Developing Strong Leaders: Essential Leadership Training for Managers
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Why are leadership workshops important?
Good business leaders are highly skilled, well-educated, and outstanding in their field. However, like elite athletes, they must continually train to maintain and improve their abilities. Document management plays a vital role in this ongoing development, ensuring that leaders have easy access to critical information, training materials, and performance feedback. As Jimmy Connors famously said, “Use it or lose it,” emphasizing the importance of continuous practice and learning to stay at the top of their game.
As any good leader will tell you, poor leadership has a negative impact on individuals and the company as a whole. Leaders who don’t improve their skills may struggle to inspire trust, often find it difficult to build high-performing teams, and may even dampen their team’s team spirit.
Fortunately, leaders can stay in top shape by attending leadership workshops. Leadership training helps develop the skills needed to inspire a team to achieve goals, encourage collaboration, and stimulate innovation.
With the right training, leaders can learn to communicate effectively, assign tasks, promote a healthy work atmosphere, set goals, and develop strategies. Leadership training also provides constructive criticism and helps leaders understand how their decisions impact the performance of the team and the organization as a whole.
In this article, we'll take a deep dive into leadership training for managers and see how it builds strong leaders.
What benefits do leadership workshops offer managers?
Increased self-awareness
By understanding our strengths and weaknesses, we can leverage our strengths and build on our innate qualities and talents. Leadership workshops help managers identify areas for improvement in their own unique leadership style and build on their skills. Research shows that when we see ourselves clearly, we make better decisions, build better relationships inside and outside the workplace, become more creative and confident, and ultimately become more effective leaders.
Improved leadership skills
Even the best leaders benefit from learning real-world strategies that sharpen their existing talents. Improving a range of pre-existing management skills such as communication, decision-making and problem-solving techniques means managers perform better, which in turn inspires their teams to be more productive and creates a more positive work environment.
In business, more positivity means more profit. Studies show that people who work in a negative, unforgiving business environment in the US experience greater stress, which the American Psychological Association estimates results in a whopping 550 million lost workdays per year.
Goal setting and action planning
A good leadership program helps managers clarify their goals and develop a plan to improve their leadership style for the future. Leadership programs aren't just about building new skills. They're also designed to encourage managers to think about their existing skills and set goals that are specific, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Setting SMART goals helps leaders make continuous improvements and progress.
Improved decision making
All good leaders must be excellent decision makers and often need to be able to quickly analyze and assess complex situations. Attending a leadership workshop provides managers with the skills to quickly assess risk by gathering information to make informed decisions, considering the impact on the business and their colleagues.
Improving decision-making skills such as problem-solving skills, analytical skills, organizational skills and innovative thinking means you can tackle problems and challenges with confidence and create a solid plan to overcome any problems that arise.
Networking and Peer Learning
One of history's greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln, once said, "A strong leader knows when to rely on others and is able to put his team's success ahead of his own." Over 150 years later, leaders still know the value of having a large support network. That's why any effective leadership workshop offers leaders the opportunity to connect with and learn from like-minded professionals from different fields and industries.
Another lesson we can learn from Honest Abe is the benefit of sharing ideas in a group setting and working with a variety of people to learn new perspectives and ways to solve problems. Collaboration in leadership leads to increased productivity, engagement and innovation and reduced employee turnover.
What's included in a good leadership training program?
Leadership programs should never consist of a few days of someone telling you what they personally believe you should improve. The organizers of a good leadership program will engage with you and your team, listen to your needs, and even examine the dynamics of your organization.
At IceHrm, participants are asked to complete a detailed questionnaire before the workshop begins. This report helps participants better understand themselves to become better leaders. At IceHrm, we draw on our 30 years of experience in recruiting and help you become the best leader you can be with:
- A leader-discovery activity
- Sessions that focus on different styles of iconic leaders
- Sessions that help you understand your own strengths
- The IceHrm leadership model, which explores leadership quadrants such as “leading the way,” “leading people,” and “leading yourself”
- A session that examines your report to put your answers into action.
Highly experienced business psychologists lead the leadership workshop, empowering leaders to go further with insights and strategies they can apply in the real world. You and over twenty others can attend the workshop both virtually and in person, and take advantage of a full-day training program to upskill team members and provide the skills to independently conduct the workshop in your organization.
Leadership workshops are crucial for developing strong leaders who can inspire and lead effectively. Through increased self-awareness, improved decision-making, and enhanced networking, managers become more capable and confident. IceHrm's leadership training programs provide comprehensive tools and insights, empowering leaders to excel and drive organizational success.
