Effective managers — those who work between executive and entry- or mid-level employees — guide their teams to reach the company’s goals. But, how can you improve your managers' skills? Promoting people from within or hiring externally without further training can lead to some issues. But implementing a management development program could solve your problems.

Managers must have certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) to achieve organizational success and engage employees. And even when professional development is encouraged at all levels, management development (or the lack of it) significantly impacts business goals.

So why not make it an ongoing process? Leading your people to get the job done, done right, and done efficiently requires more than becoming proficient at essential business acumen. Achieving strategic goals needs an engaged and motivated team and a healthy culture that helps everyone thrive.

A management development program is a powerful tool for developing leaders in your business. Let’s start by understanding what management development is, then move to the benefits and challenges, and, finally, what these programs should cover.

It's a systematic process of developing leaders and creating effective managers, so they can translate business objectives into actions to successfully achieve those goals. There are as many techniques as management styles, and the organization's approach will rely on the managers' existing KSAs. But what are the areas they should be competent in? Reading people's behaviors, verbal and nonverbal communication, and conflict management are some key areas management development can help upskill.

Investing in leadership development is one of the best ways to improve your existing workforce and grow your business. And if you do it from within the organization, that will have extra benefits. Employees who work at companies with professional development programs stay twice as long as those who work at companies with no such programs.

LinkedIn's 2021 Workplace Learning Report states that "51% of learning and development (L&D) professionals agree that internal mobility has become a priority since the pandemic," and leadership and management is one of the three top areas they're focusing on.

Although managers can use tools and follow methods and theories on their own, a training program facilitated by L&D professionals will target specific KSAs to develop. A structured approach will allow managers to:

• Positively impact employee performance and morale
• Motivate employees 
• Improve retention rate
• Avoid costs of firing and rehiring
• Act as translators between levels and groups of employees
  

Effective communication is key to connecting with your team, other coworkers at the same organizational level, and your superiors. Managing up, down, and sideways is a critical skill to develop, and it all starts with communication. That’s especially relevant to building meaningful relationships and empathizing with your team, so you know what they need to succeed and when they need extra motivation to do their jobs.

Training and educating your workforce is one of the best ways to increase your organization's human capital. Management development helps you close gaps in knowledge and experience and help your best employees achieve their full potential.

Whether you’re in a saturated market or not, innovation is a competitive advantage. And when employees have been through various experiences, they will be able to bring innovation. And that’s what management development does for your people: provides new experiences and creates a new perspective.

A culture of innovation can:

• Help your business cut costs
• Improve productivity and efficiency
• Develop new features for products and services that competitors don’t have

Work Institute 2020 Retention Report states that 37.9% of employees leave their job after less than a year and turnover costs about 30% of an employee’s annual salary to your business. What is the best way to improve employee retention rates?

As we mentioned, hiring from within is one way to do it. But that may be pointless if you don’t include a management development program in the process. In the long run, that investment will pay off when your best managers stick around and save the company the cost of hiring and training new managers.

Planning for the succession of key management positions is a good idea. People retire, get promoted, or leave the company, so what’s better than to have someone ready to fill the position? All you need to do is keep an eye on those team members with high potential to lead and gradually train them, so they’re prepared when the time comes.

Resistance to change is natural. Promising managers recognize their own deficiencies and find ways to improve through training. But others might find it hard to admit their weaknesses and question the benefits of management development. Here are some of the common challenges L&D professionals have identified:

• Making the switch between an individual contributor position and a manager role is not a piece of cake. Sadly, many companies don’t provide development programs for new managers or continuous training for those existing managers.

 

• When new managers are promoted from within, they may hesitate to enforce some policies or to demand results in an attempt to keep relationships with former coworkers or subordinates.
  

 

• Arrogance is equally problematic. Having the knowledge is not enough to become a good manager. Other skills need to be nurtured to make it to a leadership position. An abusive manager will scare away your best employees.

 

• Most of the time, existing managers train new additions to the team, but an effective manager and an educator are not the same thing.

Knowledge and skills are the main categories management development programs should cover. They are designed according to your organization's structure, industry, and needs to close specific gaps.

• Company business model
• Company structure
• Company scope
• Internal policies and codes
• Labor laws
• Management theories

• Scheduling
• Managing individual performance
• Hiring, interviewing, and termination
• Conflict management
• Team motivation
• Communication
• Decision making
• Coaching
• Feedback
• Goal Setting
  
• Building Trust

Some become managers when promoted from an individual contributor role. Some come from another organization with some management experience. But whatever took them to that position will not guarantee a successful performance as a manager. Management development is more than a benefit; it’s an investment to grow your business.

Professional development is not just one of the perks companies offer to make themselves appealing to new talent. It is a strategic decision that, when implemented rigorously, significantly impacts business growth. So no matter the size of your organization, creating a Learning & Development (L&D) strategy should be one of your priorities as a leader. Why?

I'm not going to explain how the tech revolution has affected the job market in the last few years, but I can tell you that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace of change, and world events have forced us to adapt rapidly to new circumstances. But even before all that, McKinsey's research estimated that as many as 800 million jobs could be displaced by automation by 2030.

Historically, L&D initiatives have helped teams to build new skills and improve their performance in their roles or prepare them for new challenges. As roles continue to evolve, training is unquestionably necessary for any business that wants to keep up with its industry and retain its talent.

The good news is that McKinsey's research revealed that "60 percent of respondents plan to increase L&D spending over the next few years, and 66 percent want to boost the number of employee-training hours." But what exactly is the role of business training, and how do you create an effective strategy? Here are the answers to these questions.

These are five areas where your Learning & Development strategy will support your business goals.

Having a healthy snack bar, nap pods, or on-site massages sound like great perks. But if you truly want to attract and retain the best talent, you need to offer an L&D plan. Companies keep employees as long as they add value, but people will stay in one job if they see room for growth. "Opportunities for learning and development" are among the top criteria for joining an organization.

Human capital is the biggest asset any business can have. If knowledge or skills become outdated, your human capital loses value. So investing in learning and work experiences help move the needle. Research confirms that companies with an L&D strategy outperform other organizations by nearly two times on EBITDA, 2.4 times when training leaders during significant transformations.

People are more drawn to those organizations that contribute to the welfare of society. And now that the workforce is increasingly virtual and globally dispersed, a values-based culture becomes more relevant.

Although it should not be seen as a benefit, and more as a business strategy, communicating your L&D initiatives will positively impact your brand and reputation. And that's a competitive advantage in the current talent pool.

Research suggests that lifelong learning contributes to happiness. So, when helping your team members to develop their career paths, they will more likely engage with their job and be excited to embark on new opportunities at work.

The ultimate goal of an L&D strategy is to support the business strategy; otherwise, there's no point in implementing one. Training your team for the sake of training won't do anything for your business. So like any other strategy, you need to set your objectives, identify gaps that could prevent you or your team from achieving them, and design and customize an L&D program aligned with those plans.

Enhancing the company culture and engaging team members with the company's values are just a natural by-product of a professional development program carefully designed.

However, according to McKinsey, only 40% of companies are doing a good job when aligning their learning strategy and business goals. The other 60% offer programs that are outdated or programs disconnected from strategic objectives.

It's on the leaders to create an L&D strategy in sync with the business and reevaluate the alignment every year or every time a big change happens in the company. That's how you're truly covering priorities and strategic objectives.

As mentioned before, senior leaders have a big say in what type of training they need according to their goals. A partnership with HR speeds up any process and rapidly adapts to new professional requirements. For example, if team members require immediate training on new technologies or collaboration tools.

If a governance structure is established, leadership from both groups share responsibility for defining, prioritizing, designing, and securing funds for L&D programs. That's how you create the agenda that meets the company's overall goals and embeds the learning function in the organizational culture.

One of the biggest challenges of any L&D program is people actually retaining what they've learned and applying it to their jobs. The secret (not so secret) is how you deliver the learning experiences.

Research cited by the Harvard Business Review "suggests that breaking up training content into smaller chunks that can be interleaved into other activities both enhances learning and improves retention."

Whether in digital or in-person day-long workshops, people tend to forget what they've learned. Bruce C. Rudy, the author of the article Build Learning into Your Employees' Workflow from HBR, shared feedback from programs he has conducted, supporting this idea. Learners prefer shorter lessons with one core idea because they're more likely to apply it during their workday. Online courses are also easily incorporated into managers' and team members' weekly schedules.

Time and funding are critical to the successful execution of L&D initiatives. Time is a limited resource for senior managers, so microlearning experiences answer this objection.

Now, when facing insufficient funding, L&D leadership and business leaders need to determine priorities to ensure resources and requirements for any program before it begins. The larger the program, the bigger the impact. But if budget is an issue, starting with a pilot and scaling up is an alternative.

Learning is an individual process, but if you want to assess the ROI of your organization's investment in L&D programs, you need to aggregate each learner's results at the team level. Then you can determine if employees' performance or commitment levels have improved due to training.

And get this! Encouraging people to track their own progress makes it easier for everyone to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programs and guarantees their continuity.

A Learning & Development strategy is not about throwing some training at your people. It’s a more thorough plan that needs to be tight with your business goals; otherwise, it will become just like an extra expense instead of an investment. Don’t rush into an improvised program; plan carefully, and you’ll see that reflected in your ROI. But how do you know when is the right time to bring in learning and development experts? Here is the answer to that question.