Introduction
Employee training is a significant undertaking for every organization that wants to remain competitive. Training future leaders is the most valuable kind of investment that an institution can make through training its junior employees in readiness to take leadership. The strategy ensures that young employees are competent to perform leadership duties and that they can take the organization into its future steps.
Organization culture is continued from continuous leadership. Although organization leadership continues to become more complex each day, many organizations have not committed themselves to train future leaders. Not all leaders who do well in leadership positions in the world were born leaders. Leadership can be learned. Leadership training is therefore important for the achievement of organization goals.
When employees realize that they are being prepared for leadership positions in their organization, their willingness to turnover their current jobs is reduced. The paper uses this foundation to discuss the process of training development and motivation of future leaders.
Training
According to Becker (1993), training the employee on leadership enhances employee retention. Training of standards of leadership is a remarkably critical undertaking for any organization that has success as its sole agenda. Leadership training reduces the desire for turnover by instilling a spirit of commitment to employees. According to Richard (1977), employees who are committed to their jobs and organizations are less likely to leave their jobs.
Richard also affirms that trained leaders have more loyalty and intention to stay longer in their organizations. Organizations that will grow to high success have to view the development of new leaders as a strategic investment. Institutions of leadership have to value training of juniors besides having long-term investment plans to develop new leaders. Such employees are also very committed to their duties.
It is, therefore, necessary for organizations to set training standards that make junior leaders more steadfast to the organization and its goals. A research that was conducted by Owens (2006) found that leadership loyalty increased with an increase in training hence lowering the rate of turnover. According to Owens’ research, trained employees were stanch to their organizations compared to employees who never received any training in their organizations.
It is also worth to note that, when junior leaders become unswerving, they produce better results than apathetic employees do. According to Walton (1985), devoted employees yield better results. Assurance on the side of the employees makes an organization achieve its goals with ease since it results in teamwork and cooperation.
Leadership training standards should also put in place mechanisms to ensure that they achieve inspirational leaders in the organization. Organizations should, therefore, set standards for leadership that will inspire the whole organization towards achieving future goals. Inspirational leadership ensures that the whole organization develops and nurtures a learning culture.
New leaders have trained on the leadership style that the organization adopts together with the set strategies to achieve organizational goals in the future. Training standards should ensure that junior leaders are well versed with communication flow and protocols in the organization including giving and receiving feedback, open communication, listening, and ability to trust others.
Learning should also promote a consultative kind of leadership. This standard also calls for the existing leaders in organizations to act as role models to the juniors who are likely to copy what they do as they climb up the leadership ladder.
Good leadership training should encourage intellectual stimulation. Leadership training should stimulate the thinking ability of the junior leaders to ensure that they develop expertise and knowledge at all the levels of such an organization.
Employees from whom junior and future leaders come should be encouraged always to voice their grievances and any problem that they experience in the organization. This procedure further promotes the organizations’ information flow.
It is also the role of training standards set by the organization to guide leadership training to achieve individualized consideration. Organizations should ensure that leaders are introduced to organization leadership procedures and activities in an acculturation way. Every leader should be trained according to his or her distinctiveness. Not all junior leaders are born with leadership skills.
This argument means that leaders have different leadership abilities, which should be considered when establishing leadership-training standards. When individuality is considered in leadership, every leader feels part of the organization. Individualized leadership training enables the junior leaders to air their varying grievances thus enabling them to learn how to give and take leadership positions.
The other training standard that organizations should observe in training leaders is the use of contingent rewards. The organization should always foster learning. Since organizations keep on changing, leadership-training changes need to transform with time. Such practices should include changes in the educational curriculum.
Training efforts should be tailored to fit the situation. Under employee training standards, employees need to be praised for their actions to heighten their loyalty to the organization. Therefore, employing quality leadership training standards has the outcome of guaranteeing effective leadership and hence the success of any organization.
Leadership Development
Leadership development involves undertakings that promote leadership quality and level in an institution or in the individual leader. Leadership development can be done in schools or by taking employees for retreats. In organizations, developing leadership involves making individual employees gain abilities that enable them to lead others. It also involves the development of leadership attitude in individual employees.
Therefore, there is a need for training leaders since personal traits can affect the leadership abilities of certain individuals. There is a call to develop leadership competences in individual employees in preparation to take leadership positions in the future. Through leadership, every person can develop leadership competency and effectiveness.
Young leaders who receive guidance on leadership should also be ready and focused. They should also be ready to put into practice what they learn in the process. Young leaders should also be patient and persistent in learning. Organizations can adopt various methods of leadership development.
One of such leadership development style is the use of classroom training. This style is effective because it enables leaders to realize good leadership qualities. According to Cromwell and Kolb (2004), classroom training is effective even when it is done at a very low level. Many people can develop leadership traits in organizations through this strategy. Leadership training enables leaders to know what to do in different situations.
Baldwin and Ford (1988) point out how leadership development depends on various factors. To begin with, for junior leaders to gain the required standards of leadership skills from the development program, the individual learners’ characteristic plays a big role because the traits and characteristics of an individual affect his or her learning and development.
Individual uniqueness such as having a high urge to learn and or having an inner drive to achieve high goals affect the leadership development process. An individual who believes in high standards of achievement can acquire knowledge more easily relative to the one with low standard goals. Leadership urge and self-motivation enable young leaders to set their own goals and standards.
Also, a person who is open to learning new ideas or new experiences can easily develop to a leader. These qualities can drive an organization to the future by ensuring competitive performance. An employee who has a sense of control to the environment can also develop into a leader faster than people who do not mind about their immediate environment. Such people always yearn to change their environment.
The high urge to change people’s environment drives them to learn leadership skills quickly (King & Ferguso, 2001, p.124). It is also worth noting that self-monitoring employees can learn leadership skills faster than those who have low self-monitoring skills.
The second determinant of leadership development is the quality of the leadership training program applied. Well-authenticated and tested program is likely to yield better results than an unfamiliar program. Organizations should, therefore, come up with leadership development programs that employees can easily identify with. When employees own the training program, acquiring the intended leadership skills becomes easy.
Employees become eager to learn and acquire skills that the program offers. Development programs that aim at transforming junior leaders into competitive and trustworthy leaders should be designed in a way that makes them more integrative. Development programs should integrate changes that continuously occur in the environment of the trainee.
The program should also provide for feedback opportunity meaning that every development program should have a proper communication mechanism. The design of such a development program should enable leaders to learn how to set goals and or assess the achievement of such goals.
The third leadership development variable that is important in training and development is support from the supervisor. Every leader should be supported through correction and affirmation by supervisors. From such support, leaders develop new skills besides learning from their predecessors. Support from such leaders makes leadership a transitional activity that can be inherited and handed over from one person to the other.
According to Lifer and Rogers (1993), the quality of leadership that an organization achieves in its future largely depends on the quality of its supervisors and trainers. Leadership development programs should cultivate skills like self-efficacy, visioning, and experiential learning.
After completing the leadership development program, new leaders should have the ability to form substantial experience, observe, and reflect on what they learn, formulate concepts in an abstract way, and evaluate every new undertaking. It is also important that development programs should extend a sense of ability in the employees.
Finally, a training and development program should enable the employee to come up with a clear perception of the goals that the organization targets in the future. At the end of every good leadership development program, the young leader should take leadership responsibilities, develop a strong purpose of living, begin working immediately, come up with achievable and effective goals and missions, and gain focus.
Leadership Motivation
Motivation directly affects the level of efforts that employees apply in a bid to achieve high leadership qualities. Through motivation, the developed leadership gains the will to sustain the adopted or learned qualities to apply them in the real-life situation. According to Quill (2005, p.9), motivation makes people persistent in their endeavor to take over leadership in the future of the organization.
Motivation enables the individual employee to develop an inner drive to achieve his goals and those of the organization. Organizations can develop programs to ensure that employees remain motivated to acquire leadership skills for future services.
Lifer and Rogers (1993) affirm that organizations can motivate their employees through extrinsic motivation means like good payments, offering high benefits, good supervision, and proper sendoff perks to induce employees’ desire to be in leadership positions in the future. On the other hand, organizations may also provide good employee-task relationship.
When employees enjoy their duties, they are also likely to admire working for the organization for long and at various leadership positions. Such motivation is regarded as intrinsic. It is a more influential source of motivation relative to money and perks. As King and Ferguson (2001, p.123) posit, every employee has certain desires he or she would want to fulfill in the future.
The needs drive his or her motivation to work hard. All junior employees need to achieve certain levels of success in their workplace. For example, in the military, most of the junior members of the forces desire to attain certain accomplishments that their trainers and supervisors have attained.
Junior members of the forces desire to become sergeants and even commanders of certain battalions thus acting as an intrinsic inspiration for them to work harder and in a more loyal way. Such individuals set high and risky goals in their bid to attain their targets. The respect, honor, and loyalty that they see other members of the force portraying to the commanders act as a brainwave for them to heighten their inputs (King & Ferguso, 2001, p.123).
Junior leaders may also be intrinsically motivated to take on leadership roles by their desire to be affiliated with certain individuals or organizations. People may wish to be associated with others of a certain social class. Affiliation drives people to admire being associated with others.
Junior leaders in the organization are introduced to sharing the positions of leadership with the old one to make them admire the association they have with other leaders. Hence, they are motivated to prepare themselves to take over leadership positions in the future.
The other factor that may motivate employees to take over leadership positions in the future is the need for power (Quill, 2005, p.9). It is human nature for people to want to be in power. Employees would want to have power and influence. This need makes junior leaders and ordinary employees to work hard and or even train as leaders.
According to Quill (2005, p.9), power offers the leader with attention from other employees and fellow leaders. It enables new leaders to develop a sense of prestige. This motivation makes leaders work hard to maintain high levels of leadership qualities so that they are ready to take over leadership positions in their organizations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, employee training is necessary for leadership development. Organizations must establish mechanisms to ensure that there are leaders who have been prepared to take over leadership roles in the future of the organization. Certain training standards like commitment, intellectual stimulation, and continuous inspiration should be put in place.
Organizations should also ensure that development is continuous and that it meets certain standards. Various leadership development programs should be put in place to prepare new leadership for their positions in the future. Finally, leadership also requires motivation for it to achieve its goals. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is necessary for preparation of new leaders for their future positions.
Reference List
Becker, S. (1960). Notes on the concept of commitment. The American Journal of Sociology, 66(1), 32-40.
Cromwell, M., & Kolb, J. (2004). An examination of work-environment support factors affecting transfer of supervisory skills training to the work place. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 15(4), 449-71.
King, T., & Ferguso, A. (2001). Leadership Development with Black Professional Women. NWSA Journal, 13(2), 123.
Lifer, E., Rogers, M. (1993). Leadership development program at LC. Library Journal, 118(15), 16.
Owens, L. (2006). One more reason not to cut your training budget: The relationship between training and organizational outcomes. Public Personnel Management, 35(2), 163-171.
Quill, A. (2005). Special Section. Leaders in the making, 93(6), 7.
Walton, E. (1985). From control to commitment in the workplace. Harvard Business Review, 63(2), 77-84.