If your company has good management and leadership, you may not be worried about training your employees. But both of these are essential when it comes to successfully running a company. And even if your company has this, there is always room for improvement.
Your company can significantly benefit by adding management and leadership training to its list of training that management needs to take. No matter how big or small the company is, this training will provide insight on how to best run the company.
What is management and leadership training?
Management and leadership training is a special set of training that provides management with new techniques on how to lead. These pieces of training can also hone in on old skills that may need to be polished up. Anyone who has a management position should have this kind of training updated every year.
When you are a leader of a company, there are core values that you must adhere to. These include:
* Being a role model
* Making an impact
* Concentrate on following a vision
* Encouraging collaboration
* Remaining positive
Leadership styles
Perhaps you have never thought about it before, but there are many different types of leadership styles.
Autocratic leaders have very clear expectations and will let employees know exactly how they wish for a job to be done. These leaders will make decisions on their own. An advantage to being an autocratic leader is that when there is a huge issue, they know exactly how to handle it.
Delegative leaders are just the opposite of autocratic leaders. They will not micromanage, rather they allow the group to form their own decisions. These leaders have the capability of having a team that is very close. On the downside, these leaders might find that those they overlook will struggle to take control over what they are responsible for.
Participative leaders combine the two styles above. They provide direction while also hearing feedback from their team.
Coaching style leaders think of themselves as coaches. They empower others by having a feeling of seeing the best in others. They motivate by tapping into a person’s ability.
Affiliative style leaders put people first. They support team members emotionally and do their best to connect with the entire team.
Skills all management and leadership training should address
When management and leadership training are thought of, there are specific skills that companies should look at addressing.
Delegating
One skill that all leaders need is the ability to delegate. In a perfect world, we would be able to handle everything on our own so it was perfect. But companies just do not work that way. The management needs to delegate who does what, and at particular times, will need to negotiate as well.
When a manager or leader has to delegate, they must be sure to define the task and make certain it is SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, timebound, and ethical recorded). They will then need to assign it to the best team member. At this time, they will also need to specify why that employee was chosen.
The leader will then need to provide what the end goal is, how the task should be completed, and when the deadline is. During the task, communication should remain open between the team member and the manager. Once it has been completed, feedback will need to be provided.
Active listening
Leaders need to be great at listening if they want to have a job as a manager. Day in and day out, you will have those under you coming to you for advice or asking questions. If you are unable to listen, your team will fail right from the start.
Decisions
You will find that great leaders or managers are able to make great decisions. And when making decisions, they often will need to be split decisions, so you will need to be quick on your feet.
And sometimes, your team will have differing opinions on what should happen. While it is fine to listen to your employees, you will need to be the one to make the final call.
Conflicting manager
When you are in charge of a team, there is bound to be conflict. And your job will be to step in and be the manager of this! Employees, just as yourself, get tired and cranky and it can be easy to put blame on this person or that idea. Your job as a leader will be to calm the storm when it occurs. Good leaders will need to know how to confront people and situations, know what to do when the boss is in a foul mood, handle formal complaints, and manage stress.
Motivation
If you are a leader or a manager at a company, you really need to know how to motivate your team members. One of the biggest motivators is to tell your team members thank you and mean it! These are two little words but they go so far!
If you want your employees to be the best that they can be, you need to motivate them. This will make them work harder.
So exactly how can you make your team work harder while motivating them. Consider any one of the following:
* Allow team members to have the freedom to make decisions
* Setting realistic goals
* Recognize team member for their achievements
* Identifying progress on your team
Types of management and leadership training
When looking for management and leadership training, there are various programs that you can use for your company. You may wish to try several and see what works best for you.
Technology
Technology can often be used as a means of training when doing management or leadership training. CDs, videos, and DVDs can be used to allow a person to train on their own or in a small group. What is great about this is that a person can go back and look if something is missed in training.
Webinars can also be considered as a source of training. Here a leader will be able to address their managers in small groups or a one on one setting.
In-house training
In-house training is a popular leadership training because this type of training can be customized for the company. In order to do this training, there needs to be a leader that is willing to take on this role of training others. While this can be a good thing, if you have a bad leader teaching you, your training will suffer, which could put your job in jeopardy later. Should your company decide to use this type of training, you may wish to have several trainers for an upcoming leader to work with.
Team building
Many leaders do not realize how important it is to have a good team. This is where team building will come into place. Taking the time to put together activities for your entire team will bring the team closer as a whole, which can tremendously help progress in the company.
Games are a great way to do team building. One easy one is to have all team members sit in a circle and take turns sharing past experiences about their job or little things about themselves to really get to know each other.
Or you can do team building outside of work by hosting a dinner party, all getting together to go bowling, or by starting a volleyball or basketball league.
Topics to focus on
When completing management and leadership training, there are many topics that your company may wish to focus on. These may include:
- Effective communication with upper management. Leaders need to have communication with those on their team, but in order for the company to succeed, they need to be able to communicate well with those that are above them too.
- Effective discipline actions to take are often needed by a leader. There are situations in every company that one will need to know how to deal with. Some of these may be sticky or hard to deal with, but by taking courses that specifically deal with this, you will know exactly how to handle every situation.
- Improving work habits is a topic that everyone in any job can use! However, some habits really need to change in order to make the employee better. If the employee is always late, you need to know how to handle this. As a leader, you can not use a general conversation with this, just staging “You are always late.” Instead, it can work better if you give exact examples, such as “On Wednesday, you returned 15 minutes after your lunch had ended and on Friday you arrived at work 10 minutes late.”
- Change is something that many people do not like. But in leadership roles, things are always changing, Therefore, it is a good idea to have a topic about change in your leadership and management training.
Conclusion
Management and leadership training should be a part of every company. No matter if the training is in person, online, or through a higher up employee in-house, leadership training is essential in any company. With this type of training, you can maximize how productive your team is while navigating through tough situations that may arise.
