Leadership Training & Organizational Development

Leadership training has a direct impact on organizational development.

Businesslink.gov states that leadership training is essential for successful and effective organizational development. Leadership training provides a consistent training and development program that enables leaders to recognize their strengths and weaknesses in order to utilize a leader's strong points and build areas of weakness. A large aspect of leadership training is organizational development where the leadership assesses its current organizational structure and provides suggestions on how to improve a company's organization flow.

Definition

Leadership training is the process of empowering, educating and providing tools for those given authority over a group of people.

Organizational development is defined by The Center for Human Systems as, "collaborating with organizational leaders and their groups to create systemic change on behalf of root-cause problem-solving toward improving productivity and employee satisfaction through strengthening the human processes through which they get their work done."

Relationship

Leadership training has a direct impact on organizational development because the more a leader is developed with leadership skills and overseeing an organization, the more the organization as a whole will change. For example, if the leadership in a company does not deal with feedback very well, the entire company may develop fear of ever voicing their opinion. In leadership training, the proper education of how to deal with feedback and organizational conflict can provide a more balanced perspective on feedback, changing the corporate culture and freeing the employees to provide honest feedback.

Effect

Proper leadership training coupled with movement in organizational development will in effect directly result in satisfied employees, more productivity and a positive working environment. Organizational development has a specific emphasis on human behavior as a result of an organization's health. Therefore, as organizational development aligns more and more with the employees' needs and desires, the more productive that organization will be.

Types

Types of leadership development that have a direct result on organizational development are team-building activities, feedback sessions and role-playing. Team-building activities provide the leaders with hands-on training that demonstrates a specific leadership principle. Feedback sessions allow leaders to hear the honest truth about how employees feel about the company. Role-playing places the leader in a specific situation and has her act out the scenario to see first-hand how certain leadership skills can work.

Considerations

An effective way to implement change organizationally after participating in leadership training is to have a needs assessment performed at your organization. A needs assessment takes an objective look at the organization, identifying strengths and weaknesses and provides an action plan to fill in the gaps of the weaknesses. This helps develop the leadership team and provide an objective look at the how successful the organization is.

References

• Businesslink.gov: The Importance of Leadership
• Management Help: What is Organization Development?
• The Center for Human Systems: Defining Organization Development for Practical Purposes
• California Institute of Technology: Organizational Change