Even more than ever it is important to ensure that the investment a business makes in training and developing its managers pays off.

 

Management training can deliver real business benefits and help to improve business performance if the training is directed in the right way. Firstly the business needs to identify what new levels of performance are needed for it to be successful and therefore what new skills and behaviours it needs form its managers to deliver it.  Once this is clear, the relevant training and development programmes can be prepared.  These may cover topics such as: leadership, personal effectiveness, managing performance, improving influence and team development.

Given the right development, managers can achieve significant improvement in their own performance as well as that of their teams.  It will help them to manage conflicting demands on their time, improve the engagement of their staff as well as manage change more effectively.

 

Many organisations report a number of other benefits of training their managers.  For example, regular training and development is seen as a sign of professionalism and helps to create a positive image for the organisation in its market place, thereby enabling the business to attract and retain key talent

 

While training and development costs should be built into annual budgets, they do not need to be expensive. For example, groups of managers may have similar development needs and a training provider can be brought in to design a programme that specifically meets their needs. This is a far more economical as well as a more impactful than sending delegates to attended open programmes.

Ultimately, the businesses that are clear about the objectives of their management training and development programmes are the ones that reap the greatest rewards.  These organisations continually ask themselves, ‘what new levels of performance are needed for this organisation to be successful and what new skills and behaviours are needed by our managers to deliver the improvement in performance?  In this way they ensure that they can monitor the impact of training not just on individual performance and also on the company’s bottom line.