Top 10 Arguments for Enrolling in a Leadership Course

The skill of inspiring a group of individuals to take action in pursuit of a common objective is known as leadership. In a professional setting, this may entail leading coworkers and employees with a plan to serve the needs of the organization.

Challenges can come up at any time in the corporate world of today, and if you want to be a great leader, you must be able to handle them with wisdom, tact, and knowledge. Agile leaders that can effectively lead through change, drive performance, and foster a people-first culture of engagement and accountability are essential for business success.

In any organization, leaders usually provide the direction towards the achievement of its goals and objectives. Leaders influence the attitudes and behavior of their staff. Great leaders are secure in their role and in their ability to do their jobs. They communicate well with their teams and mentor their employees. They make sure they know what their teams need to do their jobs, and meet their own goals. They challenge their staff and hold them accountable, but they also take responsibility if the team fails at something.

Millennials in particular consider leadership training a job perk. PriceWaterhouse Cooper’s (PwC) report on Millennials At Work found millennials were more interested in learning and development than in other kinds of benefits, including cash bonuses. They are also interested in moving into leadership positions, and fast; 52% of respondents said they’d choose a job that would let them advance through the ranks quickly over one with a higher salary.

So, 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, managers will not achieve the desired impact and effectiveness. Therefore, providing leaders with training will bring them one step closer to reaching organizational goals.

Can you afford the costs of poor leadership?

Disengaged talent, high employee turnover, low productivity, bad decisions, unhappy customers? No, you can’t. It’s more cost effective to develop your existing employees into leaders than to hire leaders from outside hoping they will be the right fit for your company.

Also, effective and efficient leaders have to continue enhancing their skills and abilities through leadership training programmes to meet the organization's goals and develop their people.

If you’re having difficulty responding to unanticipated business challenges, or if you’re simply interested in improving your leadership skills, you should strongly consider enrolling in a leadership training course.

Top 10 reasons your business needs leadership training

Not only is leadership training of benefit to the employees, it is also very beneficial to the company. By promoting your employees to leadership roles, you already understand their abilities, work ethic, and professional drive to succeed. However, if employees lack the necessary skill sets and training, promoting them to leadership roles can be risky and potentially result in their downfall. Your staff members might excel above expectations in their current roles, but they might be less successful in leadership roles.

Leadership development programmes are crucial to the long-term success of every organization. Whether you believe leaders are born or made, in order to build a high-performing team, optimize your people’s expertise and prepare the next generation of well-rounded leaders, you have to invest in leadership development

Here are our top 10 reasons why your business will benefit from investment in leadership training for your managers:

1. Increase Productivity

By training your managers 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. They will have the ability to assess problems, manage situations, and provide sensible solutions.

The right consistent leadership can increase the productivity of your people.

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.

2. Increase employee engagement and reduce staff 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, recruitment agency fees, HR costs, travel and relocation expenses, etc. In terms of turnover, the most common reason for employee exodus is a bad manager, that is, poor leadership.

3. Nurture future leaders

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.

4. Improve their managerial skills and abilities

Training programmes will ideally teach employees new strategies that will improve their performance, and in turn the performance of the business.

By learning new things, employees can find themselves growing their skills, which can help them to become better aligned to their role as a leader.

Employee engagement therefore increases as they can feel motivated by implementing new strategies and skills into their roles.

It should develop among all the managers a sense of responsibility for active participation in making improvements. As they develop their talents and abilities in management, they strengthen their needs for improving performance.

5. Improve Risk Management

Companies know that when conducting business, an element of risk will always be present. You therefore need to train your future and current leaders in risk management. If you do so, they will gain strategic vision and risk management skills. Improving leaders’ risk management skills will add extensive value to any business.

6. Achieve better Project Leadership

Without sufficient project leadership skills, leaders will likely struggle to handle all aspects of a project. This might cause the project to go off course and end in substantial losses to the business. Staff morale is also likely to decrease due to incorrect guidance and magnified stress.

By teaching effective leadership skills, your leaders will be able to better manage their teams and complete projects efficiently and on schedule. This increased efficiency will boost your overall productivity and result in greater profits.

7. Improve corporate 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. Programmes that include mentoring and coaching can boost employee morale and transform your company from a workplace to a great place to work. Leadership development programmes also reinforce a company’s vision, mission and values by setting an example.

8. Effectively manage change

Leadership development helps companies navigate challenging times by increasing people’s ability to respond rapidly in unpredictable business environments. Effective leadership is essential during critical times such as drastic change, workforce reductions, corporate restructuring, political upheaval and new competition.

9. Build effective work teams

Leadership programmes benefit the followers as much as the leader. A leader with greater clarity, direction and effectiveness enables those traits to trickle down to those she is leading. Followers will have a great sense of direction and purpose, which leads to greater motivation to accomplish their tasks and produces greater organizational effectiveness. Leadership programmes focus on teaching leaders how to produce satisfied followers.

10. Enable better decision-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.

The investment you make in leadership training will return a very impressive Return on Investment for your organization. According to a Global Coaching Client Study by ICF, 86% of the companies able to provide figures to calculate ROI from leadership training indicated they had at least made their investment back: 19% showed an ROI of at least 50 times (5000%) the initial investment, while a further 28% saw an ROI of 10 to 49 times the investment. “The median company return was 700%, indicating that typically a company can expect a return of seven times the initial investment,” ICF reported.

Top 10 reasons how you will benefit from leadership training

Learning is a process that never ends — you’ve probably heard this before. When it comes to management and leadership skills, this philosophy holds true. A person does not have to be born a leader to become one and with the appropriate training and understanding, anyone can become an effective leader. Here are our top 10 reasons why you will benefit from leadership training:

1. Ensures you use the most effective leadership style

Leadership training will assist you in implementing the most appropriate leadership style in the work you do. There are several leadership styles, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. Leadership training can help individual leaders identify the leadership style that ensures they will have a positive influence on others completing different tasks.

2. It will help you clarify your vision

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.

3. It will improve your career prospects

Landing your dream career has a lot to do with marketing yourself to potential employers. Businesses are looking for someone with skills and accomplishments that far surpass those of all other applicants, and they will look for leadership skills to shine through during job interviews.

Leadership training gives you a thorough overview of the qualities of a good leader, while also allowing you to put these skills into practice in classroom and business settings.

4. Empowers you to succeed

If you think great leaders are born and not made, think again. Leadership training uses various techniques and examples to emphasize the point that with a little hard work we all have it in us to be great leaders.

Most entrepreneurs have never had training that teaches them how to run a company. Because of this, you might not have a clear idea of where you want to go. Maybe there are expansion opportunities that you haven’t considered, or maybe there are business relationships you haven’t fostered. The next level is about progress, and one way to achieve that progress is to add to your skill set.

5. It will boost your confidence

Self-confidence is a vital skill, both in the working world and in your social life. Through leadership training, public speaking, group activities and similar exercises will force you to be confident in yourself and your opinions, even when you’re faced with opposition.

Leadership training programmes can help teach you the essential skills and techniques you need in order to look at challenges from a different perspective. Doing so can add clarity to a difficult situation, and also promotes wisdom and facilitates self-confidence.

6. It will teach you new, valuable skills

Leadership training can teach you the skills you need to lead effectively, including the often-tricky skills needed to persuade and influence people — even those over whom you have little direct authority.

Leadership training widens thinking abilities to help leaders think in innovative and creative ways. Looking at a problem within an organization from every possible angle and coming up with new and better ways to solve it helps you to add value to your organization.

Peer-to-peer learning can occur often in a leadership course. By watching one of your classmates attempt the day’s exercise, you can see what things worked and what things didn’t. You can then shape the good things into your own performance, and just like that, you have improved your leadership skills just by watching another student.

7. Helps you communicate better

Leadership training teaches leaders to communicate better with their team. Untrained leaders may expect their team members to think and act just like the leaders themselves do, which may not be possible.

When leaders are taught to realize that different people hear, respond, accept and act very differently in a single situation, they become more skilled in the manner in which they communicate. Leadership training will aid you to communicate well across ages, backgrounds, traditions, cultures and other factors so as to raise shared agreement and motivate your team members to work together to succeed.

8. Develop Better Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is one of the main personality traits that makes for a great leader. Understanding how emotions affect others ensures that people lead efficiently and considerately.

In his book 'The New Leaders', 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 make you a better leader.

9. Teaches you how to influence people

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.

You’ll gain insights on how to pick a good team, how to build a team capable of delivering your vision, and how to give orders without coming off as either too weak or too overbearing.

10. Teaches you how to avoid mistakes

Training will give you a glimpse of the worst mistakes you can make as a leader. It will also teach you how to help map out a plan for avoiding the traps and pitfalls that can end your leadership career.

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