What Google Can Teach You About Leadership Training

Yes, Google. When you search the keyword “leadership training” there are 328,000,000 results returned in 1 second.  So, Google can teach you a lot about leadership training, meaning, there are lots of results to choose from.  You’ll need a lot of time to sort through them, so let’s see if I can make the task a tad easier.  Time?  What’s that?

Narrow Your Search Term

Those results are astronomical, would you agree?  So what if we searched instead for some more narrowly focused terms, like “leadership management skill” – results – a little better at 132,000,000, but still a ton of searching.  How about “leader coach training” – results – much better at 24,100,000, but still a lot?  How about “leader as coach” – results – still at 178,000,000, pretty darn high?  Hmm, this does not seem to be working too well.  Let’s try another tactic.

Define What You Need

What a novel thought.  How will you benefit from leadership training?  Do you need assistance in how to develop and lead a work team, create an effective process to manage change, develop and maintain a productive work environment, or learn effective communication, counseling, and effective coaching skills and techniques, to name a few?

Bear in mind, a Google search for any of these terms will yield – you guessed it – millions of search results.  So how do you identify the best leadership training for you?

Related: Why Most Leader As Coach Training Fails

Ask Your Customers – Internal and External

Yep.  Ask them.  If you’re serious about earning the leadership mantle within your company – ask those most interested in your success – those who work with you and those who receive products and services from your company.  Sound a bit trite?  Perhaps – but depending on the respect you have earned from those internal and external customers they should give you an honest appraisal – or completely ignore the request (in which case you should take the hint).

Related: Shhhh… Listen! Do You Hear The Sound Of The Leadership Coach Coming To Your Business?

Take A Formal Assessment

Would you agree that successful businesses grow, have great financials, and have well integrated sales, marketing, and operations functions; and when combined with superior leadership, teams, and employees that develop and implement good planning, businesses can be top performers?

Believe it or not – there are very effective assessment tools that can measure your ownership perspective, employee alignment, personnel practices, team effectiveness, strategy and planning, customer service, sales and marketing, operations, management, company culture, and leadership.  Measured across these 11 spectrums you can get a pretty good feel for where leadership needs to be effectively exerted, and it will help you understand better how to tailor your leadership training.

Understand The Person Within

Yes, a large part of leadership development will concentrate on you, for, in order for the training to be effective you will need to understand you.  That’s where the coaching part comes into play – both for you and for your business.  Commit to learn as much as you can about yourself – your talents, motivations, and preferences – and then commit to learn what drives those who work with you.  Instead of directing, telling, and yelling – learn to ask, gain commitment, and buy in.  Work with others, not over then.

There’s lots of information available to learn.  It can lead you to become a leader – but the person within has to want to grow – with or without Google teaching you.  Oh, and we’ve done a little work for you.  Check out these related posts and enjoy the journey.

Related: Become A Better Manager: 10 Inspirational Management And Leadership Blogs

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Images:  ”Mountain View CA – Google / Shutterstock.com“