What is Leadership Development?

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Leadership and life coaching

There are currently over one hundred thousand texts on the market that deal with the concept of leadership development, and this number is continually rising. Roughly 3,000 new texts on this subject are added on a regular basis, each giving a differing viewpoint and opinion on the subject. However, many leaders do not know what leadership development is. This guide will help to explain what leadership development is as well as why it is important in creating successful leaders.

What is Leadership Development?

Leadership development is a process that increases the ability of individuals to perform in leadership roles. Leadership development programs help organization leaders to learn skills that will help them reach their full potential so that they can perform their duties as best as possible. Often time’s, people end up in leadership positions but they do not have experience with being in a leadership role. Leadership development can help them to learn strategies, ideas, and skills that will help them to succeed in their position.

What is leadership development? It’s basically a combination of teaching and developing leadership to those who plan to lead others in some way, be it a company, nonprofit, community or team. Those seeking leadership development are often taught through expensive university courses or sometimes in executive retreats. Other times, leadership development will take place directly within a company, with someone there to teach the ropes.

Why Leadership Development is Important

While drive and passion are the most important qualities of a successful leader, there are certain skills that a great leader needs to possess. However, these skills are not always inherent in every individual, but instead they need to be learned. Leadership development can help leaders to learn these skills and apply them to their position. The skills that can be learned through leadership development include:

What is leadership development
Perseverance: A great leader needs to be committed to the goals they are trying to achieve; yet, even for the most driven person, this can be a difficult task. Leadership development training can help individuals to learn skills that will help them to persevere even when times are tough.
Planning and Organization: Every leader needs to know how to keep everything organized so that the people and tasks they oversee can continue to run on schedule. Leadership training teaches techniques that can help leaders to plan and organize efficiently so that they can better manage their duties.
How to Be Motivating: One of the most important skills for a leader to have is that they need to be able to motivate those around them. It is important for leaders to learn how to be motivating without being pushy or demanding of those around them; this is a key skill that leadership development can teach.
Oral Communication Skills: This goes in conjunction with the previous skill. In order to be able to motivate and manage those around you, you need to be able to be an effective communicator, which is often a trait that must be learned.

But does direct training really work, or does there have to be some self-guidance along the way so there’s an assimilation of real-world scenarios?

Teaching Specific Tools

There isn’t a doubt that some leadership skills can be taught. Teaching basic goal-setting and visualization for what a leader wants his company to become can be given emphasis. Forbes pointed out, however, that leadership development has to live up to its name and not be focused strictly on training. They say the best practices of great leadership are far too subjective nowadays in the world of high-stakes business.

So how does one go about truly developing leadership skills so it’s applied in a real-world scenario? One effective way is through a possible mentor program.

Learning From Past Experience and in Real Time

Learning through the experience of others can develop a leader substantially, even if past experiences may differ extremely from the present or future. Nevertheless, the past usually repeats itself, and it’s no different in the business world. Certain pitfalls can be avoided by learning from what a previous leader might have gone through.

What about learning in real time, though? Advisors with leadership experience are always a vital tool in giving suggestions to leaders when some new challenge arises. Even the President of the United States confers with past Presidents and other leaders for advice on handling sensitive matters. This is true real world learning where you learn while doing the actual work.

That may have to be the future of how leadership development operates, especially when common situations in the professional world can change on a dime. Most importantly, the moral foundation of a leader may be the most crucial tool as the backbone in handling those real-world scenarios.

A Final Note on the Ethics of a Leader

It’s a shame we see far too many leaders who don’t have a strong sense of ethics. When a leader develops a moral sense of business, the handling of Herculean and all-new business tasks will likely have better outcomes. Anybody out to cheat the system in order to make more money is only going to have it all catch up with them in time as we’ve seen already.

That’s why developing a strong ethical foundation in early development will be crucial in creating the superior leaders of tomorrow. And, in fact, you could say leader development starts very early when ethics are formed as a child through one’s family environment.

Questions?

Leadership development training is vital for any leader, as it teaches them how to be as effective as possible in the position they hold. Contact us if you would like to learn more about what leadership training is and how it can benefit you as a leader. If you need more advice on this topic and help in developing leadership, visit Levaire.com.

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Matthew Schoenherr
Prior to beginning his Christian ministry, Matthew spent over 25 years as a marketing consultant, published author, speaker, coach, business developer and entrepreneur. In 2015, he pushed out over 400 accounts and retooled his marketing practice to serve the Christian Church. In addition to his pastoral studies and spreading the Gospel message through Levaire.com, Matthew helps Christian churches and humanitarian aid organizations develop successful outreach strategies. He and his vivacious wife, Kelly, live in Michigan with their four amazing children.

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