There’s no doubt that engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and invested in your success. So why aren’t more employers investing in their employees?
According to Gallup’s latest study, only 32% of current full- and part-time employees in the US are engaged. Numbers have been low since a drop in 2021, and even as the pandemic lifts, employee engagement hasn’t improved. The engagement drivers that have dropped the most include:
- Clarity of expectations
- Connection to the mission or purpose of the company
- Opportunities to learn and grow
- Opportunities to do what employees do best
- Feeling cared about at work
How can organizations reverse this dangerous trend? For starters: If employees feel that you’re not invested in their growth, they’ll wonder why they should contribute to yours. Beyond simply dismissing engagement challenges as “a training issue”, businesses dedicated to transforming employee engagement can gain significantly by prioritizing leadership development at every level.
Leadership development programs matter
Leadership training is crucial to organizational success and can play a key role in the performance of organizational leaders and managers, as well as overall employee engagement and retention. Leadership development brings benefits to many different groups and individuals within the organization.
- Managers will communicate, motivate, coach, build relationships, and drive loyalty and engagement with their teams more effectively.
- High-potential employees will see a reason to stay with a company that focuses on recruiting and training leaders from within.
- Candidates in the hiring process will be more attracted when they encounter an environment that will allow them to grow within the organization.
- The entire organization will see a healthier culture with higher performance.
Key elements of a successful leadership development program
To successfully improve the skills and confidence of the current leadership and management team while also building your organization’s next generation of business leaders, leadership development should be an ongoing program.
In fact, leadership development programs should also be more than a set of educational resources. To ensure you get it right, you can focus on including Jack Welch’s 4Es of leadership: education, experience, exposure, and evaluation.
Education: Empower lifelong learning
While strategy development, financial analysis, in-depth domain expertise, and even years of people management are all valuable skills to have – they don’t define good leaders. Organizations need to ensure their leadership team and future leaders have access to educational resources that help strengthen their communicative, interpretive, and affective skills such as active listening, interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence, confidence, team building, conflict management, motivation, empathy, coaching, and other, depending on your organizational culture and goals. Instead of the one-size-fits-all, it’s best when these educational resources come in a variety of formats, including books, individual e-learning, group seminars, and in-person training.
Experience: Ensure what is learned is applied
It’s impossible to master a new skill without practice, so experience is essential for leadership development. And since not every leader is a people manager, it is important that your leadership development programs are aligned with the organization’s product, marketing, IT, and other roadmaps. It is also essential that these programs be aligned with cross-functional business projects that need to be effectively led and executed.
Exposure: Enable inspiration
Coaching and mentoring are two leadership development techniques that stand out from the rest because they provide an opportunity to observe, learn, and work with an inspirational leader. Every leader who has a coach will get a space for reflection and feedback that can enhance self-awareness and conversational intelligence. Mentorship programs empower mentors to demonstrate and mentees to see great real-world leadership examples.
Evaluation: Understand what’s working
This is an essential part of any successful leadership development program. You need to know where your leaders are currently and identify where they need to improve and grow. You need to measure employee satisfaction with all the initiatives and resources in place. Ideally, you need a helpful, user-friendly software with built-in assessments, pulse checks, surveys, and 360 projects. Wondering how to get started? We can help you empower future leaders to reach their full potential. Let’s connect!
The right time is now
To successfully navigate today’s complex and ambiguous environment, leadership development is a must-have employee benefit. You need to equip your team with leadership skills different from those that helped them succeed in the past. Importantly, you should not restrict leadership development to the current executive team only. You need a pool of leaders who will bring fresh perspectives to a company’s strategy.
At the same time, the best talent on the market needs employers who will invest in their development and empower them to confidently contribute to corporate strategy and culture. The time to make that match happen is now.
If you are looking to evaluate your leadership development program as part of an integrated learning and development strategy, register for our webinar, L&D Strategies Gone Wrong: Delivering Better Training in 2023.
