- Geekmaster
- 2021-02-15 10:12:39
- 18 minute(s)
7 Key Benefits To Leverage Leadership Training Programs
You are aspiring to become a leader. Or you might already be a leader in your current organization. Why then would you need to take a leadership training program? Are there key benefits of such leadership programs?
Great leaders are unforgettable because they inspire you and motivate you to achieve your business goals.
So to create a great leader it is imperative for every organization no matter it is small or large to conduct leadership training. The success of leadership training depends upon how it is done. When it is done right, it creates many great leaders.
Though you may like to believe you can survive with the leadership skills you have developed naturally, there are many benefits of undergoing formal leadership training.
Though no one is born a natural leader, we must all undertake progressive leadership training in order to develop the required leadership competency. Effective leaders are those who build on their experience by enrolling in a leadership training program.
Why are great leaders so scarce? It’s not because most managers are incapable of leadership. It’s simply that most managers aren’t getting the guidance they need before they’re placed in leadership roles.
To be consistent with the visions, values, and strategies of most organizations, managers need to receive information on how to strengthen their capability to meet their organization’s goals. Accordingly, if those skills and capabilities are left unattended, they will not achieve the desired impact and effectiveness.
A lack of leadership development impacts your organization in many ways.
It can result in high turnover, low morale, absenteeism, lost productivity, and more. If this describes individuals in your organization, it may be time to address the leadership development issue.
Conversely, training your employees in current leadership skills will help them to develop themselves. And your investment will translate into you having a staff that is overall better at leading.
When was the last time the company you work for offered leadership training to employees that didn’t already hold positions somewhere near the top? Who says leadership training should be reserved exclusively for company leaders? And what might happen if leadership training was offered to all employees instead? Let’s find out the key benefits to train your employees on leadership skills.
- Benefit #1: Leadership Training Reduces Employee Churn
- Benefit #2: Leadership Training Improves Productivity
- Benefit #3: Leadership Training Nurtures Future Leaders
- Benefit #4: Leadership Training Mends Skills Gap
- Benefit #5: Leadership Training Eases Decisions Making
- Benefit #6: Leadership Training Boosts Employee Morale
- Benefit #7: Leadership Training Drives Change
Benefit #1: Leadership Training Reduces Employee Churn
No matter the industry, employee turnover is costly. It’s important to keep employee turnover rates low to prevent unnecessary waste of money and resources. This reality highlights the importance of leadership and development in the workplace, since its presence (or lack thereof) will separate you from other competitors.
By offering corporate leadership training, you give them one more reason to happily stay (or join) your company.
75% of people voluntarily leaving jobs don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses! That’s right, employees leave ineffective leaders. By investing in leadership training, you can retain your people and reduce costly recruitment expenses.
Investing in leadership training is one way to retain your employees, especially your top talents.
It’s a wise investment that will give you higher returns in terms of increased productivity and strengthening your company’s foundation. When it comes to attracting, and then keeping, talent, developing your people, helping them strengthen their creativity and leadership skill set and increasing talent engagement and performance is visible internally and externally. It boosts productivity, collaboration and overall work satisfaction.
The best type of leaders who those continually thank employees, provide actionable feedback and are positive have employees who are more likely to be highly efficient and engaged.
This is because the behavior of a leader really impacts team culture. As a result, leaders who ignore staff, criticize mistakes or belittle their team members are likely to end up with unmotivated, disengaged staff. This is a major blow to productivity.
Leadership development programs increase employee engagement and reduces costs associated with turnover.
When you give employees a role in your company’s future, they respond with loyalty. Developing your own people also is less expensive than bringing on new recruits, as it doesn’t require you to spend money on advertising, headhunter fees, HR costs, etc. In terms of turnover, the most common reason for employee exodus is a bad manager, that is, poor leadership.
Let’s say; you are a team leader. But, the attrition rate of your team is very high. Could your leadership be a reason?
It has often been found that interpersonal conflicts with the manager are one of the main reasons why employees call it quits. Leadership training can help you identify your drawbacks and understand the expectations of your employees under your headship.
Employees that know that their employer invests in them work harder. They strive to work more effectively.
The attrition rate will dramatically reduce with leadership training programs as a means of incentive. Lower attrition rates are always a good indicator of a well-run and thriving business. Employee retention can also mean that more employees can reach the level of maturity for senior roles.
Benefit #2: Leadership Training Improves Productivity
Any leader is expected to offer and produce desired results. In most cases, leadership training sessions offer leaders an opportunity to learn new production techniques, such as how to leverage technology and human resources in the workplace setting. Some of the most important ingredients that help facilitate productivity in the workplace include upholding emotional intelligence, empathy, and time management.
The right, consistent leadership can increase the productivity of your people. At its primal level, leadership is about understanding your people emotionally.
Daniel Goleman states that emotional intelligence is critical to the success of a leader. Emotional intelligence involves being smart about emotions and using empathy effectively to empower and engage employees. Leadership training that encompasses emotional intelligence can hone these emotional skills in your people managers and leaders.
Emotional intelligence means less finger-pointing and blaming when problems arise.
Showing your emotional intelligence as a leader can help influence your employees to focus on problem-solving instead. Leadership training means your company will have more people on board that can handle volatile scenarios in a calm manner.
By training your leaders in effective leadership skills, you can increase the productivity of your workforce.
Leaders are there to provide direction to staff and ensure they are performing at or above expectations. It the case of a shortfall, the leaders you’ve trained will have the ability to assess problems, manage situations, and provide sensible solutions.
Leadership training creates an opportunity for employees to reach new heights and achieve set goals.
With this, performance is enhanced as employees strive to develop their skills through the invested training. This allows employers to identify high potential employees who aspire to unlock their full potential. Employees are more likely to stay focused and increase their performance levels when they are working towards their goal.
The right consistent leadership can increase the productivity of your people.
When you know how to reach out to your followers and align them with work goals, it increases their productivity. In turn, your productivity also gets a boost. When your team or subordinates trust your leadership skills, they get motivated to work better and harder.
Benefit #3: Leadership Training Nurtures Future Leaders
Without adequate leadership training, it is hard for future leaders to be driven. Leaders are meant to be the thought powerhouses to which employees and associates turn for advice and direction. They need the abilities to communicate well and to inspire and encourage their colleagues.
You need to be strategic about developing and nurturing future leaders. Without strategy, leadership roles are often given to the most forward candidates with dominant personalities.
Quality leadership is a combination of the right qualities and the right training. Identify those who have what it takes and provide them with targeted leadership training. Nurturing future leaders supports succession planning and offers career pathways to employees, further increasing retention.
Any leader in a given position serves for a limited duration of time.
Through leadership training, a good leader gets an opportunity to understand the importance of nurturing upcoming leaders. The new league of leaders can help to take up leadership responsibilities after gaining the necessary competency. The broad concept of nurturing leaders is not easy and, therefore, requires professional training.
One of the main benefits of conducting leadership training is that it offers many opportunities to nurture more great leaders for the future in your company.
Nurturing leaders support succession and pathways to many other employees in your company who are eager to go to the next dominant level. An additional advantage of offering leadership training to everyone is that it increases the chances of discovering talent that has existed under your own roof the whole time. This will help increase your company’s percentage of roles that could be rapidly filled by promoting from within.
When planning ahead, it’s vital that you train staff to actually be leaders.
Ideally, you want your workers to stay with your company and this means you should focus on developing their skills and ensuring that one day they will have what it takes to be leaders themselves.
The ideal traits behind leadership have almost nothing relating to loudness and flamboyancy.
And therefore staff members shouldn’t be considered based on how outgoing they are. It would be wise to encourage all staff members to enroll in courses based on leadership so that when the time arises, you can rest assured that everyone has the capacity to be a great leader.
📚 Additional reading
Benefit #4: Leadership Training Mends Skills Gap
With increasing digitization, employees need to adapt while their soft skills mostly take a back seat, especially among newbies and frontline managers. That’s why providing leadership training not only keeps your employees abreast of the latest techniques in managing modern digital-age people, but also inculcates empathy, respect, thoughtfulness, and good communication.
Leadership training focuses on empowering potential leaders with essential skills, techniques, and values on how they can become more productive and focused.
The training sessions also impart self-confidence and wisdom, which enables leaders to become well-rounded when it comes to decision-making. The self-confidence is important in enabling the leader to win the hearts of the subordinates.
Above all, leadership builds character. Honesty, integrity, humility, patience, perseverance, self-discipline — all of these are developed in the crucible of leadership.
The greatest leaders of all time have been those who learn to serve others with deep love and respect and a desire for the greater good. As you learn to develop your leadership skills in leadership team development seminars, or other methods, the effects will spill over into all of your relationships and all aspects of your life.
Becoming a leader is tough. Continuing to remain one and also doing it successfully is even more challenging.
Leadership is a trait hard to find. As a number of companies have shifted their focus to hybrid roles — a mix of technical and soft skills, leadership is one skill that they expect from their employees. So a leadership course should be providing you with skills on this front.
When discussing leadership development, it’s important to address the separation between what employers want and what individuals can actually do.
The desire to mend this skills gap has become more popular as organizations realize how serious the issue is. Simply by dedicating time for individuals to focus on their skills, the gap can shrink. The best way to do this is by implementing a leadership development program as a platform for these individuals to learn.
Benefit #5: Leadership Training Eases Decisions Making
Leadership training can result in better decision-making. How? Because leaders functioning at a high level of emotional intelligence have the perspective to make informed, intelligent business decisions. For that reason alone, you can consider your leadership training investment returned.
Leaders make decisions on a daily basis. Sometimes, making such a decision requires much consultation and due diligence.
Many such decisions affect more than one person in the workplace while also providing strategic direction for the company. With so much weight on their shoulders, leaders need to be competent and prudent in their decision-making. Such competency can only be gained from leadership training programs.
Successful leaders have a clear, sound vision of where they want to go.
Training gives you the chance to step back from your daily responsibilities, to examine your organization, and to think about how the future may unfold. You will be able to communicate your vision in a way that truly motivates the people around you.
Leadership training doesn’t have to imply that it’s only useful for those in charge of leading others.
People who are leaders exercise self-reliance, sufficiency, and discipline. Employees who have the chance to learn about and apply this forward thinking don’t just become more decisive. The decisions they make are also more consistently the best ones they could’ve made in a given situation.
Leadership training programs will equip your people with the right tools to handle situations better as they arise.
When people are given tools, they can deal with scenarios more effectively. Situations that are normally handled by supervisors and managers can be dealt with. Empowering your people at different levels ensures that when they reach the management stage they are ready.
Intelligent and strategic decisions are the daily tasks of a leader. These decisions cost jobs, money, and time.
Better decisions are made when the leader is already comfortable with his or her leadership style. Training is one of the best ways to make individual leaders develop the style with which their subordinates will respond to. Training, as well as the experience of it firsthand, makes the most effective leaders. Those that combine these are often earmarked to succeed.
Leadership training helps in preparing potential leaders to make tough decisions that are right for their team.
Training can help to teach people how to analyze a situation and make an informed decision based on the contextual factors at play. This is particularly important in fast-paced industries where decisions need to be made on the spot.
Benefit #6: Leadership Training Boosts Employee Morale
We all like to know how we are progressing in our roles, receiving praise when it is well-earned and constructive feedback as necessary. In fact, 43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week compared to only 18% of those with low engagement.
Leadership training results in better employee engagement. Great leaders create a sense of giving feedback which in itself a great skill.
The behavior of a leader really impacts team culture. Investing in leadership development sends a message to your people that you care about them and inspires them to meet and exceed performance expectations. Programs that include mentoring and coaching can boost employee morale and transform your company from a workplace to a great place to work.
Leadership development programs also reinforce a company’s vision, mission and values by setting an example.
Part of leadership training is about teaching you the power to influence those around you. You will learn how to motivate your team and how to discriminate between good and bad sources of power, and between strong and weak methods of influence.
Good leaders acknowledge their mistakes and encourage others to learn from them. They make it their duty to keep everyone productive.
Finally, they pass on this accountability to create a strong culture of accountability throughout the workplace. Leadership development creates a higher level of accountability in leaders. Through their development they gain a clear understanding of why a culture of accountability is important to their success.
Leaders with the biggest egos and heads often get stuck on projects. Subordinates have more chances to fail and even those with potential often quit before even realizing what they can do.
Managers that do not have proper training will only be content with followers. People who can plan ideas on their own will never allow themselves to work under such leaders. Bad team leaders will generally result in a poorly executed project almost all the time.
Your leaders will recognize the importance of employee engagement if you train them in leadership early on.
A good leader will put in place a feedback loop system to nip any problem in the bud. The company as a whole benefit with a full feedback loop system in place. The way it works is that the feedback starts with the manager and subordinate talking. This can be negative or positive feedback and the loop is closed when action is taken by both parties.
Benefit #7: Leadership Training Drives Change
Effective leadership comes in handy not only during day-to-day business operations but particularly during critical times such as drastic change, accidents, workforce reductions, corporate restructuring, political upheaval and personal tragedy.
Leadership development helps companies navigate challenging times by increasing people’s ability to respond rapidly in unpredictable business environments.
The business environment is constantly changing, and as such, leaders need to be able to recognize this change and adapt to it. In reality, workers only have 30 to 50 percent of the information they need to make the right decisions in any situation.
A commitment to continued learning can spark innovation across your organization.
For example, extending leadership training programs to entire teams may facilitate discussions about new ideas for the company. It also helps employees think more strategically about opportunities for improvement, adapt to future challenges, and expand their leadership and management skills. Quality leadership training fosters a culture of continuous growth and improvement — which brings out the best in your people.
Having a workforce that has been indiscriminately trained in leadership skills is the key to mitigating information risk.
Information risk in this context refers to the risk that builds up when a single person is privy to knowledge, and others don’t share this same information. If something were to happen to this singular leader that results in them no longer being able to work for the company, then the void in knowledge left behind is massive, and the company can no longer run smoothly.
You can’t fight change. In fact, change is probably the only aspect of business that is certain.
Change management training isn’t something you invest in to fix a problem, but should be a critical component of your leadership development program, meaning every leader — from the frontline up to the executive offices — is equipped to guide their teams through change from the get-go.
Wrapping Up
Leadership training that actually takes hold and produces a workforce full of leaders is not something you can design and put in place overnight. It’s an investment. It takes time to show returns.
Actually, leadership training is not a risky investment.
Well implemented, effective leadership training will bear fruit. And the sweetness that is higher productivity, an improved work environment, and increased profits, is fruit that no business should pass on.
Now you know more about the benefits of providing leadership training for your employees.
You are in a position to make them more self-sufficient, confident, and skilled in handling different work scenarios, challenges, and changes in your company. Of course, your business can also benefit further from retaining your employees and increasing productivity in the workplace.
Leadership training could be one way that you inadvertently boost profit and employee happiness all at the same time.
Most business owners haven’t undergone any leadership training and this can mean they are hindering the growth of their own business by not connecting with their staff in the way that they should. Trained leaders can very easily enhance and streamline workflows and ensure that their employees are happy, healthy and inspired.
Investing in your employees really is investing in your company. That is the only way to look at leadership training in the workplace.
If a leader makes a right call, that’s great. But wrong calls can cost businesses a lot of time and money. By training your employees, they will gain the ability to make better, more informed, and resolute decisions. Do you plan to attend a leadership training program soon? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Thanks for helping me understand that leadership training cannot just happen overnight. With that in mind, a leadership development program should be entrusted to professionals when you need them for your company. Relying on professionals will surely give you the results you want and need for your company’s growth and development to expand more.
Hi Mia,
Really appreciate that my content resonates with your own leadership goals.
You got it. Company’s growth is directly linked with its ability to train new leaders who know how to empower people toward excellence.
FYI, I’m currently working on a leadership program (The Spin Leadership Program), which aim for helping people to hone their leadership skills, especially in our VUCA world.
Thanks again for your feedback and don’t hesitate to ask if you want some additional tips and tricks about leadership.
Laurent.
Thanks for pointing out that to create a great leader, it is imperative for every organization, no matter how small or large, to conduct leadership training. I would imagine that any business owner would want to have a productive and dependable team to increase sales. I think they should look for a leadership development keynote speaker who can motivate and mentor their employees effectively.
Hi Haily,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Training is effectively part of helping employees to growth, as persons then as leaders.
That’s exactly what I aim for on this website, paving the way to leadership training for organizations of any scale. And I’m really proud that this article did resonate with you.
Laurent.
It’s great that you talked about leadership training and how it improves your workplace’s efficiency! Recently, one of my cousins said he’s interested in hiring a professional to increase his team’s skillset! I believe any business could benefit from working with a leadership training program, so I’ll be sure to suggest it to my cousin! Thanks for the advice on how a company could grow with leadership training!
Hi Eli,
Leadership training is no more an option for organizations to keep growing.
There is a war of talent these days and winning it suggests hiring people who will become good leaders for their people and teams.
To be honest, that’s the reason why I started this blog a couple of years ago.
Research showed that many organizations lack of leadership development programs, not to mention the fact it impedes their economic growth.
Don’t hesitate to reach out on LinkedIn, I’m looking after hearing from you 🙂
Laurent.
I do agree when you shared that it is important to train your employees in current leadership skills so you are able to help them develop themselves. Besides, you can ensure that they can reach your maximum potential to serve the best for your company. I would like to think if a company needs to develop its employees, it should consider working with a reliable service that can provide leadership development training.
I couldn’t agree more Taylor, leadership training shouldn’t be an option these days, people need to be driven to embrace the mission of the organization.
And it shouldn’t be understated, leadership is not only a skill, it’s a mix of attitude and mindset.
In particular, millenials and Gen-Z are willing to be managed by true leaders who embody strength, empathy and courage.
There are too many managers who do nothing but bark orders without taking into account that their behavior is destroying the workplace and make it toxic.
thanks for info
It was interesting to learn about how continuous growth and improvement can be fostered with the right management and leadership skills. My cousin has been looking for some ways to help her encourage her teammates to be more productive. Taking some management training from a professional could help her to get the skills she wants.
You’re spot on, sometimes we need help to getting ahead whether it is our personal or professional life.
thanks for sharing such beautiful content.
Thank you for sharing such amazing information, looking forward to reading more stuff like this. Great share, Amazing write-up. Also Check <a href=”https://www.shellye.opengrowth.com/”>high performance teams</a>
My friend wants to make sure that he can lead his business properly. It makes sense that he might want to get the proper leadership training to help out with that! That way, he can learn how to keep his employees motivated.
You got it right, leadership is one of the cornerstones of any business.