subject: Make Your Leadership Development Training A Blast [print this page] Everyone has the potential to become a great leader. Some are fortunate enough to develop their leadership skills at an early age through exposure on different activities, while some still need leadership development programs to enhance that potential. Some are more comfortable acting as leaders, while some are more at ease to follow orders. But there are times when followers have to become leaders whether out of necessity or circumstances. If you are a born leader, going through a leadership development program would strengthen your natural leadership prowess, while those who lack confidence to lead will have the courage to do so given the right training and opportunities.
What Should Be Included in a Leadership Training Program?
Unlike management training that focuses on measurable outcomes and immediate outputs through various tools, leadership training, on the other hand, is directed on capacitating leaders to manage a certain group or organization in an efficient and effective manner in order to attain a common goal.
Leadership skills can be developed or strengthened through a leadership development training that has the following emphasis:
* Understanding human behavior and its differences
* How to deal with workmates and the people in your immediate surrounding
* How to foster ideal traits of an effective leader such as integrity, humility, dedication, support, and so on
* Learning decision-making concepts
Conduct a Training Needs Analysis
If you want to effectively carry out your leadership development training, you need to have an idea on your target participants and where they are in terms of their knowledge and appreciation on leadership and what it is all about. By analyzing your intended participants you will determine their leadership development needs including their strengths and weaknesses, and this should be your basis in formulating a training design. The process of analyzing your target participants is called training needs analysis or TNA. Effective facilitators use this method prior to conducting an actual training, and its concepts and methods can be found on various management websites and handbooks.
Conduct an Energetic Leadership Development Training
A facilitator's nightmare is to see that his participants are inattentive because of sleepiness or because the seatmates are more interesting than the topics being presented. To guarantee that you would effectively transfer the essential concepts of leadership development proficiencies, see to it that you will maintain the enthusiasm of your participants by employing different strategies that will surely capture the audience's attention. To do this, make your leadership development training an energetic activity with these helpful tips:
* Make your training participative. Constantly solicit the thoughts and opinions of your participants. This will perk them up and get them thinking while listening to the topics.
* Allow your participants a few minutes' break to stretch, have coffee, or go to rest rooms.
* Prepare energizers. As a facilitator, you should be sensitive to your participants and keen enough to determine if they are already tired or bored. A lively game or action song would definitely kill the boredom.
