Leadership Training for Small Businesses: Customizing Solutions

Ensuring the leadership training and development of your management team is paramount for effective employee recruitment and retention, often resulting in accelerated and enduring company expansion. In the present landscape, employees are increasingly inclined to seek new opportunities if their workplace experience is unsatisfactory, and inadequate management stands out as a significant contributor to employee dissatisfaction.

As per a survey involving 3000 American employees, a significant 82% expressed their willingness to leave a job due to a negative managerial experience. Key issues like excessive control and demands for work beyond regular hours emerged as primary factors that led participants to become dissatisfied with their managers, eventually prompting them to consider quitting.

Before delving into the strategies your company can employ to provide managerial training aimed at mitigating these frustrations, it’s crucial to examine why comprehensive management development training holds such significance.

The Importance of Leadership Training Frontline Managers

Frontline managers play a pivotal role as they oversee the majority of the workforce directly involved in producing goods and services for customers. Consequently, managers have an indirect influence on customers through a single degree of separation, impacting factors like production quality and employee retention. Neglecting to cultivate a positive company culture, or worse, fostering negativity, can swiftly lead to a reduced workforce and a diminishing customer base.

Effective managers are skilled leaders who possess the capability to inspire the employees they supervise. They promptly address internal and external challenges, extending their leadership to encompass third-party vendors and partners.

Incompetent managers, on the other hand, cast a negative light on an organization’s leadership, which has adverse effects on employees, clients, and external partners. Deficient management practices, such as infrequent communication, can result in unclear employee expectations. This lack of clarity can escalate through the hierarchy, culminating in a scenario where senior executives remain unaware of struggling managers until it becomes a critical issue.

When managers fail to be effective leaders, the repercussions are felt by everyone involved.

Managers are required to be advocates for the betterment of the company, inspiring their teams to actively pursue the organization’s objectives. Their positive influence is what drives employees’ intrinsic motivation to excel rather than making them feel coerced into doing so.

Business Benefits of Management and Leadership Development Training

Efficient management yields both concrete and intangible advantages for businesses, including fostering a positive company culture, boosting morale, and enhancing revenue. According to a study on leadership training, companies characterized by effective leadership, as evaluated by both employees and external observers, can achieve financial returns that are up to 500% greater than those with inadequate leadership.

This remarkable outcome is attributed to the constructive influence of effective management on the following essential aspects:

• Attracting and Retaining Talent: Managers take the lead in recruiting, evaluating, and facilitating the integration of new talent, guaranteeing that fresh hires evolve into valuable and enduring team contributors. They are also strategically positioned to manage workforce adjustments and other workplace transitions, including individual or departmental turnovers, as well as oversee company succession planning.
• Building a Strong Company Culture: Above all, managers bear the primary responsibility for advocating company culture. They must set the precedent, imparting to employees the essential hard and soft skills necessary for their success. Demonstrating genuine concern and empathy towards employees plays a pivotal role in fostering a sense of mutual respect while acknowledging commendable performance must be harmonized with addressing subpar effort.
• Maintaining Efficient Operations: Managers frequently take the lead in decision-making, a role that gains heightened significance when unforeseen circumstances arise. In cases such as production irregularities leading to distribution inefficiencies, managers must ensure that operational systems remain on track. In times of rapid change, managers must make prompt decisions and effectively relay responsibilities to affected staff, clients, and external parties.

These business advantages underscore the significance of leadership development training for managers. Below, you will discover four categories of management training to contemplate, along with guidelines on crafting a leadership development strategy tailored to your company’s distinctive requirements.

Four Impactful Types of Management Leadership Training

To maximize the potential of your managers, as well as your entire workforce, it’s crucial to equip them with a well-structured leadership development plan.

A key element of successful leadership training involves establishing an approach that caters to the preferences of all involved parties. This encompasses the managers undergoing training, their individual learning preferences, as well as the senior executives or other trainers guiding them, taking into account their teaching methodologies.

While each training program may vary slightly, most management training initiatives can be categorized into one of four main types: mentorship, external training, internal programs, and learning management systems.

It will go through each program type in more detail in the sections that follow before outlining a comprehensive leadership development strategy that incorporates all four techniques.

1. Mentorship-Focused Training

Having a mentor can be advantageous for any employee or manager. Even in cases where formal mentorship programs are absent, proactive employees often establish such relationships on their own. Nevertheless, formalizing these connections offers the best means of harnessing the advantages and influencing the outcomes of mentor-mentee dynamics.

Ideally, senior management should consistently identify highly capable managers. This establishes a talent pool from which they can select mentors to serve as active role models for their less experienced counterparts. These mentors will impart both explicit job responsibilities and underlying, unspoken expectations to identified high performers through regular interactions and evaluations.

The most crucial skill set for this approach is company-specific knowledge. Mentors should underscore for mentees how the company’s internal workings directly influence daily work dynamics.

2. Workshops and External Leadership Training Programs

Another approach involves employing external teaching resources, such as in-person or online workshops delivered by consultants or industry experts. These training sessions might be mandatory during the onboarding phase or as a requirement for career advancement.

These programs are particularly effective for instilling fundamental management concepts, including:

• Overall definition and expectations: What is a manager? What are their responsibilities?
• Skills a manager should have: How can managers provide value, and then measure it?
• Communication and reporting protocol: How should managers engage clients or staff?

To maximize the benefits of these programs, it’s essential to partner with the service provider and incorporate your company-specific knowledge into the curriculum. While fundamentals are crucial, they have limitations. To truly optimize your manager training, customization tailored to your organization’s needs is key.

3. Internal Leadership Training Programs

A more impactful variation of the external workshop model employs similar delivery methods like classes or online modules but shifts their development to an internal context. In this approach, senior staff collaborates with HR or external consultants to design and deliver training that is “from managers to managers.” This approach tailors the lessons to align precisely with the organization’s expectations, often drawing from the trainers’ own experiences.

For instance, senior managers can elucidate organizational charts and reporting structures through both formal explanations and informal anecdotes from their own tenure in the company. The training can be enriched with intentional but casual interactions, such as lunch discussions or coordinating breaks with the mentee.

This method fosters trust, conveying that the company is committed to the personal growth of its managers.

4. Learning Management Systems

Lastly, organizations may opt for a fully online platform, commonly referred to as a learning management system, to provide training for their managers. This same platform could be utilized for all employees, with specific modules or sections dedicated to leadership and management. Similar to outsourced workshops and often in conjunction with them, these platforms are particularly suitable for foundational company knowledge.

It’s important to note that many fully online and self-paced platforms might not be optimal for teaching soft skills or technical skills that require hands-on experience. To achieve this, they need to integrate real-world examples and assessments that closely replicate the interface of enterprise software in use.

How to Create a Leadership Training and Development Program for Managers

Irrespective of the method chosen, organizations should customize their leadership development coaching to align with their unique organizational requirements. The most effective program for your company should be one that is extensively tailored, whether it is conducted by internal or external entities or a blend of both.

The subsequent sections outline a six-step process for designing, implementing, and sustaining a management training and development program.

1. Determine Your Audience And Goals

First, your organization should pinpoint its objectives for leadership development. Subsequently, identify the target audience and anticipated results of the training program, aligning them with the established goals.

• Who is the training for? Does the main target group consist of current managers, employees on a path toward management roles, or newcomers including new employees and managers?
• What do you want to achieve? Which specific metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) will be employed to assess the effectiveness of both the trained managers and the training program as a whole?

Having well-defined responses to these inquiries from the outset will streamline the creation of content, delivery approaches, and evaluation strategies. For instance, a workshop conducted by external experts intended for newly hired individuals would emphasize aspects like departmental structure or fundamental procedures, while mentorship aimed at employees advancing into management positions might concentrate on addressing skill deficiencies and necessary resource acquisition.

2. Outline the Subject Matter

The subsequent logical phase involves preparing the groundwork for the program’s structure, encompassing topics and their sequence, to align with the previously defined objectives. While each program will exhibit uniqueness, certain fundamental elements encompass:

• Company fundamentals, such as mission, vision, ethics, and values
• Industry or market-specific ethics, expectations, and best practices
• Managers’ organizational functions and impacts on other team members

When formulating workshop content, creating learning modules, or preparing discussion points for mentors, it’s essential to consider the principles of adult learning.

• Experience: Ideally, incorporating real-world applications is crucial. These practical scenarios are vital for trainees to absorb and retain information. Adult learners generally prefer practical exercises over theoretical definitions.
• Engagement: On an individual level, adult learners excel when a concept or task is engaging and directly relevant to their specific roles or duties.
• Involvement: Throughout the process, adult learners seek to be actively involved. They desire to be integrated at every stage of learning, including the development of courses. This level of engagement fosters a superior employee experience and initiates a strong connection with the course content.

Once you have determined the content and timing of the training, the next step is to identify the appropriate venues or platforms for delivery.

3. Determine the Setting

Senior management and training developers should pinpoint the precise settings and contexts in which the training will take place. It’s important to clearly differentiate between formal and informal training, particularly in approaches like mentorship that may have more flexibility.

When strategizing for a structured training initiative, define the environments, activities, and resources, including:

• Designated offices and rooms are suitable for hosting classes, discussions, and presentations.
• Functional workstations and tangible tools capable of facilitating live demonstrations.
• Digital assets available for sharing, such as file copies or databases.

By engaging in role-playing exercises, try to replicate actual circumstances. These activities can happen in designated classrooms, but they can also happen in cafeterias, offices of managers, or other lively places. All participants gain from including components that closely match real-world situations.

4. Develop Training Materials

Ensure that training materials are completely prepared prior to the program’s commencement, ensuring instructors and mentors grasp the comprehensive training scope from the outset. Early preparation guarantees that no crucial elements are overlooked.

Here are some instances of materials that your training program might encompass:

• Training Manuals: Comprehensive documents containing extensive information essential for new managers to excel in their roles. These materials are usually required reading during the onboarding process.
• eLearning Modules: Interactive platforms containing a mix of textual documents, video, and audio files, as well as learning modules integrated with assessments to evaluate managers’ comprehension.
• Practical Workbooks: Concise supplements to training manuals, these guides focus on specific subjects, like particular social interactions or the utilization of project management software.

The utilization and delivery of these materials will vary based on the chosen training approach. For instance, a learning management system might rely primarily on modules and quizzes, while mentorship may use official documentation sparingly, if at all.

Once this stage is completed, your program is prepared for implementation.

5. Implement the Training Program

Once you have diligently gone through the aforementioned steps, initiating the training program and bringing managers up to speed should proceed smoothly. The optimal strategy involves initially testing the program with a limited sample size or a focus group, such as one or two current managers.

Following a successful trial of the manager training program with the selected test participants and collecting their feedback for any necessary adjustments, you can proceed with a confident launch. It’s important to note that you should establish the required infrastructure and logistics before rolling out company-wide training. However, even a successful launch doesn’t mark the end of the process. Continuous sustenance, measurement, and refinement of that success remain crucial.

6. Receive Feedback and Revise

Manager training and development follow a cyclical rather than a linear path. The final step loops back to the initial one, as a successful program, necessitates continuous evaluation and adaptation to maximize the potential of managers and their teams. This process commences with a survey aimed at assessing immediate impact, ideally completed right after each training session or module.

Senior managers and mentors should regularly engage with trainee managers at defined intervals. For instance, scheduling monthly discussions at the 30-, 60-, and 90-day marks can aid in understanding how managers are applying their newly acquired skills. Any indications of deviation from the intended outcome call for adjustments. These interactions can also serve to monitor and enhance managers’ long-term career advancement.

If it’s determined that the training isn’t aligning with the objectives outlined in step #1, it’s highly likely that steps #2-4 should be reviewed. Additionally, if the objectives are being met but there are inefficiencies in the workflows of new managers, it might be necessary to reevaluate the objectives themselves.

Skills Every Good Manager Should Have

A query such as “What are the essential leadership skills?” holds less weight compared to “Which leadership skills are most relevant for my company?” Regardless of your organization’s leadership development objectives, it’s imperative to consider fundamental proficiencies, encompassing but not restricted to:

• Communication: For employees to connect with one another and, more importantly, with clients and external stakeholders, they must be proficient in both written and spoken communication.
• Conflict Management: Being skilled at resolving personal and professional conflicts among employees enhances employee retention and safeguards the company’s reputation.
• Team Work and Team Building: Managers should possess the ability to unite team members and harness their strengths in a way that optimizes the utilization of all available company resources.
• Decision-making: Each decision must undergo an evaluation process that considers its effects on the entire organization in comparison to the potential repercussions from all affected parties.
• Empathy: Managers should empathize with their employees, clients, and third parties to comprehend and utilize their motivations effectively.
• Delegations: Competent managers need to be aware of which resources are suitable for specific tasks to prevent suggesting inappropriate solutions to problems.
• Technological Literacy: Managers should possess proficiency in all the technologies required for their current roles and be receptive to swiftly acquiring new tools and methods as needed.
• Performance Management: Ultimately, managers should possess the ability to monitor both their own performance and that of their team members, prepared to acknowledge and reward exemplary work while also addressing any instances of underperformance.

Similar to how workers are likely to leave businesses with poor management practices, aspiring managers are likely to look for opportunities to develop their skills.

When managers perceive that their organization is dedicated to nurturing their growth, it fosters a stronger inclination to remain, perform at elevated standards, and experience a genuine sense of accomplishment in their roles. This commitment from managers often extends to more contented team members, an enhanced organizational culture, and heightened overall productivity.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com