions that actually work. We can help your business with organizational leadership training and revolutionary sales advancement.
To learn more about how we build better businesses, you can read all about our qualified team. Also, check out our services that give you results and tips on how to prosper on our blog. When you’re ready to level up, book a call with us and we’ll tell you all that you need to know.