What to Include in a Leadership Training Program

The Importance of Leadership Training for All

When was the last time your company offered leadership training to non-tenured employees somewhere near the top? But who says leadership training should be reserved for company leaders only? Let’s find out the benefits of leadership training and why it pays to offer it to all employees.

Why Is Leadership Training Important For All Employees?

In fact, the idea that leadership training is only useful for high-level employees is just an assumption. There is no evidence to support this claim.

Therefore, the question becomes: is there evidence to support that leadership training is important for all employees and that applying it to all departments and senior levels is beneficial?

The short answer? Yes.

Nearly 1,000 top-level organizational leaders were surveyed in the 2018 Global Leadership Forecast. [1] The data provides insight into the top concerns leaders have in the coming years. On the list were issues such as, “slowing economic growth in emerging markets,” “labor relations,” and “global recession.”

However, the top 2 concerns on this list were none of these. Instead, they “were ‘Next Gen’ leaders” and “failed to attract/retain top talent.” These were cited more than twice as often as other stories. So when all is said and done, the benefits of leadership training across the board are not something you should ignore.

What Do We Mean by Leadership Training?

Before we get into the tangible benefits of leadership training, we must establish that it is training developed for the purpose of teaching individuals the skills of a good leader. These skills include things like behavior, work ethic, perspective, and the ability to inspire and motivate others and themselves.

Despite the myth that “leaders are born” and not made, these skills are it can be taught and developed. And the fact that leadership skills development is possible is reason enough to break down the barriers surrounding leadership training and make it available to all employees.

5 Benefits of Company-wide Leadership Training

1. Your Employees Will Be Better Decision Makers

Leadership training for employees, done well, teaches them to weigh risks and benefits, pros and cons, and envision multiple possible outcomes. This way of thinking is something we all use in our daily lives.

Learning to actively use this thinking process when it comes to our work is closely related to developing soft skills at work. They are important for managers and supervisors to have. But just imagine how much better your daily activities will go if all of them the employee was trained in this concept.

Executive leadership training is not only useful for those in charge of leading others. Leaders show confidence, contentment, and discipline. Employees who have the opportunity to learn and apply this forward thinking are not just decision makers. The decisions they make are more consistent than they would make in a given situation.

The benefits of leadership training for all employees are far reaching. Improved individual performance and personal responsibility translates into easier time for your managers and goals they can consistently achieve.

In addition, a leader who leads other leaders does not need to manage small things. Having a technically trained workforce can be the first step to success. But employees who can also manage themselves and choose the best courses of action consistently are the true foundation of a successful business, regardless of size or industry.

2. You will see Significant Improvements in Company Structure and Organization

When we think of leadership in a corporate context, we tend to think of a pyramid-like structure. At the top, you have your CEO or founder, and possibly board members. At the bottom, you can have vice presidents or managers, depending on the size of the company. Next, there are managers, and at the bottom of the pyramid, you have employees.

In this classic structure, we think of a chain of communication, from employee to manager to manager to CEO. It’s a one-person-at-a-time type of interaction. But leadership should not mean only leadership. Collaborative leadership exists when two or more people lead a group together.

The same report that addresses management concerns also shows that organizations that use collaborative leadership are more likely to make better-informed, data-driven decisions. This type of leadership allows for multiple perspectives when it comes to making decisions. As a result, these organizations are more responsive to competition and customer needs.

Collaborative leadership promotes a flat workforce structure within the company. It eliminates this feeling of being a second-class citizen within the hierarchy, where some people are treated as important or less important than others. When information is disseminated and disseminated appropriately among employees, people feel valued. This means they are highly motivated to perform better.

The importance of acquiring and training leadership skills becomes clear when we consider how important it is for a company that wants to work with a flat structure. Ending the divide and the collapse of the pyramid structure is much more possible when you take the time to train everyone on what it means to be a leader.

3. The Company Is Better Equipped to Handle the Unexpected (AKA the Future)

Companies surveyed in the Global Leadership Forecast report on average, “only 42% of key roles can be filled immediately by internal candidates.” So what happens in an emergency? Are company operations coming to a standstill?

More importantly, what is being done to improve this percentage? Is leadership training made available to all employees?

In short, no.

Companies understand the importance of leadership in business. However, 46% of them continue to provide it exclusively to employees who have been identified as having the greatest potential for development within the company.

When it comes to assessing and managing risk, leadership is critical to business. And this does not apply to current leaders and managers. It also applies to team managers, future managers, employees with multiple responsibilities. Basically, anyone in the organization. Having employees trained in leadership skills is key to reducing information risk.

Information risk in this context refers to the risk that arises when one person has information, and others do not share this information. If something happens to this one leader that causes him to no longer be able to work for the company, then the remaining information gap is huge, and the company will no longer be able to function properly.

But when key information is shared with more than one person and information is communicated throughout the organization, the risk of downtime is greatly reduced. Effectively mitigating this type of information risk is critical to keeping things running smoothly, both in the near and long term.

The truth is that while the development of future leaders is always ranked as a top concern by management, it is being addressed in a dynamic way. As long as leadership development training is reserved for the few, there will continue to be a shortage of people equipped with the necessary skills to fill important positions.

4. The Presence (Or Absence) of Extensive Leadership Training Affects Company Profitability

Let’s face it: leadership training and development is not without cost. And based on the limited use of this training, it is not surprising that businesses spend more on leadership training activities for senior employees than any other group.

But how can we know that extending this training to all employees will be worth the additional cost of doing so?

The same study that shows us its limited reach also shows that when a business chooses to extend leadership skills training to employees in lower positions than to people at higher levels, it was 4.2 times more likely than an organization that did not. It outperformed these other businesses in areas including revenue growth, operating margin, and return on equity.

Who knew that a little leadership and management training spread across employees could go such a long way?

To get the benefits of leadership training, it is best to use a training platform that will help you create online courses once, share them with your people, and update them as often as needed.

5. Giving Everyone the Opportunity to Develop Leadership Qualities Will Help Attract and Retain Top Talent

Regardless of the industry, employee turnover is expensive. It is important to keep cash prices low to prevent unnecessary wastage of money and resources. But in a labor market that favors workers over employers, it can be a challenge to find and retain good performers.

This fact highlights the importance of leadership and development in the workplace as their presence (or lack thereof) will differentiate you from other competitors. Employees are looking for ways to grow and develop their skills at low personal cost. By offering business leadership training, you’re giving them one more reason to happily stay at (or join) your company.

An added benefit of offering leadership training to everyone is that it increases the chances of finding talent that has been under your roof all along. This will help increase your company’s percentage of roles that can be filled quickly by promoting from within.

The data also shows that when companies make leadership training available to all employees, more women hold positions at all levels of management, and that senior leadership tends to be at a higher level.

Simply put, leadership training is important for all employees because it is an investment in your people. And companies that don’t invest in their people aren’t always open for business.

When It Comes To Leadership Training, Choose Everything Instead Of Nothing

One training session on what it means to be a leader does not make a leadership team. Leadership training that really catches on and produces a workforce full of leaders is not something you can design and put in place overnight. It is an investment. It takes time to show returns.

But it is not a risky investment. Effective, effective leadership training will pay off. And the pleasures of higher productivity, an improved work environment, and increased profits, are fruits that no business should pass up.

Reference:

[1] Global Leadership Forecast 2018

Additional Resources:

Originally published on www.talentlms.com.