Leadership training is a common example of professional development in action. As employees spend more time with a company and start to develop industry-specific expertise, moving into a managerial role is the obvious next rung on the career ladder. However, not everyone has the skills needed to become an effective leader right off the bat. This is where leadership training comes in.
Keen to turn your hardest workers into tomorrow’s managers? Let’s take a closer look at this vital branch of professional development and some leadership training ideas you can put to use within your company.
The Importance of Leadership Training
Leadership training provides people with the necessary skills and managerial techniques they need to become an effective leader. There are many different leadership training topics, with each one providing new insights and fresh perspectives.
There are various types of leadership training to cater to specific industries and job requirements, but most training focuses on learning key leadership skills, promoting team development, and maintaining high levels of employee engagement.
Leadership Training Ideas You Can Try
Searching for some inspiration to draw up a list of leadership development topics? We’ve got you covered.
1. Self-Awareness: Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses
Every worker has a secret talent or a set of skills unique to them. However, most of us also have shortcomings, with all manner of weaknesses holding us back. Being self-aware allows you to have a handle on both your strengths and weaknesses and feel more comfortable talking about both. This creates a culture of openness, where increased communication and cross-collaboration become the norm.
2. Clear and Concise Communication Styles
Successful business calls for clear communication. The way leaders communicate with their teams is a decisive factor in workplace relationships and dynamics, and can even affect productivity and employee morale. Investing in communication skills training makes sense if you want leaders to be effective communicators who can inspire and engage a team.
3. Team Building Activities: Breaking the Ice and Building Trust
Even with the best communication skills and self-awareness, leaders can still find it hard to connect with direct reports. Team-building activities are a great way to break the ice and bring quieter team members out of their shells. Working remotely? With the right video conferencing platform, engaging employees virtually couldn’t be easier.
4. Delegation and Empowerment
Knowing when to delegate is a critical skill that every leader has to master. When a leader delegates work, they’re placing a significant amount of trust in a team member, with multiple outcomes possible. If a brief hasn’t been properly explained or the delegate has insufficient experience, missed deadlines and unhappy clients can be expected. A good leader needs to know who’s best suited for the job and who will feel empowered, rather than overwhelmed by the opportunity.
5. Recognizing Individual Strengths
Managers who oversee large departments or multiple teams can have a hard time assessing the merits of individual employees. However, it’s vital that leaders know about all the key strengths of every individual working underneath them. This way, they can delegate demanding assignments to those with the right skill sets and single out prospects for professional development opportunities.
6. Conflict Resolution: Navigating Disagreements Productively
Disagreements are common in the workplace, but they don’t have to run team dynamics and derail project deadlines. An experienced leader should have the ability to defuse tense situations between colleagues in moments, without the resolution getting in the way of a daily to-do list.
7. Setting and Defining SMART Goals
Leaders aren’t just responsible for overseeing groups of employees, they’re also tasked with delivering measurable results like increased productivity and continuous growth. As such, an ideal leader needs to set SMART goals with clear definitions. SMART goals can prove particularly useful for incoming leaders looking to engage a new team, or longstanding ones who have been handed the reins to a big-ticket project. In either case, SMART goal training is one investment you don’t want to skimp on.
8. Guiding Teams Through Transitions
On occasion, the nature of a team’s work can change significantly. The arrival of new stakeholders, downsized departments, and wildly different in-house systems can all lead to uncomfortable periods of transition. A seasoned leader can steer their team through any storm, helping them maintain perspective and focus on the bigger picture.
9. Building Trust and Psychological Safety
When employees trust their managers, they tend to be more agreeable and supportive of new initiatives and ways of working. However, building trust and respect takes work, which is where leadership training comes in. Psychological safety should also be practiced if you want your employees to feel confident enough to speak up with questions and ideas.
10. Recognizing and Rewarding Achievements
If you want your employees to go above and beyond, leaders need to understand how to spot achievements and how to recognize them. Even if you’re working remotely, virtual employee appreciation ideas can be used to reward your hardest workers and create a culture of healthy competition that’s conducive to productivity.
11. Creating a Culture of Learning and Feedback
The best leaders are the ones who consistently give their teams fresh insights and development opportunities. Growth can also be more organic when a culture of learning is established. Opening the floor to constructive criticism and feedback from colleagues also supports this initiative.
12. Providing Opportunities for Development
Offering development opportunities to employees is a surefire way of getting your top talent to stick around for longer. Leaders need to know the individual skill sets of every employee, along with their career goals, to offer them opportunities that are best suited to the individual.
13. Time Management and Prioritization
Time management is a critical skill in business, increasing efficiency and boosting productivity. Make time management a focus of leadership training to reduce stress levels, raise morale, and motivate your team to produce better work more quickly.
14. Making Ethical Decisions Under Pressure
When faced with looming deadlines and diminishing budgets, it’s easy to make knee-jerk decisions that veer toward the unethical. To prevent this from happening, train leaders to be more aware when it comes to ethical decision-making, no matter what the stakes are.
15. Meeting Management Made Easy
Holding court in a busy meeting room or hosting an online get-together with remote teams is more difficult than it sounds. Only leaders with the right blend of authority, charisma, and communication skills can keep a room engaged and discussions from straying off topic. Leadership training should give managers the resources they need to ensure every meeting is warranted, properly scheduled, and delivers results.
Take Leadership Training Online with Gloww
Ready to inspire your next generation of leaders? If your business is an online one, you’ll need the right tools to facilitate leadership development and all those virtual training ideas. With a host of useful features and reliable service, a video conferencing solution like Gloww is an obvious choice.
With Gloww, you can create bespoke training sessions covering the leadership modules most important to your business. Each session can be enhanced with multimedia assets, with all manner of customizations possible. You can also use one of our ready-made session templates if you’re not feeling particularly creative. What’s more, employee engagement is guaranteed thanks to a variety of interactive virtual activities and classic icebreaker games.
You can get started with Gloww right now. Interested in learning about Gloww’s advanced functionality? Check out our premium pricing tiers. Got a question about the platform. Why not contact the team today?
