Senin, 25 September 2017

The Power of the Leadership Training and Leadership Coaching Duo

Every leader needs leadership training. Right? Have you ever had a boss who didn't? Every player needs a coach. Right? Have you ever met a sports star without?

In fact, leaders are in constant need of leadership training. It's the nature of the beast. To be truly effective to the best of their abilities, leaders must continuously analyze their behavior, seek feedback from those around them and constantly work on improving their leadership skills.

Leadership training is one way to gain new knowledge and learn new skills. It's focused and intense. And the usual training getaway from being in the saddle 24/7 is much needed by any and all leaders.

The best types of leadership training include grappling with real-life situations. The latest and greatest theories are important, but they are no substitute for tackling tough, complex leadership challenges as though one's life depended on it. Because it does.

Top notch leadership training not only teaches critical skills, but also gives participants the opportunity to practice what they're learning through role plays and other training techniques. People need to "feel" the problem and wrestle with the solution to truly learn.

But leadership training is not enough. As Edwin Friedman wrote in A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, "Mature leadership begins with the leader's capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny." Understanding one's emotional being and harnessing it for powerful leadership is a process, not a skill.

That's where leadership coaching enters the scene as the powerful partner of leadership training. Coaching is an ongoing process that helps leaders build on lessons learned in leadership training and apply them in real life situations.

Behavior is driven by emotion. Yet leaders rarely take time and seek assistance to understand their emotional selves that drive their behavioral selves. It is much easier to attend leadership training workshops, read books about leadership skills and commit to implementing what one has learned. But understanding one's emotional self and emotional intelligence is precisely what one must do to move from being a good leader to great leader. Coaches are worth their weight in gold when they help school leaders understand their emotional selves and take responsibility for changing.

In a coaching relationship, the coach helps the coachee understand his or her emotional self and the ways in which that self drives behavior. One excellent tool that coaches can use to help school leaders understand and improve their emotional selves and intelligence is the EQ-i (Emotional Quotient Inventory). It measures emotional intelligence in the following areas: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Stress Management, Adaptability and General Mood. All are critical to being a great leader.

Leadership training combined with ongoing leadership coaching is a powerful combination that helps school leaders become truly great leaders. Through training, leaders hone skills, but most importantly, through coaching they learn to execute the critical plays under pressure.


Senin, 04 September 2017

How Leadership Training Develops Strong Business Leadership Skills

Leadership training must evolve beyond programs of improving basic business leadership skills. While discussing the fundamentals of delegation, running meetings, "motivating" employees and public speaking may be OK for newly minted supervisors, it's really inadequate for the majority of professionals who rely on executive management training to survive in their leadership positions.

If you do not think we need to change our leadership training strategies, here are a few reasons why we should. Our world enjoys a level playing field which empowers billions of people to attain greater prosperity. At the same time, more people are acquiring and improving their business leadership skills through formal educational programs or their own informal development efforts.

The many advances made in computing, communications and other commercialization technologies offer everybody opportunities to quickly develop and sell their ideas. As improvements in the physical technology arenas continue to capture media attention, most business leadership skills courses and leadership training endeavors fail to improve our expertise in applying social technology.

Some people call this period of human history, the Age of Knowledge, yet still others, like me, say it is the Imagination Age. Indeed, we even find ourselves questioning deeply-held priorities, like our use of natural, human and man-made resources, in response to ever-increasing social pressures.

However, leadership training programs, especially in today's competitive economy, should prepare executives, management candidates and entrepreneurs to energize their business leadership skills in such areas as:

    => Innovation strategy development
    => Talent management and human capital enrichment
    => Technology portfolio designs and analysis
    => Business systems requirements and analysis
    => Coaching, facilitation and consulting techniques
    => Value-oriented analytics and engineering principles

All these subjects and others can help you boost growth and improve your performance on the "bottom-line". But more importantly, directors, executives and managers who work in non profits, a governmental agency or a service organization simply do not understand the contributions of those same subjects to their future success.

When selecting your next leadership training, business leadership skills or executive management training program use the following three tips.

Tip-1 - What Philosophy Is Being Promoted?

Any leadership training program attempts to help you discover the nature, causes and principles associated with the reality of leading, applying the knowledge base of leadership and the reasoning used by leaders.

That statement defines the philosophy of most leadership development programs. However, it's up to you to assess, measure and comprehend the scope, depth and intensity of your leadership training courses. You do have to evaluate when the needs of your business leadership skills are not being served by your executive management training program.

Tip-2 - How Does This Leadership Training Strategy Work for You?

These days there quite a few numbers of effective, efficient and efficacious educational techniques, delivery systems and program support strategies available to you.

Obviously, you will want to use your schedule, your learning style preferences and your personal as well as your professional requirements to gauge your leadership training options.

Your business leadership skills will be strengthened, sharpened and stimulated if you employ a long-term (6-12 months or longer) executive management training regimen.

Tip-3 - Why Will These Activities Energize Your Business Leadership Skills?

An excellent leadership training program will include classroom or instructor-led, self-directed or home-study and in-service learning activities. Involving this variety of learning situations increases the energy levels of your business leadership skills.

In other words, the doing, dissecting and developing of your leadership performances enables you to more effectively absorb your 'lessons' physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically. That's why world-class organizations give their promising performers executive management training for 2, 3 or more years.