It’s easy to focus on the day-to-day tasks at work, especially when juggling childcare, fluctuating budgets, and new ways of working. This leaves little time to think about your own or your team’s career development. But it’s important to have career development goals for your team members. Ultimately, training pays off in the long term.
Planning ahead, while it might sound like a cliché, is the best way to fit in leadership training. It allows you to incorporate training into the resource plan, and it helps your future business leaders manage their workload. More than this, it helps with succession planning. Whether a board member is close to retirement, or there is someone in your business with board-level potential, making decisions early will make sure everyone is prepared.
After all, board level jobs are very different to other jobs in the business. Someone might be great at business development, but that doesn’t automatically make them the best manager. They need training to develop their career, and you need to create time for that training to take place.
How to make time for career development
Allowing enough time is particularly important for the flexible learning method which suits most business leaders. Rather than long courses which take a lot of time out of the business, many people prefer small packages of dedicated time with experts. This allows them to develop a variety of skills over time, without having to take part in courses that will already be familiar to them. It also means they can fit it around their day job rather than taking weeks out at a time.
For example, you might want to move one of your finance directors up to CFO in the next 18 months. They’ll need to learn about building strong customer relationships, motivating staff, and improving business performance. But it’s unlikely they’ll need to learn about business finance.
The importance of career development & leadership programmes
Alliance MBS can put together a programme that best suits the needs of your business, whether it involves consultancy, guest lectures, masterclasses, or longer courses. We can put together the best programme to help your business leaders develop and reach their career goals.
We did this for Audi to help it face a changing automotive landscape. Audi UK launched a new leadership and change management programme across its dealer network in response to the changes, and we created a bespoke leadership programme to tackle real issues Audi Centres are facing - by developing its leadership teams to remain agile and open to industry change; whilst supporting their teams to continue delivering the premium experiences Audi customers expect.
Across all industries, only one in five managers actually has formal management qualifications. And if you think back to previous managers you’ve had in your career, you’ll probably find this easy to believe. But a good manager means better performing teams, lower staff turnover and higher employee satisfaction, so spending a bit of time now will save time and money in the long run.
While it might seem hard to add one more thing to the to-do list, it is possible to fit it around a hectic lifestyle. The key is to plan ahead and choose a flexible option that suits your organisation and its business leaders.
Our Manchester Leadership Development Programme is a practical, accelerated leadership programme for leaders and managers moving forward in their career, and will help you understand how to get the best out of your team and business.
