LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Whatever your leaders have experienced before in terms of management skills, they are certainly being challenged now. Not all leadership approaches work for shift work and partial office/working from home arrangements. It requires some planning to keep everyone's momentum up and morale high. If leaders are inexperienced, you will have noticed that promotion for your staff brings both opportunities and perils. Not everyone who is good at their job is good at leading other people to do it well. Sometimes people embrace it easily, others struggle at least to start with, but perhaps dare not admit it. It is helpful for an organisation to provide tailored coaching to make sure there are no gaps, which if left unaddressed, will impact on team performance and profit. Not to mention emotional health and well-being.
Leadership Skills for 1st time Managers
A one day course for up to four people provides leadership skills and vital cultural insights for new managers and is a cost effective way of aiding their progress and that of their team.
Basic leadership, enhanced communication skills using compassion & active listening, diffusing tension, handling aggression and holding meetings can all be covered in an engaging manner in one day.
Other elements like time management, coaching skills and appraisal meetings can be dealt with on separate sessions as required. Click here to read more about these essential soft skills and my most popular courses.
However, it would be erroneous to assume that experienced leaders would not benefit from a motivational refresher, especially as today's workers expect a range of things to make them happy, such as flexibility, purpose, feedback and ethical working practices. Times they are a 'changing! Please click here to read about the essential soft skills which leaders need to adopt to ensure the well being of the teams or contact me on helen@thomsontraining.com to talk about how I can help you get the right results, now.
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Delighted to have my thoughts about developing leadership skills published on AccountingWeb.
I believe that leadership skills can be developed within anyone.
Expectations have changed and the skills required of leaders have evolved.
Is this your experience? Please click here to read the article in full.
Inspiring Leaders - Passionate Performance
COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP : Managers who have been in the role for some time might be interested in a more developed course covering a new model of leadership which is perfectly suited to the challenges of managing in the current 'consultative' environment.
I was fortunate to be the subject of research from Dr Linda Wilks at the Open University in 2013 regarding an ambitious community volunteer project which I set up and led, and there have been papers published, lectures held and a new leadership model developed based on my methods.
I developed an approach that was an amalgamation of best practice I had witnessed and also executed in my working life up til that point. I am delighted to be able to share and train this new model with your company.
I believe that this model of leadership is one which is particularly relevant for now. Organisations need to treat people with the respect they would for volunteers. This means taking the care that would be needed to still keep them wanting to come in, even if they were not being paid. Because, and this is important, apart from the housekeeping elements of money, many of them are not money motivated.
They have other needs - for example purpose and impact and the specific environment in which they grew up in has meant that many have a higher need for recognition and validation as well as a immediate results. They sometimes suffer from an unreliable social support structure as a result of easily distracted 'social media' based friend networks, (so the work 'family' can be very important) and struggle with job satisfaction because they feel that they can't make an impact quick enough, so they appear less settled and perhaps less patient than the previous generations.
The work life balance does not exist for many, they don't want to 'switch off' when they go to work, (or indeed when they go home), many want it all to integrate and for it all to be good, and fun and rewarding. They want to know why, they need to be consulted (tricky if they are uncomfortable with direct communication) and they need to feel part of something bigger. They need to be managed with the care, almost as if they were volunteers. They are often more educated than older staff, more able to multi task, have a great capacity for creative thinking and our challenge is to help them discover their true selves and allow them to shine and grow within the company, using as many of their unique talents as possible.
