What is the Purpose of a Leadership Development Program?

In today’s workplace with diverse employees and new challenges, leadership can come from many different walks of life. They may hold varying experiences in the professional and post-secondary world. This diverse background can be a great asset to the executive team, but it may mean your leadership team needs the training to serve your overall business effectively. The workplace is constantly changing with technology bringing us new solutions and young workers entering the workforce. With training, you can help your leadership team prepare for these changes effectively and assist your company to thrive.

Many high performing individual contributors are promoted to leadership positions only to find themselves not attaining success. This is because the skills one needs to lead are quite different than the skills one might use as an individual contributor. This skills gap can be bridged through a robust leadership development training program.

What is Leadership Development?

Leadership Development programs teach vital skills that leaders use to become more effective at directing the company and engaging their employees to achieve success. Depending on the needs of your workforce, this will include leadership and management skills. Working with an experienced training partner, you can customize the curriculum to include the skills you feel your employees lack.

The issues that naturally occur at companies that have no clear vision or leadership can impact the bottom line and make day to day operations less effective. Having an effective leadership team that communicates well gives your workers confidence in the work they do and how their role fits into the bigger picture.

In some cases, company leaders may have been promoted from within and lack the formal training that teaches them necessary skills. Those might include communicating effectively with subordinates, motivating team members to meet company goals, and how to effectively manage a workforce with a variety of personalities, ages and backgrounds.

Successful leadership development programs could include the following deliverables:

• Instructor Guide 

• eLearning Programs

• Training Videos

• Participant Guide 

• Classroom Presentation

• Knowledge Checks

• Instructional Aids for Classroom Environment

• Final Assessment in Paper Test form 

• Instructor’s Coaching Guide (for leading TTT delivery)

• Supervisor’s Coaching Guide (for Reinforcement after training event)

• Job Aids (for Performance Support)

• Certification Testing (for Compliance)

Why Does Your Company Need Leadership Training?

Not only does training benefit your leaders but it can also help your business get more successful. Leadership development can help you accomplish many of your business goals and solve common problems that most companies face including:

• Failure to meet overall company goals

• Performance goals associated with the current strategy are not being met

• Your executives question whether the current skill set of leaders will enable them to achieve desired results

• There are issues surrounding attracting and retaining leaders with critically important skills and attributes

• There is an insufficient talent pool for leadership succession

• Difficulty maintaining workforce productivity and morale during challenging economic times

• Continuous loss of employees in key positions

The benefits of leadership development training can continue for months or years after you’ve paid for the training sessions. By working through training courses together, your key employees can develop stronger relationships while improving their skill sets. After training, these skills can help leadership project a more unified message and increase the confidence other employees have in them.

Choosing The Right Leadership Training Program For Your Team

To make training effective it's important to choose a format that reaches every person in the team. Customizing a training program is the best way to make sure that the training makes a long term difference. A one size fits all training program may not have the desired effect because some employees may have difficulty connecting with and retaining the material. Having a customized training program developed for your employees leads to higher success overall. Employees stay more engaged when the material is delivered in varied formats, including written text and videos.

To find out more about leadership development and how it can help your company be more successful, download our free e-book on 5 Must-Have Skills for Leadership Development today, or contact us to get help with the specific issues you are experiencing.

At TrainingFolks, we specialize in helping you train each member of your leadership team to make your company more successful. Working with you to understand your business goals, we can customize the right training program to reach everyone on your team.