Only 19% of business managers strongly agree that their leadership development programs have a high relevance to their business.

And this is despite all professional L&D people are engaged in creating better and more advanced leadership programs. Investment in leadership programs is going up but results are going down.

Programs must focus more on leadership, not management — which often is the case today.

How can we put more focus on leadership development?

The answer is core leadership skills. These are critical skills in almost any leader role and daily work. Core leadership skills are all about walking the talk, being present, listening, motivating, engaging, making people grow and listening even more.

That’s how leaders can create positive impact on their team members’ engagement and motivation.

Going forward; 3 critical parts to make leadership development more relevant for leaders

1. Individualized

Make sure the training is based on the individual leader. Her strengths and weaknesses and the context she leads in.

2. Behavioral focus

Leadership is more what you do, not know. That’s why the focus must be on changing leadership behavior. This comes with a “sacrifice”; investing time and energy to practice in the daily work. And most important, reflect on it.

3.Measure progress

In order to understand how leaders develop — daily or weekly feedback on the progress is key to stay motivated and understand how the training affects the leadership.

Leaders want higher personal relevance and organizations want better results. That’s why Yomento offers a Personal Leadership Trainer to help leaders develop their behavior in the daily work.

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Source: HBR 2016