Monday, July 8, 2019

With Ongoing Leadership Development Long Island Businesses Gain An Edge

By Frances Stone


There has been a very big shift in the way large businesses are run. Most modern and successful enterprises have implemented a system whereby self directed teams pursue specific goals. Members of teams all have very specific roles to play and in most cases teams accept responsibility for achieving their goals. This approach can only work if the organization has strong leaders leading these teams. With leadership development Long Island companies strive towards improving the quality of their teams.

It is not true that leaders are born and not made. Everyone has the potential to be a leader. Studies have shown that all great leaders share certain characteristics and behaviorists agree that anyone is capable of adopting new characteristic. Companies put formal programs in place to develop leaders with promise because they know that their very survival is dependent upon good and decisive leaders at all levels of the organization.

Companies employ a number of methods to develop their leaders. Mentorship programs are popular. They allow less experienced leaders to learn from respected and experienced senior leaders. Formal courses and seminars are also useful to impart new knowledge and attitudes and to gain essential skills in communication, conflict management, negotiations and a wide variety of other fields. Peer reviews have also helped leaders to find out how their colleagues view them.

Hugely successful companies do not just employ strong and inspirational leaders at the top of the structure. They develop leaders throughout the organization, even at the lower levels of the hierarchy. In this way they strengthen their teams and maintain a high level of motivation among all their staff. It is not only potential leaders that need to be developed. Even experienced leaders can become stagnant and will benefit from ongoing development programs.

Good programs for developing leaders should also focus on the value of mistakes and failure. Everyone makes mistakes but truly great leaders learn valuable lessons from those mistakes. Some great leaders have admitted that the most valuable lessons they ever learnt came from their failures. Great leaders also know that they are not perfect and that they have flaws. They are able to admit their shortcomings and to take steps to overcome them.

There are a lot of programs, courses, books and on line resources that aim at developing leaders. If can be difficult to make a choice. The course or program should have crystal clear objectives, it should be well designed by experts in the field and it should be run by reputable service providers. It is important to insist upon references and programs that are formally accredited are generally the best bet.

Formal courses and programs are certainly very useful for exposing developing leaders to new ideas and knowledge. It is at the workplace, however, that these ideas have to be tried and implemented. To this end some companies use independent coaches to guide promising new leaders. These coaches make no decisions. They simply act to motivate their clients, to make them think before acting and to be their sounding boards.

All successful companies recognize the need for string, decisive and inspiration leadership throughout the organization. That is why they invest heavily in development programs. These programs often pay very handsome dividends over the long term and should be viewed as sound investments in the company itself.




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