How to create a leadership development program

Allow Self-Directed Learning. They increase employee morale and retention, improve productivity, promote better decision making, build better teams, and train future leaders in your company who have a management style that is conducive to a positive working atmosphere. With that in mind, here are five skills a comprehensive leadership development program should include.

Coaching is one of the best methods leaders can leverage to unleash the full potential of their direct reports. Change Management. Influence and Negotiation. However, if you are developing leaders to become better at a specific area of workplace communication — such as influencing, coaching or having performance conversations — expect to need at least three days.

Ideally, in our experience, these should be split into a two-day workshop and a one-day workshop. Enhanced productivity from understanding how to bring out the best in teams. Increased employee engagement when managers know how to effectively lead people. More positive and nurturing corporate culture where learning is embraced by all. By making sure the goals you set are aligned with the five SMART criteria Specific , Measurable , Attainable , Relevant , and Time-Bound , you have an anchor on which to base all of your focus and decision-making.

Get your hands dirty. What characteristics and attributes do the current leaders in our organization possess that would be missed if they were to leave? What are the current gaps in leadership within our business? Consider the answers to these questions and include them in the development of your program to align with the specific leadership needs your organization has.

Define what values your company has and determine what leadership skills match up with those values. For example, you might have growth, collaboration or commitment to customers as a value, and your goal may be to increase customer retention or increase revenue by targeting new markets.

Growing your company may include different leadership skills than a commitment to customers, and it is helpful to know your focus before developing your leadership program. If you include these items in your program, then it is likely future leaders who take the program may be fully equipped to reach company goals and maintain company values.

This helps to entice potential candidates to take part in the program and inspires leadership, since assessing organizational goals and including them in the program provides your managers and other employees with a reason for leading. A person who has not performed outstanding abilities in their current position may still have great leadership capabilities, while a person who is a top performer may not have what it takes to be the next business leader in your company.

A good way to determine leadership capabilities is to offer a Leadership Skills Assessment Test. This test allows your employees to discover their potential and helps you to determine and select individuals who may be effective leaders and good candidates for your leadership program. Effective instructors will have some leadership expertise to inspire participants to engage in the program. Many companies work with a third party company to hire an instructor for their leadership development programs.

This is integral in not only developing your program but also in enticing potential candidates to participate as well as inspiring leadership. Think of things that you want to recognize and reward employees for when you see them doing it right? What do you want your leaders to accomplish? What about future leaders?

Some organizations are focused on being highly collaborative while others focus on high growth and still others may be heavily based on interactions with the public. The problem is, many businesses view leadership as a cookie cutter process where a handful of highly defined skills work across the board.

That simply is not realistic. There are a variety of organizations with a variety of goals — and they need a variety of skills.

Potential leaders can show up in some of the unlikeliest places. They can literally be anywhere in your company which makes identifying them a challenge. Many companies attempt to identify potential leaders by looking to the employees who perform the best — and they look nowhere else.

This is a common mistake. A person who has not demonstrated exceptional abilities in their current position is not necessarily lacking in outstanding leadership skills. Likewise, a top performer may not have what it takes to be a strong business leader. Offering an opt-in Leadership Skills Assessment Test will allow employees the opportunity to explore their potential and help you determine who may be an effective leader and good candidate for your program.

The value in this approach is the ability to promote from within, thus retaining an employee who is likely already performing well, knows the business very well, and feels connected and engaged. When choosing facilitators or instructors for your program, make sure that they themselves are leaders with a proven track record.

Participants in the program will have a hard time getting behind someone who has not experienced what they are sharing. It will be difficult for them to inspire the participants and challenge them to reach higher and stretch further. Working with a third party that specialized in creating leadership development programs for organizations is often a preferred route for many companies. By choosing specialists in that area, it minimizes the impact on resources and productivity.

Personnel is not pulled away from their regular jobs to develop a program that they know little about and must research. They can view the finished reports and make decisions from there. In other words, they only have to worry about the results. There are several reasons to utilize multiple methods within your learning system.

You will have different people with different backgrounds and different learning styles coming into the program. They will have their own ways of absorbing the information, processing it, and sharing it with others. They will see the world differently, have different experiences, and exhibit different learning strengths.

To accommodate this, you want to incorporate many different methods to your program. Classroom, e-learning , written materials, lectures, and training videos are a few common training methods. In addition, team members often feel a mixture of fear, anxiety, or uncertainty, which distracts them from focusing on their work. Why Invest in Leadership Development? In addition to empowering business leaders to successfully respond to and navigate through organizational change, leadership development benefits companies in many other ways including:.

When businesses invest in leadership development, the benefits are impressive. According to the Association for Talent Development doing so results in:. What Are Leadership Development Programs? Leadership development programs are designed to empower employees at all levels to be the most effective leaders they can be.

They use a combination of coaching and individualized learning to help leaders identify their strengths, overcome any weaknesses, set and achieve goals, and make positive behavioral changes.

A leadership development plan outlines specific approaches to achieving leadership development goals, including the use of select leadership development programs within predetermined time frames that will achieve key business objectives.

To learn how to design a strategic leadership development plan that will help your business achieve key goals, read Creating an Effective Leadership Development Plan. Leaders at the highest levels set the direction of their companies by having and sharing a clear and inspiring vision. All leaders must be able to map out how to achieve key business objectives.

To do so, they must utilize leadership skills that motivate and guide others in a supportive, yet efficient way. They must also ensure that team members have the necessary skills and abilities to do their jobs and be able to recognize leadership potential. This requires meeting each existing or potential leader where they are and providing them with the training they need to develop crucial leadership capabilities including the ability to communicate as effectively and humanly as possible, to connect with the hearts and minds of others, and to help team members to develop.