Interpersonal communication is not rocket science. But learning about it can fly your team to the moon.
When prompted for areas of improvement, leaders will say more often than not: those reporting to me could be more creative; they should take on more responsibility; they could be even more motivated.
If these terms are to be more than mere buzzwords you need to take a closer look towards your behaviour as a leader and especially on how you motivate your team.
No matter what size your company is, all teams – especially a leadership team – must be working well in order to be creative and to show the way forward for the company and its employees. So how do you improve your leadership team and start a positive cycle of feedback, personal growth, and creativity?
Have a look and read the references from leadership trainings here.
Where 1:1 executive coaching gives a space to discuss work issues as well as personal ones, group training shows a different way forward for a group of leaders. Sharing knowledge with leaders from other levels of your company is an eye opener and improves your perspective and problem solving immensely.
What is leadership team training?
Being a leader is about awareness of your communication, both verbally and non-verbally. In order to make your team enhance your results, you need to know each other’s form of communication and how the dynamics of the team works.
Communication is so much more than words and a topic for training could be to learn how to show appreciation to other team members with body language. We often forget that it is not only our words that communicate. My job is to move your awareness away from your head to your body.
Communication is essential
One very simple example: to maintain eye contact while delivering your oral message, can be much more effective. This is very essential and you may think it to basic to need to write down in order to remember. But do you? How do you know?
It is my experience that we often forget the impression we leave on our colleagues and employees. Do we know how the others perceive us?
We do not know because we do not ask. In order to be a successful leader and a good team member we need to pay constant attention to the way we communicate. This can be difficult to do and maintain and that is why we need to train together in a leadership-team.
Basic knowledge about interpersonal communication is essential when leading and participating in a team. Often there is a lack of training in how to give and receive feedback in a professional setting.
The expense of not enhancing the leadership team is big and you will waste time and money if your team is ineffective. I often see people leaving companies because they experience fatigue and burnout and a lack of motivation.
When is team training a good idea?
You might try to improve your team performance by changing people’s individual tasks and positions, decrease the size of teams, or even change some team members. If this does not work, do not despair.
You can normally tell by people’s facial expression, their body language towards you and each other, if they feel connected towards achieving a common goal. Maybe your team members never learned the basic knowledge of interpersonal communication – it is however easy to learn.
Leadership training is good idea if:
- You and your co-leaders are experiencing endless and fruitless discussions at times over minor details and practical issues.
- Your leadership team struggles with a bad workflow or lack of motivation.
- Your team has an increase in sick days and an aversion to meetings grows.
- No one takes ownership of strategies or plans – and disagreements are voiced outside your group instead of inside.
What will the team training give you?
First and foremost, it is about changing the perspective both for the individual member of the team and for you as a group. After two days of training, you and your team will gather insights into your communication methods and discover why certain conflicts occur.
Even better, you get the tools to solve the conflicts and move forward as a stronger leader of a good working team or a stronger team (C-level or below) of good leaders. Team building is a positive side effect to leadership team training.
Together, you and your team will develope a new and shared sense of responsibility, to overcome differences and to focus on the results instead. Everyone will take ownership for the decisions and this new understanding will foster creativity and higher levels of work joy. In addition, you will learn to give and receive feedback without taking suggestions or differences personally.
Are you interested in training, info(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)klares-coaching.de e-mail for an introductory conversation. I offer trainings in Hamburg and Berlin free of travel expenses. I travel all over Germany and Europe.
When is coaching (1:1) a better idea than training? You can read more about my coaching approach here.