Leadership is a quality hard to define and even harder to practice. By definition “it is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” To put it simply, a leader must possess the ability to inspire people and provide a new direction to achieve their goal. Gone are the days when people believed “leaders are born, not made”. The modern corporate business world believes in positive thinking and therefore, leadership skills training programs are being designed to bring out the leader in you.
Leadership Skills Training
From a commercial point of view, a good leader in management must have the potential to increase a company’s business revenue. That is why more and more corporate employers are looking towards leadership skills training programs for their employees.
Today, there are hundreds of leadership skills training institutes to give young aspirants a direction to follow. The objective of a professional leadership development training session is to transform an apparently shy, diffident person into a confident leader so that people can respect the leader; so that he can make others follow his direction – whether it is in a commercial or in social arena.
The Prime Objective of Leadership Training
The prime objectives of an effective leadership skills training session should be:
- Understanding the behaviours of leaders
- Learning to differentiate between leadership and management
- Gaining insight into ones self and personal beliefs
- Identifying human qualities and strengths
- Improving perception to catch up quickly with what is going on around
- Polishing interpersonal communication skills
- Making effective and timely decisions
- Learning how to handle difficult situations tactfully
- Learning about commitment
- Inspiring and encouraging others in their job
Differences between Leadership and Management
A leadership development training program can be explained as a combination of management skills training, interpersonal communication skills training and many other aspects.
However, we often confuse leadership training with managements skills training. The very basics of leadership training, as we have already discussed, is learning the difference between these two. Leadership is primarily about acquiring certain behavioral characteristics while skills are secondary. People trust and respect leaders because of certain human qualities like courage, honesty, humbleness, compassion, confidence, sensitivity, sincerity, positive thinking, wisdom and vision. All these qualities blended with his personal charisma to make a leader acceptable to the mass.
On the contrary, management skills training deals with planning as well as developing organizational and communication skills.
Management skill relies more on skills to control people to excel in a certain direction. Management has subordinates to direct and control while a leader has followers who are inspired by him, charmed by his charisma and will follow him for his ideologies.
Leadership is about giving a new direction and vision to people and inspiring them to follow that path. Leadership has the courage to take risk and break the established social norms. But management controls and directs people to follow already established rules and notions.
However, this doesn’t mean that a good manager can not be a good leader. Knowing the basic differences will help you acquire leadership abilities as you will be able to distinguish between the do’s and don’ts for a leader. Leadership without management is like a ship without a mast – uncontrollable in the wind. On the other hand, management without leadership is like stagnant water that gradually acquires impurities with no free flow. It is only when leadership quality is combined with management skill that we get to see the best results.
Author:
Mark Johnson
Author’s Bio:
Mark Johnson writes on various aspects of personality development and leadership training including communication skills training and management skills training. For more on leadership he recommends you to visit: http://www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org/.
Tags: effective leadership skills, Leadership & Management, Leadership Skills Training
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