Why Train Your Leaders?

Why is it essential for your company to train and develop its leaders? This goes far beyond simply professional development, talent management, and knowledge acquisition. Having effective leaders and managers is one of the most critical components to long-term organizational success.

Some interesting statistics…

Many people underestimate the importance of good managers. Here are four common organizational pains and objectives that can be addressed with leadership training: retention, engagement, quality, and revenue.

Retention

Many companies struggle with retaining their key employees. High turnover is costly and disruptive. More than any other reason, people leave their current job because of their manager. If you could improve your annual turnover rate by even a few percentage points, what would that mean for your company (both in cost savings and productivity)? 

Engagement

Poor engagement is plaguing companies worldwide. In the U.S., 68% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. Managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. Studies have also found that managers, not the organization, drive employee engagement. In other words, teams that have good managers are far more likely to be engaged and productive than teams run by mediocre or bad managers.

Quality

Many companies rely on the quality of their product or service as their competitive advantage. Poor quality can sink a company. So how do you get high-quality outcomes? It all starts with the team behind the product or service. If the team is not productive, properly communicating, and committed to quality and success, it’s nearly impossible to have high-quality outcomes. The team’s quality is rooted in… you guessed it… the quality of the team’s manager.

Revenue

All for-profit (and even many not-for-profit) businesses are concerned with revenue. Without revenue (and revenue growth), there’s no company. Companies with strong leaders have twice the revenue growth of other companies. In other words, without good managers creating engaged and productive teams, many companies find their revenue stagnant or declining.

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Why a Leadership Framework is Critical 

One of the common objections to management training we hear is “aren’t all of these skills just inherent and intuitive?” Or “can’t people just learn these skills on the job?” The answer is that while many of the skills of good leadership and effective management are intuitive and simple, the execution of these skills can be quite difficult. And learning leadership skills without structure and guidance is often a recipe for bad habits.

Proper execution first requires learning a proven, effective model. A great manager needs to know how to communicate, lead, involve team members, delegate, coach others, resolve conflicts, manage complaints, support change, provide feedback, develop goals, and discipline employees. 

These skills can be learned slowly (and often painfully!) on the job. But most people end up developing some bad habits that become second nature when they acquire skills without a proper foundation. And they may not even realize they’re doing things the wrong way! These leaders may be confused when they end up with an unproductive team or high turnover. 

That’s where leadership and management training come in. Vital Learning’s Leadership Essentials courses provide a proven framework for both new and experienced managers. Participants that go through our courses learn the everyday skills and situation-specific skills needed to be an effective manager. They learn the right framework that becomes comfortable and ingrained with continued practice. With the proper foundation, managers are able to continually execute and grow the right way.