Why Your Team Needs a Leadership Development Program – What to Know
Leaders are made, not born, but it takes a while to turn someone into a leader. Some aspects of being an employee would need augmenting, including public speaking and mentorship skills, before a person is ready for managerial positions. With the help of development programs, though, you would be able to develop high-potential employees in your company so they can be better equipped for leadership roles. If you are still looking for reasons why you should prioritise leadership development, take a look at our list below.
Good leaders result in satisfied employees.
A positive relationship between employees and superiors cultivates trust and promotes productivity. When your team can devote time to genuine collaboration, it lessens office politics and gossip and makes tasks easier to accomplish. When leaders demonstrate positive attitudes toward work, they influence subordinates to adopt a similar mindset. The truism ‘an employee doesn’t leave a company, but a manager’ holds true for a lot of situations. This can be avoided by making employees trust in their leader’s vision.
Development programs foster loyalty.
Instead of headhunting for a new manager, training and promoting someone from within the company shows your employees that you value their career progression. It shows that you want them to take steps toward lifetime learning. Encouraging growth in your ranks emphasises your commitment to your employees and allows high-potential but unknown individuals to step up and show their managers that they are capable of handling bigger responsibilities.
Talent is kept within the company.
Human resource departments spend most of their time recruiting and screening candidates. They put people through rigorous examinations and lengthy interviews, for good reason. You want to attract and hire only the best for the company. But sometimes, once the best candidates are hired, companies do little to encourage their growth. Unless the employee takes courses on their own, and in their own time, they won’t have opportunities to make their existing skills better. As a result, some of these untapped, high-performing individuals leave. Spending a bit on a program saves your company much more in terms of turnover expenses.
Multiple company concerns are addressed.
Leadership programs are both incubators of talent and sources of professional development. Because there are always innovations in business, it is important to keep adapting your team to these. There may be new methods in managing people, or new aspects of operations, that your team will benefit from learning. Leadership development opportunities allow people to add to their skills, and update existing ones. Furthermore, programs like these are much cheaper in the long run compared to having piecemeal seminars for different departments. The key is finding a consultancy that can advise you on what your company needs as a whole.
Increase employee productivity.
Since being a leader is largely about empathy, having employees attend training programs lets them understand their colleagues and their subordinates. When you have high emotional intelligence, you can engage other people better, and help them thrive in their roles. People are most productive when they have a sense of ownership in their work, and managers who complete successful programs would have the tools they need to foster this in others and in themselves.
The bottom line
Cultivating leaders takes much more than giving a high-performing employee a list of things to do, and a deadline. Having them take executive coaching courses gives them the chance to gain skills that would help them not just survive but also thrive in their roles. Enlisting the help of a reputable management consultant is the key.
The Black Business Association of BC provides leadership development support to businesses in Canada. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
