This is in answer to the growing demand for younger, more dynamic managers to fill in the shoes of their older and graying counterparts who are just one step towards retirement. For the young and ambitious, this is the most opportune time to enroll on this program and hone their leadership skills in preparation for a more stable and for many, an exciting future as CEOs.
Statistics reveal that among the present crop of eager young hopefuls impatient to get to the top, it is the more aggressive, and hungrier crop and more driven, thus more likely to develop into good leaders in the race to the top. The training programs offered are available on line, so there is less demand for the trainees in terms of time and effort. The programs offer tips on how to improve individual skills, managerial abilities, personality development, confidence building, decision-making, employee management and the like. While the importance of training programs cannot be overemphasized nor undermined, inherent ability to deal with situations and quick thinking should not be over looked, nor the ability to sustain grace under pressure.
The programs are many and varied. For the young and eager learners, training to be good leaders is a new and exciting world of intensive discovery about individual capacities and strengths as well as weaknesses, as well as getting to know more about people, learning more about their behavior, attitudes, idiosyncrasies and what they want remain hidden from their peers.
These programs are keyed in on young people’s ability to adjust faster than the older colleagues, and fast learning skills. Due to a highly competitive corporate world, more programs are tube din on the unorthodox, and less traveled career paths to challenge the imagination of young minds, and induce their creative and productive juices deal with their competitors.
The training programs target the younger group who think they have what it takes, but are also open to their older peers who also believe that they have more than just being driven and eager, but are more experienced and thus, have an edge over the young trainees.
One of the biggest mistakes many organizations make is to cut back on management training and leadership development in a bad economy. These outfits cut the resources for these vital functions at the time when they are needed most.
A company needs trained managers and real leaders most when it is facing difficulties such as falling sales and dwindling resources. Yet many management teams chose not to devote money and resources to efforts to provide these individuals. In many cases, the resources and support for managers are cut even as their workload increases.
Management training programs combined with serious leadership development efforts can help an organization cope with the challenges posed by shrinking, low morale and falling sales. An example of how such efforts can help is generating new ideas.
There are many creative, intelligent and capable people working in every organization. Many of these people have the capability to manage and lead if they are given the tools. AÂ leadership development effort can identity those people while management training can increase their capabilities.
Such efforts save the organization money because it does not have to hire new managers from outside. It also gives the best and most capable workers an incentive to stay with the organization and commit to it its future.
Developing a pool of managers with leadership potential is also a good way to build a foundation for the economic rebound. The companies that do this will have the resources available to hit the ground running and start expanding when the economy starts growing again. History shows us that economic booms usually follow economic downturns.
There will be many new opportunities appearing in the years ahead, new technologies, new industries and new markets will appear. Organizations need leaders that can recognize these opportunities and managers who can take advantage of them. Those that devote resources to management training will reap these rewards.
Successful organizations do not react to change: they anticipate it and manage it. Change management does not mean controlling change, nobody can do that. Change management means being prepared for change so you can survive and succeed, in spite of it.
Designing a Successful Change Management Process
Designing and implementing a successful change management process is actually easier than you might think. All you have to do is sit down, list the changes you expect then start devising strategies for dealing with them.
The best way to do this is to get representatives of every department in organization together. Then have each of them list the changes he or she expects in the near future. Once that is done you can start devising a change management strategy to deal with the changes that are most likely.
The IT manager might note that the software you are using will soon be obsolete or that the computers will soon need to be replaced. The team could devise a strategy for purchasing and deploying the new software and equipment. It could devise a budget for purchasing it, a strategy for coping with the change over and for educating the team in the use of the new equipment and software.
Part of change management is listing all the problems a change might entail. For example bringing in new software will require you to successfully put all the data in the old system into the new. Is that possible and if so what will it take.
You can also anticipate disruptions to business and potential customer service problems. For example will the organization have to shut down while the changeover is in progress? Will that cut business and how can it be done without driving customers away. Will sales people be able to fill orders while the computers are unavailable?
Brainstorming to address these problems is the essence of change management. Once you have mastered that your organization can survive and thrive. For example you can create smart goals to convey the change management strategy to the team.
The cornerstone of every effective leadership development effort must be realistic and effective leadership training. No large organization can survive or succeed in today’s world without effective leadership training programs.
Simply hoping that leaders develop within your team or that you can hire really good candidates for leadership is not enough. To succeed you must learn how to develop leaders in house. Developing your own cadre of leaders will always be cheaper and more effective than hiring outsiders.
Some Indications of Effective Leadership Training Programs
1. Employee engagement: people want to participate in the program because they feel they will actually learn something from it.
2. Faith in the program: management feels confident when promoting graduates of the program.
3. Increased morale: people feel good after completing the program and when participating in it.
4. Involved: the leadership training program is in line with the company’s goals. For example it is training people in the skills needed for expansion.
5. Long term: employees participating in the program feel that they will be involved in it for years. They develop a long term commitment to the company by participating in the program.
6. Strategic: the program imparts the organization’s strategy to the employees so they understand it and know how to implement it.
If your leadership training program does not fit these descriptions it is probably a waste of time and money. A good place to begin a leadership development program is with a list of Smart Goals. Sit down create goals for the company then start thinking about the kind of leaders you will need to achieve them.
Once you’ve done that ask yourself: how can I transform the leaders I have today into the people who will achieve those goals? When you have answered that question you will know how to set up an effective leadership training program.
Management training has proved to be the most efficient and most effective tool in boosting productivity and increasing employee morale.
The biggest complaint that employees have about management today is that managers do not know what is going on. Too often workers complain that the manager really does not understand the company or what we do here. He or she knows nothing about the technology, the customers, the services we provide and everything else.
Management training programs can address this need by creating leaders and managers that understand the organization and what it does. Instead of hiring people just out of college and hoping they can learn the process; an organization can give its most knowledgeable and effective employees management training.
That way it can develop a cadre of leaders that really understand the industry. Many of the most effective organizations including UPS , Wal-Mart and the United States Marines Corps have intensive management training and leadership development programs. These organizations are successful because they spend time and effort on leadership development.
More importantly their leadership teams can rely upon their managers because the managers know the organization and its goals. They know that the manager on the floor can be trusted on to make the right decisions because she knows what is going on there.
Management training can increase employee morale because employees will be much more likely to listen to, respond to and pay attention somebody who rises from the ranks. No employee will ever respect or listen to a manager who does not know what he is talking about.
Yet, many organizations are full of such managers. In some situations, employees end up training the manager. That destroys the chain of command and makes both discipline and employee morale impossible.
Setting up a management training program as a part of a leadership development effort will pay off. In particular it will pay off in the form of managers that know the business and how to succeed in it.
Quite a few organizations make the mistake of eliminating or cutting back on leadership development efforts when the economy gets bad. Leadership training programs are often the first thing to be eliminated and the last thing to be restored when the budget cuts start.
Cutting back on leadership development efforts during a bad economy is a terrible mistake. Organizations and companies need visionary leadership in a bad economy. Yet they refuse to pay for the tools needed to develop such leadership.
The challenges are greater than ever but the leaders needed to guide companies and agencies through the economic challenges may not be there. To make matters worse there could be little or no money to use to lure effective leaders in from the outside.
That means organizations will need to make due with their existing employee bases. It makes sense to give those employees the training and tools they need to become effective leaders. It also makes sense to have a cadre of trained leaders that are willing to step up and take command when the going gets tough.
Leadership development and leadership training are not luxuries. No company or organization can survive without leaders and leadership. So it makes sense for an organization to increase its investment in leadership development during a bad economy.
Such efforts will show employees that they are valued, and give the most creative and successful workers a reason to stay even if salary increases are not available. Workers who know that their loyalty and hard work could be rewarded with a leadership position are more likely to stay. Workers who think that leadership roles are reserved for outsiders will start sending out resumes.
Leadership development is vital to the survival of any organization and cannot be ignored even in today’s poor economy. Those organizations that spend money and resources developing new leaders will thrive and succeed in the years ahead. Those that do not will perish.
Leaders want to make a change in how they do business. A recent global survey by McKinsey and Company reveals that over 70 percent of global leaders say they need to improve their performance in solving social and environmental problems but are not sure what to do.
Research reported by Ashridge Business School reports that 76 percent of CEOs and senior executives believe that it is important that senior executives have the necessary knowledge and skills to respond to trends like climate change, resource scarcity and doing business in emerging markets marked by poverty, corruption and human rights violations. Alarmingly, however, only 8 percent believe that these knowledge and skills are currently being developed very effectively by either their own organizations or by business schools more broadly.
EPR Management News is a new blog, part of EPR Network, that is going to be focused on and will be covering the management news and stories from press releases published on EPR Network.
EPR Network (EPR stands for express press release) is one of the nation’s largest press release distribution networks on Web. The EPR’s nationwide network includes 12 State based PR sites, one major PR forum and a number of industry specific PR blogs and what started as a hobby on Internet years ago turned out to be a rapidly growing business today. EPR Network is also known as one of the most trusted (human optimized, published, edited and monitored, spam/scam/low quality PR content free) PR sites on the web with more than 10,000 company and individual press releases distributed per month. EPR Network is putting your press releases on top of all major search engines’ results and is reaching thousands of individuals, companies, PR specialists, media professionals, bloggers and journalists every day.
EPR Network has thousands of clients around the world including global 500 corporations like Hilton Hotels, Barclays Bank, AXA Insurance, Tesco UK, eBay/Skype, Emirates, just to name a few. The network’s PR web sites are currently reaching from 150,000 to sometimes 500,000 unique visitors per month while our viral reach could possibly go to as much as 1M people per month through our presence across various social media sites. EPR Network was established in 2004 and as of May 2008 it had more than 800,000 press releases (pages) published on its network.
