Types of Leadership Development

Leadership development is strategic planning companies use to improve employees’ leadership abilities and expertise to well-train them for effective management and leadership challenges. 

The process is well-organized, thoroughly planned, long-term, and specialized to allow executives, teams, and individuals to acquire leadership skills to accomplish personal and organizational goals.

What is leadership development?

48% of leaders in the present organizations witnessed leadership as a major skill, higher than 34% in 2011. 

Leadership development is termed as a company development program to coach and train high-potential leaders to fill roles as and when they get vacant. The leadership development programs are long-term and more comprehensive than other precise end-goals programs.

Primarily, leadership focuses on enhancing an individual’s attitude. The quality of the development depends on the program chosen. Development is visible when the program is carried out for a specific period, integrating other developmental experiences.

Why is leadership development important?

The study reveals that individuals going for leadership coaching enhanced their learning ability by 25% and their work skills by 20%. 

Independent studies by Deloitte stated that leadership development is a major issue companies face today. But what has made leadership development so crucial? Well, it is the obvious chance to acquire a competitive edge against their competitors.

When a business focuses on the development of leaders, you will see them acquire a major competitive edge by enhancing the result- attracting, fostering, and retaining talent and boosting your success when directing change.

According to the top leadership trends, 20% of companies use leadership development to trace individuals with remarkable leadership abilities. As per a survey, most participants agreed:

• The leadership development program prepared them efficiently for future responsibilities.
• Lessons learned were related to the challenges faced in leadership.
• Individuals undergoing training and coaching could easily put their learning into the organization regarding management abilities, cross-team collaboration, overall efficiency, and transparency to diverse perspectives.

Reasons to choose leadership development

So, what makes leadership development important? Well, four things make leadership development drive sustained success:

1. Enhance final fiscal performance

Organizations that invest heftily in human capital witness 5 times better stock market returns than those that pay less attention to human capital. Leadership development increases the ability to lower costs, boost new income lines and enhance customer satisfaction.

1. Acquire and retain talent

Leadership development increases employee engagement enhances a company’s talent to manage the talent pipeline gaps and lowers the cost linked with turnover. Efficient leaders attract, appoint, and inspire employees. A manager with poor leadership abilities will fail to acquire and retain efficient employees.

It is considered a good endeavor to coach and promote people internally in the long run by hiring external coaches to use their leadership abilities further to attract and retain a high-performing workforce.

1. Inspire strategy execution

Effective leadership development is not just about personal development. Companies choose a leadership coaching strategy that integrates well with their business strategy and decks the employees with leadership abilities helpful for their company. Leadership development helps companies shape the workplace culture and business strategy as per their ideologies.

According to the Conference Board, “Leadership development has great power to shape and innovate the business culture and strategy.”

1. Successful changes

Leadership development enhances an individual’s ability to lead in a chaotic environment. When companies look ahead to developing high potentials and executives to unravel the full potential of their talent pool, they experience agility.

Influential leadership development coaching programs develop a more integrated, richer, and diverse talent, which is why organizations choose them.

Types of leadership development

The leadership type is a company’s manager to lead its workforce. Extensive research has been done to find out the best leadership styles. Well, you have different types depending on varied situations. The most suitable and relevant leadership development type depends on the program chosen by the company for its executives, leaders, potential workforce, and managers, depending on the current situation. 

So, the situation helps to pick the most efficient type of interaction. Many times, leaders should handle problems needing immediate solutions without any consultation. Here’s how different leadership types can bring different results:

Hi-Pot Development

Hi-pot in a workplace is recognized as the secret weapon of any company’s future. The hi-pot employees are those showcasing winning traits of future leaders and executives.

Leadership development programs focusing on high-pot development enhance their confidence and productivity. To harness the skills of high-performing employees, companies should identify their potential. The coaching involves programs beyond standard compliance and role-specific training.

• Know their strengths and weaknesses through evaluation
• Provide enrichment courses for their strong points
• Offer them feedback and coaching opportunities for their weak points
• Reinforce learning at all stages
• Develop a track to prepare them for the future
• Hire a coach to advocate and groom them
• Consider them as an investment

Pave the way for high-potential employees by teaming them with a coach who independently coaches them and assesses their growth. Choose competency-based learning to support their skills.

Succession planning

Planning successors is a major business strategy to help companies prepare for the future with more readiness, reduced talent loss, and enhanced leadership aptitudes. 

Succession planning is the procedure of recruiting employees and helping them grow to perform a key role in a company. It boosts the accessibility of professional and abled employees who can satisfactorily replace old leaders. 

Companies need to adopt a preemptive strategic approach to their leadership succession planning. Grooming potential leaders using a well-planned strategy to enforce a pipeline of leaders helps sustain business continuity.

Benefits to reap from succession planning

• Recognize future leaders by offering training and coaching to improve performance.
• Reduce recruitment expenses by training and replacing employees with candidates from the organization. 
• Address competency gaps between the current employee competency and the needed competency level and offer coaching programs to equip them with the right skills.

Role Transitioning

Organizations grow because their employees grow. Facilitating consistent growth of your hi-pot employees through role transition serves as your biggest competitive advantage. 

Transition refers to having the ability to transit into any role. It means to fight, adapt and win over to the changing workplace situations to continue making profits.

Often employees are not equipped with the needed capabilities to handle a new role which can cause a fall in their performance. This causes failure in developing talent for the future.

Once the organization aligns role transition according to their business goals and cultural environment, they can enhance the employees’ learning journey.

With the millennial workforce enjoying managerial roles earlier in their career, making them well-versed with the managerial, technical, and strategic skills needed for higher roles is important. You can help them with:

• Designing role transition training in sync with the organizational goals for the highest possible ROI.
• Focusing more on overall individual development along with behavioral and technical skills.
• Identifying major transitions from individual contributor to first-stage manager, from first-stage manager to middle-stage management, and from middle-stage manager to senior leader.

Career development

Choosing a good leadership development program can help you address your present skills and give you the right coaching to improve them. If you’re confident about your skills, coaching can help you with a focused path for growth and train you to grow in your career.

Leadership development, coaching, and mentoring can help with career development by offering:

• Better guidelines for career growth: Candidates may have queries about the right strategies to pursue a career. A structured leadership development coaching can answer the questions of employment, career growth, and achievements that need to be met for perfect career development.
• Offer the motivation required to seek career development: Focusing on development will help pursue career growth. Feeling motivated and directed offers expert ambition.
• Show value: Employees may look for constructive feedback for value in a workplace where managers and executives don’t work as mentors. Adopting a leadership development program for career development will inspire confidence and self-esteem and make them secure feedback for their work. It gives them the satisfaction that their work is being valued.

Skill Development

To generate excellent leadership, it is important to invest in the leaders, including offering access to coaching that provides skill training such as delegation, decision-making, management abilities, and more. 

It is a commitment, and any organization looking forward to developing leaders of choice should adopt it to support such an immersive leadership learning experience. 

Examples of skill development coaching can be conference intensive, external or internal coaching, and breakout sessions where your leaders have the opportunity to communicate and develop robust behavioral, interpersonal, and relationship abilities.

Now that teams are highly diverse and geographically scattered because of the pandemic, companies choose leadership programs to make their leadership team highly unified. Hence, companies offer soft skills that leaders require to support, inspire, enhance and motivate teams.

Interactive learning offers leaders a unique opportunity to improve their leadership abilities and review all the skills they’ve acquired when their situation needs it.

Conflict resolution

Conflicts in the workplace can occur because of several reasons, such as disagreement about specific work processes, differences in opinions, different interests or ideas for a project, or simple personality clashes. Leaders must address workplace conflict’s negative effects and look for ways to resolve it.

Using a leadership development program can help develop consensus amongst the team and save time. It further helps to boost cooperation, productivity, and higher employee motivation with better employee retention.

Dealing with change

Every company undergoes a small and big change. Both proficient leaders and new ones have a tough time managing these situations. 

Managing and helping the workforce cope with the change by explaining what prompts it and how it will offer better future results is a good way to combat the situation.

Coaching includes points on challenges that come along with the change, the significance of resilience, and the opportunities it offers, and understanding how to use it positively is a great way to pave the way for success. 

With this leadership style, you can guide your team to overcome major change-related obstacles and still work creatively.

Creative problem solving

You cannot avoid workplace problems, so a problem-solving career development program is helpful to learn ways to identify problems, address them as they arise, and look for effective solutions. 

Studying different solutions for problem-solving can help leaders avoid and face tough situations in a better, relevant and positive way.

Leading innovation

Without innovation, a workplace cannot stay competitive in the consistently evolving market. Innovation offers better opportunities to set up a successful work environment. 

The leadership innovation leadership development program helps lead creatively and develop an innovative workplace culture to enhance employee satisfaction and retention by concentrating on growth, differences, and meeting the client’s needs. 

Innovation as a part of your company’s principles makes the workforce feels proud of what they’re doing and the value they add to the community.

Leadership in a virtual environment

Leadership in a virtual environment coaching can help leaders acquire the abilities required to lead digital teams towards success. Training style can involve significant ways to interact without face-to-face contact, focusing on the growth of emotional intelligence to empower teams, wipe out cultural barriers, boost collaboration and engagement while working remotely, and maximize your online tools.

Leadership in cross-cultural teams

Most organizations in the present scenario are adopting a diverse workforce to enhance their standing in the global field. Keeping this in mind, a good leader should know how to lead and work with a diverse team by bringing out the best qualities to work in harmony, irrespective of their culture, gender, race, and sexual differences.

Creating diversity, equality, and inclusion awareness will help leaders break insensible bias, discrimination, and stereotypes. This further ensures that all team members are fairly heard, seen, and valued for their work.

Project planning, management, and delegation

Understanding how to plan projects efficiently, manage the process, and delegate responsibilities efficiently can help company leadership finish all the work that should be done. Delegating is a major skill needed for management. It helps members to be prepared to be accountable for their responsibilities. 

It can be accomplished by coaching them to implement project planning and derive results. Visualize the progress of your employees to recognize problem areas and work with your team on a solution. Recognize the strength of every employee and then delegate responsibilities or prepare them for the task before delegating duties.

Building trust and respect

Employees require trust and respect training. When developing a base of trust with your employees, keep in mind they will respect those decisions you make for the organization, which also helps take the team towards success.

You can train to create trust and respect with your workforce by acquiring coaching and skills in communication, learning to be transparent and cooperative, and discovering the right ways to boost confidence in your team so that they feel integrated and inspired to share input.

Improving employee performance

Coaching can enhance employee performance because it helps every team member feel appreciated and recognized. Coaching facilitates leaders to develop more efficient and effective work relationships with their workforce by offering guidance and compliments. It enhances the leader’s ability to listen to their workforce and empower them with effective feedback, honest communication, and dedication to their consistent growth and development.

Motivating and encouraging employees

Motivation drives employee performance and the growth of a company. Management can inspire and motivate their employees by knowing their motivation concept and how it impacts the workplace culture and well-being of the employee. 

Knowing the right motivational techniques and the right time and ways to use them can inspire employees to reach their maximum potential for enhanced leadership.

Effective communication skills

How you interact with your employees states the relationship you share with them! To foster a collaborative and positive connection, developing the skills of a good communicator is essential. Communication abilities coaching helps you avoid common barriers between employee-management interactions. It educates you on ways to offer transparent, direct, and inspiring statements, provide constructive feedback and consistently speak with the team and understand their needs.

Time management

Time management is essential to bring out productivity and efficiency. Coaching management to take advantage of the time by defining goals and ranking work suitably, delegating work, lowering interruptions, and enhancing working hours can help transform workplace morale and creativity.

How can uExcelerate help?

With so many types of leadership development, you need professionals to teach the right training to help new leaders on board and take up their leadership responsibilities. The objective of coaching is to state their major responsibilities, deliverables in the new project, and ways to integrate them into the organization to accomplish desired business objectives.

uExcelerate understands the needs and requirements of what a company demands from leaders and offers the most experienced and certified coaches to support the personal transformation aiming toward organizational goals.

It offers a leadership development platform to allow companies to run on-demand customized programs to address the skills development of their leaders as a one-on-one or group-level engagement approach. 

uExcelerate coaching uses a non-judgmental and non-directive method to accept a teammate with a different approach to the same problem. It seamlessly integrates a coaching culture in your company. Whether you want to develop your leaders internally or hire coaches externally, uExcelerate is your one-stop solution. It aims to develop a sustainable coaching culture to foster customized employee talent development and offer on-demand, end-to-end coaching programs by offering access to hundreds of coaches worldwide.

Conclusion

So, when looking forward to helping new leaders take up leadership roles, coaching them on their tasks is the best way. Align their responsibilities and business objectives to help them deliver their best. Using the right coaching program is very efficient, depending on the needs of your company and leaders. Conduce different sessions to find a right-fit coach for your needs and opt for personalized development to allow a significant and sustainable leadership change.