How to Approach Leadership Training
- 1). Examine "pull" programs to use instead of "push" programs. Many organizations focus their leadership initiatives on a select group of managers who receive identical, carefully monitored educational opportunities and rotations. By offering individual managers more choices and flexibility in goal development, however, training becomes more self-directed, increasing the chance for follow-through by fully committed participants.
- 2). Create tools to support self-directed learning. Boeing's successful leadership initiative, the Waypoint Project, revealed that 80 percent of a manager's development takes place directly from the challenge of job-related experiences, not from training exercises. Identify critical events in your managers' work experiences, and compile a searchable database based on those insights.
- 3). Teach managers aspects in which they're interested, but ensure they're driven by business strategy. While business needs must form the framework for personal development plans, let managers choose which aspect of meeting those needs they care about most. This top-down approach ensures that people stay focused and that the business benefits from their attention.
- 4). Incorporate a long-range view of leadership skills. Many leadership programs fall back on the traditional approach of defining the attributes of a leader and then mapping a rigid route to acquire them. Instead, look ahead to skills that may become more important in the future to give managers a wider choice of targets.
- 5). Institutionalize the lessons. To avoid the chance that individualized learning won't reach the larger organization, verify that each participant's key insights from leadership experiences are compiled and disseminated to all managers.
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