There’s no doubt that nowadays, online corporate training is a wonderful thing: It’s never been easier to access courses on any corporate subject under the sun. And if you have your Learning and Development Platform established and running smoothly, you can offer a varied and engaging training program to all your employees, curated to each person’s needs, from the newly-onboarded team member all the way up to your CEO.
Something you should consider offering to ALL your corporate learners, however, is online leadership development. Now, I know what you might be thinking: ‘Hold on, why on Earth would all the employees need to learn leadership? We can’t all be the boss!’.
Well, you’d be surprised at the effect this type of training has. Leadership is something that is obviously important for managers, but it’s not beneficial only to them – it is also for everyone at every level within your organization.
Leadership development is beneficial for your employees and your company’s growth and has notable advantages. Let’s have a look at why leadership development courses should be on offer to all learners.
Developing The Growth Mindset Versus The Fixed Mindset
One of the main benefits of leadership training is the effect that it can have on a trainee’s mindset. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck is renowned for her work on motivation and has identified two main mindsets that people tend to have: One that is fixed and one that is geared for growth.
The former makes the assumption that our basic qualities – for example, your intelligence – are fixed and unchanging. It assumes that talent is enough to achieve. The latter mindset takes the view that even the most basic abilities can be improved through dedication and hard work.
Good online leadership training will demonstrate to your employees new ways of thinking about finding solutions and promote a growth mindset. It will reveal their own inherent abilities and how even the faintest of them can be developed into a full-blown talent. This, in turn, will help them in the execution of their duties, giving them the flexibility to find solutions to even the most difficult of issues.
Training For Objectivity
The next benefit from providing leadership development courses to your employees is that it helps them to gain an objective perspective on their own role. It’s all too easy to lose oneself in one’s own job and lose the big view of how it relates to the organization as a whole. When that happens, an employee falls into the trap of the fixed mindset and becomes less able to respond to new situations.
By offering leadership development you encourage your employees to change their point of view. It’s a bit like the difference between walking along a busy street, unable to see too far ahead, and being up on the fiftieth floor, where you can see the whole city. Leadership training shows people their position in the organization and, crucially, where they are now and where it can lead to.
When an employee can see the map, as it were, then they’re going to know that there’s always a route forward. Good leadership training fosters and encourages critical, objective thinking – that vital ability to stand back from where you are right now and see the bigger picture.
This is important not just for management but for every employee – they’ll be able to see the relevance and importance of what they’re doing right now.
Fostering Engagement And Independence
It perhaps should go without saying that if a growth mindset and critical thinking are primary objectives of leadership development courses, then they also lead to greater employee engagement and independent learning.
Trainees who can see enhanced possibilities and think objectively are far more likely to be engaged with their training, and this leads to greater engagement with their work roles. And, as we know, engaged employees are far more productive.
It also follows that you’ll produce independent learners, particularly if you opt for online leadership development courses, which give far greater delivery flexibility. Independence and the capacity to rely on one’s own judgement is a crucial quality in leaders, but it’s also useful in your workforce, as they’ll feel more in control and engaged.
The Next Generation Of Leaders
The final reason for providing leadership skills development to all your workforce is perhaps the real raison d’etre of leadership development in the first place: eventually, you’re going to need to train the next generation of managers!
However, it’s not enough to constrain the training to just a few promising talents – you never can tell where you might find your next CEO: for example, Steve Rowe, the boss at Marks and Spencer’s, famously began working on the shop floor as a fifteen-year-old! Talent can be found in all sorts of places, but sometimes it may be hidden away and need encouragement. That’s why leadership training should be a given for all your employees.
The Benefits Of Leadership Development
Providing your corporate learners with leadership skills development confers so many advantages to your organization that it deserves to feature on your Learning and Talent Development platform. You’ll not only gain growth-oriented, objectively-minded employees who are engaged and productive, but you’ll also be more likely to find the people who will lead your organization in the years to come.
Finally, it should be pointed out that a great leadership development course is hugely attractive to the best and brightest talent out there, too.
