My first two HRTools Insights cover leadership training and leadership feedback. To wrap up this series on leadership, I will reveal how classroom training and real-world experiences can further enhance leadership performance.
More than ever, American businesses need effective leaders. Leadership is more than simply holding a position; leadership is about making decisions and taking action. Classroom training serves to help potential leaders realize when they are ready to take off the training wheels.
Classroom-training programs provide tools and techniques that leaders can take away and use in the real world. Effective leadership entails nourishing and leveraging relationships for the good of the organization. Classroom settings—such as in the following examples—provide leaders with opportunities to develop and nurture relationships:
- Interpersonal practice sessions
- Insights into nurturing a variety of leadership scenarios (different people, different backgrounds, different organizations, etc.)
- Demonstrations of well-executed versus poorly executed leadership examples
- Lessons and case studies
- Situational examples
- Mock interviews or conversations
In settings like these, participants are encouraged to engage and focus on the human side of leadership training, which they can then transfer over to their real world experiences. For instance, leaders can practice what they learn in the classroom with team members and their peers or managers. On the business side of leadership training, participants learn how to develop a vision, set goals and keep people on track with their tasks.
Classroom Training Enhances the Ability to Develop Relationships
Granted, everyone learns differently. While some people learn by reading or studying, leaders can gain valuable hands-on experiences through classroom training. In other words, they gain confidence and a frame of reference for enhancing their real world relationship experiences.
Performance trainers and specialists want their results to show that classroom-trained leaders can demonstrate effective leadership. Here are a few examples of what I mean.
You want leaders who can:
- make difficult decisions;
- make timely judgments (with minimal hesitation or stalling);
- take proper initiatives;
- analyze or assess what needs to happen next; and
- understand how to receive and act upon feedback.
Classroom training goes back to the notion of engaging participants to connect with their people. For example: How does a leader reconnect with a superstar who just lost a big sale? How do you get this individual in the mood to rally for the next sales opportunity? Here is a time when a leader needs to engage this person in a conversation, one that is motivational and morale building. This is a time when a leader needs to know what to say, and at the right time, in order to drive business forward.
Leaders See Both Today’s and Tomorrow’s Opportunities
Leaders, too, play a significant role in moving American business forward. Effective business leaders must have the ability to look at not just today but also look to tomorrow.
They must be constantly on the lookout for the competition, including what’s coming next and recognize the implications and the possibilities. Not only that, business leaders need to be able to paint a picture—for others—of what they see.
As it is, leadership is one of those words that everyone recognizes and, for some people, it does come more naturally. There is plenty of leadership training content that can be found in books or on the Internet; however, classroom training is distinctively effective because it creates activity and brings the content to life and gives it meaning.