Leadership Development Training  

Core Leadership Skills Every Leader Needs

Today’s business world, whether it is in the for-profit or non-profit arena, requires leaders to possess a very different skills-set. Leadership that was once top-down, where leaders were expected to have all the “answers” is now considered old school. Now, in the team environment, solutions often come from the bottom-up. This requires leaders to use the wisdom of the team, be it a staff team or a board team, to successfully lead an organization and skillfully address the numerous challenges.

Some leaders don’t possess the core skills to successfully work with a team to maximize all the members’ contributions, keep morale high, and have a more sustainable outcome. This is especially important with the Gen X’s and Gen Y’s now in and entering the workforce, and the need to develop future leaders for succession planning. Often leaders worry about not having the skills to address some of the following challenges that occur in meetings:

• Poor participation

• Disruptive behavior

• Conflict

• Decisions aren’t made

• Goals aren’t accomplished

• People feel their time was wasted

• Lack of follow though by the participants

• There are teams but no teamwork

Facilitation provides the core skills that leaders need. Facilitation training stresses the importance of neutrality and teaches how to develop processes to elicit responses that empower team members. The training also teaches how to ask questions that drill down to the root cause of problems so they can be appropriately addressed. These are just a few and there are many more skills in the facilitator’s toolkit.

When the leader possesses good facilitation skills and uses that approach in meetings, conversations and any interaction, the facilitative leadership style becomes infectious. It serves as a model to colleagues and helps to reduce conflict in organizations, elevates morale and helps develop problem solving at every level.

Let The Urban Group design a leadership program for your organization - contact us today.