Leadership Training for Managers: All You Need to Know

Leadership Training for Managers: All You Need to Know

Managers play a crucial role in business regardless of the size of the organization. Investing in leadership training for them can be the most strategic and effective top-down decision a business leader can make. The skills developed during such training can have a lasting impact on the overall success of the company’s operations. 

As an excellent way for managers at different levels to enhance their capabilities, achieve better business results, and inspire their teams, leadership skills training efficiently bridges the gap between the organizational culture leaders think they are creating and the kind of culture they wish to create.

This blog aims to explore leadership training programs for managers and why managers need them.

What is Leadership Training?

Leadership training essentially refers to an organization’s efforts to train its employees in various leadership skills. These management classes for new managers are primarily designed to teach them the skills of a good leader. Among these are vision, strategic planning, discipline, work ethic, and the ability to inspire and motivate others and themselves. 

Organizations provide this training through multiple mediums such as audio, video, meetings, live speaking, online classes, etc. It is important to note that leadership training is meant for different kinds of employees and managers, not just for those in leadership roles. 

Why is Leadership Training Important?

There are multiple benefits of leadership training courses for managers from which an organization can take advantage:

Enhance Productivity

Managers who are adequately trained to become effective leaders can be instrumental in increasing the overall productivity of their workforce. Leaders who are properly trained are more equipped to assess the problems at hand, provide better instruction to staff, manage challenges, and offer creative solutions.

Apart from this, having leadership abilities also help managers make better goal plans, foresee goal expectations, and cultivate their team to reach the desired objectives.

Further, managers who develop leadership skills themselves also help develop the same skill in others, making the entire organization more efficient through a simple investment.

Reduce Staff Turnover and Create Future Leaders 

Leadership development not only improves employee engagement but also enhances the organization’s ability to deal with gaps that exist in the talent pipeline and reduces the costs associated with staff turnover.

Great and well-trained leaders attract, hire, and inspire more great people in the organization. Conversely, a manager without training and strong leadership skills will struggle to attract and retain high-performing employees.

Additionally, it’s often significantly less expensive to develop, train, coach, and promote people internally over the long run as compared to hiring someone externally, which makes leadership training and development a good investment.

Improve Managerial Skills and Abilities

Leadership training programs for managers teach them several new strategies that help improve their performance and, in turn, the business’s overall performance.

By learning new things, managers can find themselves growing their skillsets substantially, which can help them become better aligned to their role in the organization as a leader. This further leads to higher employee engagement as they can feel motivated by implementing new skills and strategies into their roles.

It is, however, important to note that leadership training should develop a sense of responsibility among all the managers to engage in active participation and make business improvements. As they develop their skills, knowledge, talents, and abilities in management, they also strengthen their need to improve performance. 

Improve Corporate Culture

Investing in manager leadership skills development sends the message that you care about people in the organization, which inspires them to meet and exceed performance expectations effectively.

Leadership training programs for managers that include mentoring and coaching can not only help boost employee morale but also transform the overall organization from an ordinary workplace to a great place to work.

Further, such leadership training initiatives for managers also reinforce a company’s vision, mission, and values by setting a fine example.

Enable Better and More Effective Decision-Making

Another advantage of leadership training for managers is the fact that it can result in better and more effective decision-making.

This is primarily because leaders function at a high level of emotional intelligence and have the right perspective to make better, more informed, and more intelligent business decisions. 

Leadership Skills That Your Organization Should Develop

Regardless of the level – office manager or a senior executive – the most important thing that great leaders need is a foundation of skills to help them positively influence the behavior of their co-workers and team members.

Wondering what skills do managers need, then?

Some of the essential leadership skills that your leadership training programs for managers should focus on are as follows:

Strategic Thinking Skills

The ability to think strategically distinguishes leaders from managers and is one of the most important skills a leader needs.

The best strategic thinkers always see the big picture and are not distracted or ruffled by minor details. Apart from having a vision of where they want to be and systematically working to achieve that, strategic thinkers also need the ability to create a compelling vision and must be able to communicate it effectively to their followers.

Accountability

Successful leaders know and understand that their success depends more on their team’s performance than their own.

Leaders in any organization are not individual contributors and are not assessed that way. They are held accountable for both others’ actions and results, as well as their own, and therefore must take accountability for overall team outcomes.

By training managers on this important skill, you can ensure that they will be capable of clearly defining accountabilities and holding their teams to those commitments, thus enabling everyone to succeed and produce the results they need.

Change Management and Innovation Skills

Displaying leadership is particularly important during times of change. A leader needs to clearly understand change management to lead an organization through the process successfully.

For instance, navigating change management often requires the leader to create and communicate a compelling vision. It also requires them to ensure that change is driven forward in the right way.

Communication

Communication training is another essential aspect of leadership development. However, it is important to understand that communication is not a skill leaders can learn by just going through a presentation or reading a manual.

When it comes to a leadership role, communication happens all the time – through one-on-one conversations, phone calls, large presentations, text messages, videoconferencing, emails, etc.

While it’s not a novel skill in terms of leadership development, developing communication skills must be optimized to be fully useful and relevant to the leaders of today and tomorrow.  The development of this skill can be enhanced and/or supplemented by the use of a leadership coach.

Steps to Design Effective Leadership Training for Managers

In this section, we will outline the top strategies and leadership tips for managers that you can use to enhance the impact of your leadership training and ensure a better ROI.

Here is a step-by-step guide with simple tips and learning strategies:

1. Identify the talent pool across the organization that needs to be prepared/groomed for leadership

2. Since leadership training for managers is provided at different, wide-ranging levels, you need to identify and map specific training needs for each level. For instance, below are the three levels that are likely the target audiences for leadership training for most organizations:

a. Early to mid-career 

b. Mid-career 

c. Senior-level

3. For the leadership training to be successful, obtain executive support and organizational buy-in of senior executives in the organization

4. Use different approaches that enhance the impact of leadership training for managers. For instance,

a. Leverage various immersive and engaging strategies

b. Focus both on the learning and its on-the-job applications

c. Offer ongoing opportunities for retention, reinforcement, and further learning

d. Encourage self-directed and continuous learning by offering learning resources that can be grasped by the participants easily

e. Integrate various additional support measures such as coaching, mentoring, and job shadowing for better success at work 

5. Adopt different strategies that help deliver successful leadership training for managers and achieve higher ROI. Some of these can include

a. Bite-sized, focused, and action-oriented microlearning modules

b. Flexible mobile learning

c. Customized personalized learning

When done the right way, leadership training initiatives for managers help create leaders across levels who are competent and equipped to set up and lead high-performing teams.

Fostering leadership ability for managers is important because it allows organizations to not only create the right leadership talent but also to build an engaged, productive, and highly motivated team that is better aligned with the business’ goals.

To Wrap

Leadership training and development for managers is critical to any organization that wants to make a mark and navigate competition effectively. As the business landscape is rapidly evolving, organizations need to constantly work on finding a sustainable strategy to continuously develop new leaders and enhance the skillsets of the current ones. 

To develop successful leadership training programs for managers, it is important to remember that this endeavor is rooted in a culture of learning and sharing knowledge. Once that is in place, all you need is to align your learning objectives and choose the right set of activities for your current and future leaders.