Having a solid leadership group is essential in business, which is why leadership development training is so important.

Companies that lack leadership tend to suffer from higher turnover, decreased productivity, and lower morale. They can also experience issues with absenteeism.

There’s currently a significant leadership gap for companies all over the country. In fact, a 2018 whitepaper put together by the Association for Talent Development’s Public Policy Advisory Group reports that 52% of businesses have leadership and executive skills gaps, suggesting that many leaders don’t have the necessary skill set to be in that position.

The same study notes that 47% of people don’t believe the current workforce has the skills to replace the outgoing generation, and 35% think their companies aren’t investing enough in leadership training.

These numbers are alarming, but organizations can get ahead of things by investing in some leadership development training today.

Here’s a look at five ways this training can benefit your company.

1) Improve Financial Performance

Naturally, the bottom line is vital to every business, and investing in human capital can pay off in a big way.

Having a focused leadership team helps build the capacity to drive new revenue streams, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs, all of which improve the organization’s financial performance.

Leaders with the necessary training also do a better job of keeping employees on task and performing to their potential, which saves money in the long run.

2) Promote Role Clarity

One critical element leadership development training focuses on is role clarity. The gist is that when every team member understands their role within the organization and how it influences the company as a whole, they report better job satisfaction.

Role clarity also limits job overlap, reducing confusion in the workplace and allowing the leadership team to assign tasks more efficiently.

In a well-run workplace, managers should understand every team member’s role, and these employees should know what’s expected of them on a day-to-day basis.

3) Attract and Retain Talent

Solid leadership knows the value of attracting and retaining talent, both of which are invaluable for the organization as a whole.

In fact, a 2018 study by consulting service provider Mercer suggests that close to one-third of all employees planned to quit their jobs in the next 12 months.

Reasons for quitting include a lack of appreciation, an inadequate relationship with management, absence of career growth, negative corporate culture, poor mental health, and feeling burnt out.

You can trace all these factors back to the organization’s leadership. However, leadership training assists managers and executives in treating employees right, ensuring they stick around for years to come and take the company to the next level.

4) Create a Culture of Accountability

Accountability is vital in the corporate world, and it starts at the top. When leadership passes the blame onto others whenever something goes wrong, it creates a culture where avoiding accountability and responsibility is more important than completing the job correctly.

Leadership development training helps create a culture of accountability within the organization where every team member knows their responsibilities and is accountable to their peers, bosses, and themselves when they don’t meet expectations.

The result is a closer-knit community within the office where every team member strives to reach a common goal.

5) Close the Skills Gap

Finally, leadership development training can help organizations close the skill gap within the company. When the company doesn’t have enough leadership or the existing leaders don’t have the skillset to manage the team, it becomes obvious when the group fails to meet expectations.

Closing the skills gap involves elevating the leadership team to the level they need to be while also creating leadership bench strength where every team member strives to become a leader. Leadership bench strength is vital when the current leadership group is preoccupied, moves on to other opportunities, or retires because it makes the changeover far more efficient, as well.

The Leadership Training You Need

Leadership development training can help you set your organization up for success. You’ll also see the education you provide for your managers and executives trickle down to other team members.

The result is a more efficient, cohesive workplace with a culture that attracts talent and keeps them within the organization.

The Leadership Development Institute’s leadership coaches and consultants are some of the most experienced organizational development experts in Silicon Valley and Bay Area. We can assist as you make the changes necessary to take your business to the next level. Contact the Leadership Development Institute for more information on the strategic guidance we provide.

Baseball season is around the corner and I couldn’t help but infuse the title of this article with some of the vernacular from our national pastime.

In baseball, the term “one pitch pitcher” refers to a pitcher who is overly reliant on one type of pitch (fastball, curveball, etc.) to be effective. History tells us this approach has limitations and ultimately limited success. They lack the versatility in their repertoire of pitches to solve the many different kinds of situations they face in the course of a game. Experts will tell you that the best pitchers have 3-4 different pitches they can throw at any given time and at any velocity they choose to solve the predicament in front of them.

Now, imagine that you are the leader of an organization and have many competitors who are looking to beat you to market and/or dominate market share. Let’s take this scenario one step further and give you “one pitch capability” and we’ll give your competitors “three pitch capability” to solve all the problems that come your collective way. Now, the bad news, you are not going to win this competition. We’re sorry, we know that one pitch has carried you a long way and you have been successful wherever you have “played”. However the game has changed. The market place is changing daily, the complexity of data coming at you is mind boggling, innovation cycles are becoming shorter and shorter and what once made you successful now has you out of breath.

We can guess with some degree of accuracy what happened to you. Here is a short list of possibilities.

1.  You just don’t like coming out of your comfort zone.

2.  You have over-relied on a set of leadership behaviors that are not too different from each other and were greatly rewarded for this approach. It could be any set of behaviors. For our purpose we’ll choose decisiveness, hard driving and being directive. All great qualities but in the realm of leadership it translates to one pitch….FASTBALL! This is limiting. It leaves you with very little leadership versatility. Your predictable.

3.  You greatly over value one aspect of leadership and strongly under value the opposite behavior. For example you might greatly over value decisiveness and almost completely dismiss consensus building. This could leave you very “lopsided” in this area of leadership and cause you to make a misinformed decision, leave people out of the process and ultimately not gain followership from key stakeholders. You won’t miss or fail a high percentage of the time, but enough to impact your career and your organization.

Here is the bottom line, the executive leadership development field has really never measured/assessed for leaders overusing their strengths. More of a good thing is always better….right? In fact what’s wrong with being decisive, hard driving and directive? Nothing actually, unless you are doing it most of the time with most of the problems you are trying to solve. If you mixed up your “pitches” and at the right time threw in some listening, asked for other opinions, facilitated dialogue between two opposing views from other leaders and called for additional data……well then you would be that more versatile and an effective leader who has 3-4 “pitches” they can rely on to get the best outcome.

So how do you uncover whether or not you have become a one pitch leader?

HERE ARE YOU FIRST STEPS IN THE CHANGE PROCESS:

1. Pull out your most recent 360 review and capture the themes where people have indicated you’re doing too much of a particular behavior.

2. Now, to the best of your ability make note of what meetings and with what people you are over-doing these behaviors.

3. In order to balance out your behaviors and “show up” differently, look to demonstrate behaviors that are at the other end of the behavioral continuum. For example if people have indicated that your point of view tends to dominate meetings you could counter that with several possibilities; that might include a)asking questions to gather more data, b)asking someone else for their perspective or c)even “softening” your point of view with a caveat that sounds like: “I could be off the mark here, but I do think that we need to pursue this path of action…….

4. Ask for feedback. Let someone you know and trust what you are working on and ask them to give you feedback on what they’ve observed.

 

Your objective is to become a versatile leader who can bring the right amount of the right behavior and the right time and be the most effective leader you can be. This is not easily done and perfection is not the goal here. Becoming more versatile in your leadership approach to solving big problems is our objective.

Let’s dialogue about this. Let me know what you have uncovered for yourself and perhaps I can come back to you with some ideas on how to bring more “pitches” to your leadership repertoire with our executive coaching services!