Business Leadership Development: The Goals of Leadership Training
If asked to describe a great business leader, most people would mention control, poise and insight as critical characteristics. Can great leadership really be reduced to these qualities? The answer is yes, but their development requires the development of other qualities-a fact that leadership coaches know well. If you want control, poise and insight to define your tenure as an executive, developing the skills below through leadership training is the first step.
Knowing When to Fight and When to Move on
Positions of influence can tempt us to be overly controlling. For executives, too much control could manifest in the following way: a project or plan is showing inherent weaknesses, but instead of cutting losses and moving on, an executive puts more capital toward the project in hopes of sparing it, creating a greater debacle than before, and jeopardizing his or her position.
Knowing when to fight and when to move can do more than add sanity to your work environment; it can also save your company money, and preserve your career.
Being Open to New Suggestions from Everyone
One of the worst things executives can do is assume middle and low-position employees are incapable of making meaningful suggestions. On the contrary, these employees often see issues with surprising clarity by observing them from a long distance. Entertaining suggestions from non-executives might challenge your pride and company culture, but it could also improve your insight-a critical quality for any business leader.
Understanding Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses
Many leaders admit to having weaknesses without knowing what they are. This is because leadership positions encourage us to consider others’ shortcomings more than our own. When you realize your true strengths and weaknesses, it allows you to better satisfy critical needs and functions, such as hiring the right talent, task delegation and project management, to name a few.
Having the Right People in the Right Positions
Many companies have an excellent business plan, but lack the right people to carry it out. If your company is experiencing high turnover for positions that typically have long tenures, the problem could be lack of insight into what type skill set should fill them. By identifying the right people for the right positions, you can improve your company’s performance and eliminate the high cost of training employees who don’t last.
Never Underestimate the Competition
You know you shouldn’t underestimate the competition, but do you know why? In many cases, a lack of knowledge about competitors equates to underestimating them. Instead of developing strategies to keep your company ahead, you end up developing them just to catch up. As every business coach knows, this is a losing scenario that can negatively impact a company’s market positioning, and ultimately its bottom line.
Business leadership development is critical to maximizing your company’s-and also your own-business potential. For the best development services, Atlanta executives should consider development training from members of Vistage-a peer-to-peer membership organization whose goal is improving business leadership.
Article by Carlotta Jones
