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#LEADERSHIP

Leadership Training for Managers: 10 Skills to Learn

BY
Andrew Langat
September 24, 2024
Managers gaining leadership skills in training session.
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For decades, the drive to developing exceptional leaders has been a critical focus for high-impact organizations.

The best leadership training programs are all-encompassing, imparting essential leadership skills to both new and experienced leaders.

This article provides an overview of why leadership development training programs are vital. It covers how managers can use leadership coaching strategies to become better team leaders, encourage high performance, drive innovation, inspire employees, and achieve long-term results.

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What Is Leadership Development Training?

Leadership development training is a structured program designed to equip current, aspiring, or new leaders with the skills, knowledge, and competencies necessary to effectively lead others. These programs focus on improving strategic thinking, making important decisions with clarity and skill, communication, and how to motivate teams to achieve organizational goals. There is a vast array of courses available, from in-person trainings for employees to online programs.

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Why Does Leadership Training for Managers Matter?

Leadership training for managers matters because it teaches essential skills required to manage teams effectively and contribute to organization success. Key benefits of leadership training courses for managers include improved employee performance, enhanced organizational culture, better decision-making, increased adaptability, and succession planning.

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10 Essential Leadership Training Skills for Managers

For the best leaders, leadership development training is not just a stepping stone in their careers but rather a transformation providing necessary practical skills that hone leadership style and help them become senior leaders with a vision.

Targeted leadership and management training helps managers overcome challenges to high performance, fine tune leadership qualities, and maximize professional development.

Here are some skills leaders should develop:

1. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) is an important ingredient for effective leadership. For this reason, the development of EI is a core concern in leadership training for leaders at all levels, particularly new leaders and new managers.

EI is the ability to monitor and manage a person's own emotions to make deeper connections with others. This includes sensitivity to emotional currents within a team, empathic responses to team members, and creating a positive work environment.

This is because EI directly affects the manager's connection with their team, their ability to gain trust, and, eventually, the ability to influence and motivate others to do their best work.

A manager with a high level of EI is more self-aware and better prepared to resolve conflict, give constructive feedback, and manage the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.

EI not only enhances leadership excellence but also contributes to the overall well-being and productivity of teams. This has a ripple effect beyond the team, enhancing the entire business.

In a world where the human aspect of leadership skills is increasingly recognized as critical, EI stands out as an indispensable skill for any successful leader.

2. Decision-Making

This is a basic competence focused on in any leadership skills training course. High-performance teams are often led by quick – but thoughtful – decision-makers. Great leaders think strategically and then make decisions decisively.

In today's fast-moving and interwoven business world, this is a crucial skill for any leader. Leadership development training improves this skill so senior managers can make appropriate and timely decisions.

Leadership and management training courses aim to equip leaders with the tools, knowledge, and frameworks necessary to enter the decision-making process with confidence and clarity.

This involves more than quick answers. It requires analysis of team performance, consideration of different viewpoints, and anticipation results.

This is developed through a well-structured management course teaching analyzing data, measuring risks against benefits, and engaging teams when appropriate.

Such training should also promote ethical consideration of important decisions to ensure leaders effectively embed values and principles relevant to their organization.

3. Communication and Active Listening

Communication and active listening are two of the most critical leadership skills. Mastering these will set you apart from other leaders in the talent pool.

Communication and active listening help managers make and sustain relationships, organize and facilitate group activities, encourage collaboration, and build a company culture that maximizes the easy flow of ideas and feedback.

By mastering the art of communication and active listening, managers will be effective leaders who inspire trust, resolve conflict, and develop a culture of openness, cooperation, and respect for others.

At the same time, it enables the manager to lead with empathy and awareness, ensuring employees feel heard and valued in the organization. This is also a key component of driving innovation in the workplace.

These competencies make a team cohesive and productive. When a team's performance improves, innovation, efficiency, and profit improve for the business as a whole.

4. Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is vital to the long-term success of any organization, so it is typically emphasized in leadership development training courses.

Strategic thinking looks to the big picture of the future, anticipates challenges that might arise, and presents choices aligned with the organization's larger goals.

Leadership development courses focus on developing managers' strategic thinking by encouraging them to look beyond the organization's day-to-day operations and instead consider the long-term implications of their decisions on team performance.

This requires an understanding of market trends, competitor analysis, and the determination of opportunities for innovation and growth. A leader needs to understand how to leverage these to influence positive change beyond the individual person, but connecting to the full team and beyond.

A good leadership and management course also equips managers with additional skills in critical thinking, risk assessment, and strategy devising, all of which ensure their teams and organizations are at the forefront of the dynamic business arena.

Strategic thinking is a constantly evolving aspect of business leadership. It requires extensive continuing education to manage complexity, make informed decisions, and lead organizations toward prosperity.

Leaders trained in strategic thinking will be prepared to respond to challenges and proactively shape organizations direction in a competitive environment.

5. Adaptability

Adaptability is crucial for professionals in management roles. It enables leaders to conduct business in a global community full of complexities and uncertainties.

Change is inevitable. It typically comes through continuous market fluctuation, technology innovation, or an obstacle no one has foreseen, so managers have to adapt strategies and methods quickly and efficiently.

Leadership development courses that help develop adaptability allow a person in leadership to adopt an open mindset, open up to and welcoming change, invite new ideas, and allow for innovation.

Managers learn to read situations, make decisions under pressure, and confidently take employees and teams through transitions.

By developing adaptability through leadership development courses, managers become versatile. Adaptability also allows them to autonomously carry out team development by adding new talent to the leadership pipeline.

Finally, those in leadership roles can model adaptability for emerging leaders, highlighting it as a skill the whole team can learn, allowing the team as a whole to gain confidence, pivot more easily when situations change, and, over time, become a high performance team.

6. Conflict Management

Mastering conflict management is the key to sustaining a good work environment when leading teams.

Conflicts often arise from differing opinions, miscommunication, or competing interests in any organization. Leadership development training helps leaders understand and navigate the root causes of conflicts in the workplace.

Leadership training programs equip the leader with techniques for constructively navigating conflict. These include recognizing initial conflict signals, understanding the cause of the conflict, and dealing with the situation with empathy and objectivity. These are skills a leader will use over the course of their entire career.

When those in leadership and management positions know how to listen to all parties active in a conflict so that each can be heard and valued, they can model these skills for everyone while improving team morale and retention.

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7. Financial Know-How

Having strong financial skills is crucial because leaders are responsible for making decisions that directly impact company budget and profits.

For instance, if you’re managing a team, you need to know how much you can spend on resources, salaries, or new projects. For example, if your department needs new software, without understanding the cost implications, you might overspend, leading to budget cuts elsewhere.

A leader with savvy financial skills can make smarter choices that keep the business in good shape.

8. Talent Management

Talent management skills are about finding the right people for the job and helping them grow.

Imagine you’ve hired a great new employee. If you don’t give them the right opportunities, training, or feedback, they might become disengaged or even leave. Not only is that expensive and time-consuming for a company, often the best people in leadership and management positions are those who have been with a company for a long time and hold valuable institutional knowledge.

It benefits everyone when folks stay with a company for a longer portion of their career.

If you manage employee development well, they’ll be motivated, perform better, and stick around longer. It’s like being a coach who knows how to get the best out of each player on the team.

9. Delegating

Delegation is essential to getting things done efficiently.

Let’s say you have a huge project with a tight deadline. If you try to handle everything yourself, not only will you burn out, but the project might suffer.

By trusting your team and delegating tasks based on each person’s strengths, you can focus on what’s most important while giving your team a chance to shine. For example, you might delegate the technical aspects to someone with expertise in that area while you focus on the overall strategy.

This allows the team to achieve its goals while you show individual members you are considering their career goals and expertise.

10. Coaching

Coaching is about guiding your team members to grow and succeed.

Instead of just telling people what to do, the best team leaders help them figure it out for themselves. For example, if someone is struggling with a project, rather than jumping in to fix it, ask guiding questions to help them think through the problem. This way, they learn new skills and become more confident, benefiting them and the team in the long term.

This also communicates that managers care about things beyond the tasks associated with each individual role. Leaders can show interest in every employee's learning journey over the full course of their career.

Inspiring, isn’t it ? Want to learn more about connecting self-awareness to professional development? Get in touch today.
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AUTHOR
Andrew Langat
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Andrew Langat is an experienced content specialist in Leadership, Productivity, Education, Fintech, and Research. He is an avid reader and loves swimming as a hobby. He believes that quality content should be actionable and helpful.