Wednesday, July 3, 2019

With Ongoing Leadership Development Long Island Businesses Gain An Edge

By Frances Stone


The traditional way of managing businesses, with a hierarchy of managers, supervisors and workers has made place for a team based approach. These days self directed teams with very specific objectives enjoy a great deal of autonomy but also a great deal of responsibility. They are expected to be creative innovative and efficient. These teams need strong leaders and that is why, when it comes to leadership development Long Island companies invest heavily.

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.

Reputable programs emphasize the fact that nobody is the leader of a team at all times. The role of leader changes according to the situation or the circumstances. In a certain situation one person may be the best choice for leading the team but not in different circumstances. The role of leader therefore changes. There are also those that have no desire to lead and forcing them in such a role can be a mistake.

It is not just leaders at the top of the organization that should benefit from programs developing leaders. Organizations need a depth of strong leaders and must therefore develop leaders at all levels of the organization. Even established and recognized leaders can benefit greatly from such programs. The modern view on training focuses on life long learning. It prevents people from becoming complacent or stagnant.

Good programs do not just focus on the development of new characteristics. They also cover the high value of failures and personal weaknesses. Many great leaders have said that the most valuable lessons they ever learnt were from mistakes and failures. Nobody is perfect and that is why good leaders must also have the ability to recognize their own weaknesses and to implement strategies to turn those weaknesses into strong points.

There is no shortage of courses, workshops, seminars and programs designed to develop leaders. It is always a good idea to ask service providers for references. Courses should have very clear objectives and service providers must be prepared to explain how those objectives will be achieved and what their instructional methodology will be. Programs under consideration should be properly accredited.

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.

Without strong leaders at all levels of the organization, no company can hope to thrive in this competitive modern business environment. Programs to develop leaders should therefore be seen as an investment in the future. A business with strong leaders is better focused.




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