Given the tight competition that is prevalent in the business world, it’s important for companies to find talent when they come across it. That way the individuals targeted can be trained to take on positions of power and responsibility to help the business rise above the pack. Just think of a business like a baseball team in a way. When you don’t put any effort or money into your minor league system and allow top talent to leave or not be groomed correctly, the team suffers down the road. When you allow top talent to go and you don’t replenish, the business is unable to grow and remains stagnant.
For this reason, leadership development is a crucial part of any business’s training, and there is a wide variety of different business education consulting firms out there that can help your business reach its full potential by identifying and training their talent correctly. Laura Huckabee-Jennings, a reputable author and speaker on leadership development, recently wrote about her experience at ASTD for the Huffington Post on how leadership development training is changing. If you’re looking for the right consulting firm for your business, here are some things to consider:
Training Style:
The classroom style is a thing of the past as pedagogy experts are beginning to discover that not everyone learns the same way. Some employees may require more hands-on training or a multimedia presentation. Experiences and humor are taking the place of lecture and other teaching styles of the past. The ability of the firm to employ the latest in pedagogical approaches cannot be discounted.
Shorter Training Sessions:
Rather than having a single training period over the course of a couple of days or weeks, more and more employers are seeing the benefit of multiple day and half day training sessions that take place over the course of a few months. This has been shown to allow employees being trained to retain more.
Core Skills:
You can teach a prospective manager all there is on the technical side of the business, but if they aren’t being trained on the core skills, like effective communication and dispute resolution, you’re not getting the most out of the training session. There’s an old saying that goes something to the effect of: Look for five entry level engineers in a firm. Find the one who can write and you’ll find their boss. The same principle applies here. Those who have the core skills will be better apt to lead than those who just know the technical side.
Online Training:
A growing number of firms are also considering online training in their leadership development strategies as the internet becomes more prevalent in people’s everyday lives. Webinars and interactive sessions are becoming welcomed more as employees demand it. Plus, it’s more convenient logistics-wise.
These are just some of the things that are going on in leadership development. The importance of finding the right consulting firm can be the difference between having a successful business and one that has had its best years behind it. When looking for a consulting firm, consider one that utilizes these proven methods to effectively train your talent.
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Jimmy works in the Human Resource department of a major U.S. company, and has a love for learning and building on qualities that are useful in the workplace.