The concept of employee engagement is not new, but the means of achieving it is evolving. At one point, it was thought that one’s weaknesses could be developed until they successfully turned into strengths. It became clear, though, that focusing on developing strengths and prohibiting weaknesses from causing harm yielded the greatest growth. Similarly, a once-held belief was that effective management meant throwing parties and making the workplace a fun environment, but it has become clear that playing ping pong in the office isn’t the way to engage employees. Rather, it’s whether or not the leadership is such that employees want to spend time with one another playing ping pong, creating innovative plans and products or working together to solve problems.
What Makes an Impactful Leader?
Hopefully, businesses are past the point of promoting someone to a leadership position who lacks both the desire and skills to be successful in the role, but do so simply because they are so good at their individual contributor role. As previously stated, weaknesses generally don’t turn into strengths so making sure someone with both the desire and some hint of aptitude are placed in the role is a good first step. Assuming someone is a good fit for a leadership role, whether they are novice managers or seasoned leaders, both benefit from leadership training or leadership coaching. Knowing the business and executing strategy are pieces of the puzzle, but soft skills and emotional intelligence should not be neglected.
Additional soft skills training that can be helpful to leadership development include:
- Conflict Resolution
- Delivering Performance Feedback
- Listening and Reflecting
- Empathy and Attunement
- Motivational Approaches
- Helping People Achieve Their Full Potential
- Removing Obstacles to Success
How Can Leadership Effectiveness and Quality Be Measured?
Effective leadership is not solely a measure of employee satisfaction. Management can create a culture that is fun and still fails spectacularly from a productivity standpoint. Simply throwing parties and providing unlimited time off does not guarantee peak performance. On the other hand, teams can achieve great productivity but have an unhealthy culture that delivers very little satisfaction. Effective leadership demonstrates both employee satisfaction and productivity (or performing well in key performance indicators) through reportable metrics but is also self-evident.
People leave managers more than jobs. Leadership quality and effectiveness are instrumental in engaging employees, reducing turnover and crushing goals and expectations. Teams that deliver amazing results are lead by people who allow them the autonomy to get things done and operate from their natural strengths while leveraging others to do the same. Developing effective leaders is where we come in to play with leadership training and coaching.
What is the Difference Between Leadership Training and Leadership Coaching?
Leadership training encompasses a mixture of business-specific training as well as soft skills while leadership coaching is a real-time, on-the-job mentorship that develops managers to become leaders and processes through current situations and challenges as they arise. Leadership training can be in a classroom environment with large instructor to participant ratios whereas coaching is generally one-to-one. Both have their place and we can help you identify the right fit for your business needs. Contact us for a free leadership development strategy.
