The 5 elements of the best leadership training programs
There are five attributes that the best leadership training programs should include.
Before you choose any leadership training courses, whether it’s a management training program, executive development programs, office manager training or an employee development plan, you’ll be prudent to vet it for these five factors.
The best leadership and management training programs will include these 5 attributes:
When evaluating leadership and management training programs, there are certain must-have features that will ensure they are effective, relevant and a good ROI for the money.
Be on the lookout for these 5 indispensable attributes:
- Develop leaders through the entire leadership continuum: Make sure the leadership training course develops leaders through the entire training continuum, so that employees, managers and executives can all develop to the same leadership strategy.
- Skills development: Look for leadership training and development whose prime focus is leadership skills training, not a bunch of psychology theories on topics you will never use.
- Training in the core fundamentals: Leadership programs that are centered in the 4 core fundamentals of leadership rather than psychology and personality tests will ensure effectiveness.
- Centered around the 6 constituent audiences: Your audience determines your leadership approach. Leadership development training needs to be constituent-centric, so it is customizable to each leader’s audience.
- Builds emotional intelligence through soft skills. The leadership development plan templates should develop emotional intelligence habits and self-management traits through soft skills.
I will explain each of these 5 factors, so you can approach your leadership training selection with confidence.
You can find out more about the 3 phases of leadership training and development here:
Where do you start? You want to first establish where you are on the leadership training continuum so you can put together your leadership development strategy.
The best leadership training develops employees, managers and executives throughout the training continuum
Your leadership development strategy should be to develop leaders based on where they fall on this leadership training continuum:
Determine what leadership skills training you need
The first attribute is look for in leadership development courses is: does it train the leader according to where they fall in the leadership training continuum?
This will establish whether the leader needs functional leadership training, manager training or executive leadership training.
Then you’ll want to train in the skillsets that specifically need development:
- Employees: You may want to start with an employee development plan to strengthen your functional skills and get soft skills training.
- Managers: Leadership training for managers might require less functional skills training and more soft skills, emotional intelligence and leadership skills.
- Executive leadership: Executive leadership training may require more abstract intangibles such as vision, emotional intelligence maturity, brand and building personal presence and gravity.
Identifying your training needs like this sets the pace to properly focus on the skillsets you need.
Before we get to the importance of skills development, let me introduce myself and my credentials:
About the Author, Founder and Course Creator
Larry LaFata is a talent development specialist and the founder of modernleadershipcenter.com and defineyourcareer.com.
He has a unique ability to synthesize research and innovation into organized, usable concepts. This provides clients with streamlined leadership skills training and employee development solutions they can implement quickly.
After 30 years experience working with Fortune 500 companies, Larry turned to his passion: leadership development and talent development. The core of his course creation approach is customized self-assessment and skills development templates. No psychometric tests or psychology assessments are ever used.
Larry has authored: Employee Development Plans, Employee Rewards Programs, Career Planning, and this Leadership Development Program.
Larry’s mission at The Modern Leadership Center is to better humanity through innovative talent development strategies. His continuing efforts in this field keeps him in the forefront of thought leadership in the industry.
Developing leadership traits: The prime focus of the leadership training program needs to be leadership skills development, not psychology theories
The best leadership training tool you can employ is skills development. I’ll explain why.
Skills developed as habits are what develop permanent leadership traits, which is your ultimate goal for all training.
This is why both of my employee development and leadership development programs include skills training templates. So you can develop the traits of a good leader in a concise way.
Regrettably, many leadership courses ignore this, and focus on psychology topics you will never use.
Why many off-the-shelf leadership training programs are psychology information overload
In an effort to better understand leadership and the human mind, many leadership development plans focus on psychology.
In some cases a psychology focus is a benefit, as in Cialdini’s work on Influence.
However, in many cases it could be a hindrance to effective management and leadership training:
- You are learning a ton of concepts, psychology theories and syndromes, many of which you will never use.
- Retention is less than 10% after one week, according to recent studies.
- Leadership styles can limit your leadership options and put you in a box. For example democratic leadership style may work OK for small teams in specific functional silos, but doesn’t work well when applied organization wide.
- Training that uses personality profiling and psychometric tests confines you to restrictive use of your leadership as well.
Psychology may have a place in leadership training courses however beware, it can put leaders in a box.
The best leadership training programs will focus on leadership skills, not leadership styles.
“What makes a good leader?”
The benefit of leadership skills developed as habits
A leadership skill that is internally integrated as a habit, it how you develop permanent leadership traits.
Once that happens, and the trait is “part of you” your leadership is automatic, instinctual, fluid and confident.
Leadership skills as habits are what make great leaders.
Skill habits are how you build the exact leadership qualities you want:
- Skills as habits are how a senior leader builds presence, credibility and gravitas
- Emotional intelligence habits are how a manager bridges functional leadership to executive leadership
- Skills as habits allow you rehabilitate any areas where you need development
- Skills as habits provide new mangers or managers in training with confidence and self-assurance, eliminating their insecurity and anxiety during their growth transition
As a leadership training course creator, the number one training strategy I deploy is leadership skills development. The best leadership training programs will focus on them as well.
The “hidden” advantages of leadership skills training that provides a huge ROI to your training budget
Because they are concise and low cost, there are numerous “hidden” benefits to leadership skills training that provide a large training ROI:
- You can self-administer which leadership skills to work on, so you don’t need enroll in ongoing leadership training courses
- Skills development doesn’t require leadership coaching, as it effectively acts as a “leadership coach in a course”
- Using a soft skills training template, you won’t require a separate emotional intelligence course or soft skills training – they are built in
- The continual quarterly cycle of leadership training is self-perpetuating, so you don’t need to use expensive outside training each quarter
- Leadership skills training develops what I call “Leadership Quality Control” where you raise the skills sets of the leadership team to the same benchmark standards.
The best leadership training programs focus on developing the core fundamentals of leadership
There are so many “nice to have” leadership training topics to distract you, no one would blame you for being confused about which ones are truly relevant.
That confusion ends now.
The third key attribute of the best leadership development programs are those that stay centered on the basic building blocks of leadership. Period.
There are four components that are the building blocks of effective leadership skill. They are fungible, too. You can apply them to any leadership scenario.
The four components of all leadership skill:
- Position Power
- Influence
- Vision
- Mentoring
These 4 components lend themselves perfectly to skills development.
No matter what psychology theory or leadership style you may have heard of it is based on these four components to some degree.
But these four components don’t work in a vacuum. They only work when properly applied to your constituent audiences.
Why the best leadership development training program is constituent-centric
Leadership isn’t applied in a vacuum.
The fourth key attribute of the best leadership training is establishing and cultivating a leader’s constituent audiences.
The reason for this is because of this one important takeaway:
Your audience determines your leadership approach
There are up to 6 constituent audiences every leader must address or cultivate.
A quality leadership development plan will identify and establish each of your audiences and their values.
This allows you apply the four components of leadership strategically to each audience.
These audience Venn diagrams visually demonstrate audiences.
The six constituent audiences that all leaders must cultivate
There are six constituent audiences that every leader must address. Depending on your leadership role, you may only need to address a few.
For example a CEO must address all 6 constituent audiences in order to avoid a leadership vacuum and to effectively build shareholder value:
The best leadership training programs will have templates that establish these audiences for each leader.
It’s a basic principle of marketing. Before you can do anything you need to define and clarify: who is my audience/target market?
Once you know your audiences and their values, you can then develop a leadership skills and soft skills training strategy.
This audience assessment template is a template example from my leadership development plan.
It helps you define your audience and their values so you can effectively lead and cultivate them.
Developing emotional intelligence habits through soft skills training
The best leadership training for managers and executives develops emotional intelligence habits through leadership soft skills training.
Emotional intelligence is the fifth crucial must-have for manager and executive training.
It is here where skills development is your big advantage.
Soft skills training templates are one of the best ways to develop emotional intelligence, and allow you to zero in on where the managers need development.
It is also an essential leadership tool for executives to develop those important abstract skills such as vision, presence and becoming the center of gravity.
I include softs skills development templates in both my employee development programs and my leadership development programs. This insures that building emotional intelligence is not overlooked when developing your leadership skills.
Skills development applies to all types of management training
No matter what functional management training a manager might need, a leadership training program based on skills is an excellent strategy.
It is beneficial for:
- Office manager training
- Operations Manager training
- Hospitality manager training
- Finance manager
- Safety manager
- Restaurant manager
- General manager
- Sales manager
- Key account manager
And any other superviser you may be preparing for bigger things.
Summary of the 5 elements of the best leadership training programs
Keep these 5 elements in consideration when choosing leadership training for managers, executives and employees:
- Trains leaders through the entire training continuum,
- Principal focus is skills training, not psychology
- Are centered in the core fundamentals of leadership
- Addresses the 6 constituent audiences that every leaders must cultivate
- Includes soft skill templates that strengthen emotional intelligence, self-management traits and presence
You are then assured to have leadership training that is effective, relevant and centered on skills – with a great ROI.
All these best practices of leadership training are included in my Leadership Development Program. Find out more below.
What makes a great leader?
The right leadership training, of course!
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