Business Leadership Training & Executive Leadership Development

As an inspirational speaker, I’m frequently called on to discuss the importance of continued leadership development. Investing in business leadership trainings or an executive leadership development program is an incredibly smart move for your organization. It turns motivated employees into capable leaders, and good leaders into future executives.

Business leadership training is important for anyone who might take on leadership responsibilities within your company. It prepares them to assume this type of role and lays a solid foundation for taking their leadership skills to even greater heights. These are just a few of the main benefits it brings.

• Employees learn to think in terms of the big picture, noticing opportunities and emerging industry trends. This prepares them to take calculated risks and motivate others to think innovatively about how to adapt to changing market conditions.
• Workplace culture improves as aspiring leaders learn to nurture the potential of others. By modeling professionalism, they’ll set a strong example for others to follow, and their increased confidence will command respect. In their interactions with coworkers as well as the people they supervise, they’ll learn to expect more and get it.
• Time management will improve, helping the whole workplace to function more efficiently. Up-and-coming leaders will learn how to avoid time sucks and streamline the workflow by showing others how to improve productivity.

Executive leadership development takes business leadership training to the next level, growing your top talent. Unfortunately, too many companies don’t recognize that providing training for new executives is vital to their success. The brutal reality is that 35 to 45% of new executives fail in their role during their first 18 months. Training and ongoing support greatly improves their chances of success. Executive leaders need to be constantly honing their skills in order to succeed.

In my book Executive Presence, I discuss how cultivating executive leadership abilities will propel a person’s career forward and make her an invaluable asset to her organization. Here are a few of the main ways that offering this training will benefit your organization.

• Your best talent will learn to attract and nurture great people by empowering them at all levels. Executive leadership means not just managing people, but inspiring them—making them feel driven and capable of achieving success. A study by Towers-Perrin shows that only 14% of employees are fully engaged in their work. By learning to instill the passion to make them fully invested, your top talent will build employees’ morale.
• Leaders will develop the vision to guide the strategic direction of the company. They’ll also hone the skill to articulate their vision to others. This involves thinking holistically about how all the components of the company work together to achieve its vision and goals. Executive leaders need to know the vision, goals, and strategy inside and out so when new opportunities come along, they’re savvy enough to know which ones fit and guide their implementation.
• Top leaders will grow their influence, learning how to bring their “A game” whenever they’re representing the company. As the face of the organization for clients, partners, and employees, they’ll learn to project its values in all that they do. Your company will benefit from the exposure and connections they generate as they grow their networks.

Business leadership training and executive leadership development will turn good leaders into stellar ones. Remember that some people possess more leadership qualities naturally, but everyone can improve greatly with work. Choose a program that meets them where they’re at and instills the critical thinking skills to continue improving long after the program is over. Then encourage them to find strong mentors who can provide continued feedback on their development.