“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
This quote, attributed to American NFL Hall of Fame Player and Head Coach Vince Lombardi, couldn’t be truer, especially when it comes to the workplace. While there are certainly those with a natural talent for leadership and management, the skills and traits that are required from great leaders are ones anyone can acquire as long as they’re coachable.
That said, it would behoove any workplace to formally train its employees to become great leaders—regardless of whether they hold entry-level positions or are next-in-line for C-suite promotions. After all, there are many benefits to comprehensive leadership training, and the trickle-down effects that impact the company as a whole make for a winning advantage no organisation would want to miss out on.
Today, let’s examine just some of the benefits of company-wide leadership training:
Increase in Productivity
Perhaps one of the more noticeable advantages of leadership training is an automatic increase in office productivity.
Leadership development is all about understanding your strengths, your weaknesses, and your unique skillset—among other things. Sometimes, ‘weaknesses’ or areas of improvement can mean addressing where there are gaps in your day-to-day productivity. In other words, what are your time-wasters (i.e. social media, checking email too often, ineffective meetings, etc.), and how can you minimize them in order to make the most of your time in the office and move your projects forward on a quicker timeline?
Leadership training on this front can also mean learning how to properly delegate work to others and how to manage efficient team collaborations to that more is getting done over the long haul.
When the employees in your company—and not just the managers—have this type of knowledge and skill, productivity will naturally soar as a result.
Effective Decision Making
Decision-making is an important aspect of leadership.
Leaders are often called upon to make informed decisions that are practical for their team members or an entire department as a whole, but sometimes, these decisions can be difficult ones. Effective decision-making requires analytical skills and beyond that empathy, understanding, and intuition.
Not everyone is naturally skilled in these areas, and even those who are can always benefit from more formal training in order to experience further growth.
When more employees are adequately equipped with the tools, mindset, and skills they need to make better decisions on-the-job, you’ll often find that work processes in the office run much more smoothly. Employees are often able to manage themselves autonomously in a more efficient manner, for one, and apart from that, teams experience better cohesion as a result of great minds leaning toward the tasks and actions that will benefit the department as a whole.
Intuitive Vision-Casting
Vision-casting is a part of any leader’s role with a company.
It’s essential to know where your company’s headed and how you can get there more easily—while achieving business outcomes all the while. It can be taxing, however, to constantly depend on a single individual to foresee every proverbial bump in the road or to anticipate the drawbacks or blind spots that are sure to surface now and then.
When employees are offered the opportunity to partake in company-wide leadership training, however, it’s a benefit to your organisation for the simple reason that there will be an increase in ‘forward thinkers’ on staff. During meetings, your employees will have the know-how and intuition to raise concerns that a single manager could easily overlook, allowing the company to address potential issues immediately—before they become troublesome.
Diverse Leadership Styles
There are a number of leadership styles in the world, but few people ever discover the styles that best match their unique personality and skillset.
As a result, they struggle to realise their potential and sometimes only operate at half-capacity as a result of their talents not being brought to the forefront of their work.
This is the reason workplace diagnostics are so popular. People enjoy acquiring a better understanding of themselves and the deeper ways in which they perceive and engage with the world—especially if this knowledge can help them become a better version of themselves and bring their work output to a new level.
One of the greatest benefits to this is the increase you’ll naturally see in diverse leadership styles. As more and more employees become fluent in their natural methods/styles/mindsets, your office will experience the benefit of having varied ways of thinking on hand, which will most certainly make for a more inclusive workplace but can also lead to a more efficient office environment as everyone’s talents are brought out into the open and can be more readily used.
You may even discover that certain employees are ill-matched with their current responsibilities and can better serve the company in an entirely different capacity. This is especially important, as connecting your team members with work that truly challenges them and fulfills them is a key ingredient in employee engagement, which will result in higher job satisfaction across the board.
If you haven’t invested in company-wide leadership training for your employees, you’re hindering your organisation from accelerated growth. The more formally trained leaders you have on-site in the workplace, the higher your office productivity, the more effective the decision-making in your various departments, the better the vision-casting in your meetings, and the more diverse your leadership styles in the workplace. In short, investing in leadership development for every employee at your company is a win-win that can have incredible results long-term.
If you’re interested in leadership development programs for your team members, contact us today to learn more about the various services we offer to help release your team’s true potential—from onsite coaching to comprehensive courses available online!