The strength of an organization is often dependent on the cumulative strengths and weaknesses within its workforce. Workforce planning is a tactical function, with core attention on identifying important skill gaps as well as the means to fill them. This often precipitates the need for employee skill enrichment and enhancement based on the skills the business is likely to need the most in the future.
Many businesses make use of various training programs for this purpose. This also includes programs designed to take employees with the right potential in terms of leadership skills and shaping them into the leadership you would want filling key roles in the years to come.
Table of Contents
Factors That Limit the Success of Leadership Programs
Leadership skills, while not always technical in nature, are still extremely valuable in any business. And contrary to popular belief, you can create leaders even if they aren’t born to it. Of course, there need to be certain conditions in place for any leadership training programs to be successful. Conversely, the presence or absence of certain factors can mean the difference between the success or failure of such a program. Some of these factors include the following:
Not Having Clear Goals for the Program
The era of the training programs that resemble motivational speeches is fast winding down. People have evolved far beyond feel-good corporate buzzwords and generic presentations on organizational and time management skills. A blanket program will never be effective for the entire workforce. Instead, leadership programs need to be built around specific goals.
For example, if you’re trying to generate leadership for management roles, the leadership training for managers should always be built around problems and obstacles that people actually encounter in these roles. Defining the goals of a training program involving leadership skills will help trainers define the scope of the program.
Lacking The Right Caliber of Talent
Businesses need leaders, and when they don’t headhunt them for permanent roles (or even advisory roles such as cybersecurity consulting) they try to develop the leadership they need among their workforce. Sometimes, however, they fail to find workers with the ability or motivation to take up such training.
This can often be a case of HR personnel not recognizing the need for more diverse types of workers than in the past. A homogenized workforce is the business equivalent of an echo chamber. The space for opinions that don’t follow the “party line” is often negligible.
Before trying to create a program, you should therefore first assess your workforce itself. You need the right people that can be groomed for future leadership roles. And this also involves an element of removing hiring bias. Workers of all types can add value to the workplace in unique ways.
So you need to make efforts to diversify your hiring. At the same time, you also need to be sure to have the right people in charge of the right training programs. For example, it may make more sense to have women conducting women leadership training. The participants should be able to engage better and increase the program’s chances of success.
The Program Knowledge Isn’t Applicable
When choosing the course material for leadership training it can often be difficult to decide what possible curriculum would fall in its ambit. Leadership, at any level, is a complex role. That’s why there are so few of them. A leadership program could focus on various leadership needs, ranging from the job’s technical requirements to the necessary emotional intelligence to maintaining employee engagement.
One complexity lies in limiting the course information into chunks of knowledge that can be digested and then applied in a real situation. Most people already know what empathy and emotional intelligence mean. But what they need is instruction on how to use both in the workplace.
The training, therefore, should be more focused on applicable knowledge instead of a broad cross-sectional curriculum. Virtual leadership training can even have a repository for the course material that future leaders can consult from time to time in addition to the employee handbook.
No Defined Metrics to Measure Success
Businesses are focused on measuring performance as an indicator of success. From enterprise compensation models to small business employee benefits, the performance of a worker dictates the value they offer to the organization as a whole. That’s why a contract-for-hire worker will typically have a different remuneration schedule to a permanent employee.
The same principle applies to business functions as well, not just teams or individuals. An HR department will measure the outcomes of an HR investigation. Therefore, it makes sense to identify and adhere to performance indicators for any training efforts. These will help you determine the success of your leadership development programs and allow you to pinpoint any limitations they may have.
