Leadership Skills Training for Tech Leaders

Jason
April 22, 2022

Leadership doesn’t always come naturally to everyone, particularly for those people with a technical background. But picking up leadership skills is crucial if you’re going to have an impact at the senior level and with any significant management role. 

Whether you have firm ambitions to take a senior tech role or you’ve almost fallen into a managerial role by accident, it’s quite likely that you will need some level of leadership training to help you bridge any skills gaps.

A firm foundation of leadership training will help you direct your team effectively towards success. This is a crucial part of reaching your goals and you should be expecting your employer to help you find the right leadership courses.

What is Leadership Training?

As a leader, you need to be the driving force of your team and those stakeholders looking to you for leadership. You are the person who will push your team to bring out the best of each individual, to reach their full potential, and achieve the corporate goals but also the individual career goals for yourself and your team. 

Leadership training courses are generally about building up your soft skills, the ability to lead and manage people.

Specialized programs are designed to help you explore leadership techniques and discover if and where you might have any skills gaps. The good courses should help you to refine key skills required to become an effective tech leader, including assertive communication, coaching, and motivation methods.

Why is Leadership Training Important?

It’s not just important, it’s crucial.

Even natural leaders require help in fine tuning their skills and training also enables you to bring in best practice and often learn from those around you.   

The best tech leaders can transform organizations, create efficiencies, enhance value creation, and engage their employees to deliver better results and for many it’s historically been a case of learning on the job and often, learning from your mistakes.

CTO Academy was launched because of all the C-level roles, that of CTO is the one that often lacked managerial and leadership training. 

What to Expect from Leadership Training?

Focus and Improve on Soft Skills

Being a great leader is often about being human and learning the softer skills and messaging around which people, teams and organizations can prosper.

Core leadership practices include:

  • Being a role model
  • Being positive
  • Encouraging collaboration
  • Focusing on following a vision
  • Making an impact

Identify Your Leadership Style

A good leadership training will help you identify your leadership style. Expect that you will assess yourself on the type of leadership you possess, how the people see you, and your way of delegating tasks to members.

How to Delegate

Leaders face one big problem: They want to do it all. However, you simply can’t do it all! One of the hardest things to do as a leader is to delegate and negotiate tasks.

You might feel that doing all of the work yourself is the best way to get results. However, as a leader, you have to distribute the workload among your team.

In leadership training, expect to learn courses on how to delegate in different ways. Most likely, the general steps to discuss would be:

  • Define the task at hand
  • Make sure it is SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, timebound, ethical recorded)
  • Identify the best team or team member for the job
  • Communicate why they have been selected
  •  Explain the goal to be achieved
  • Discuss how the task should or could be executed
  • Agree on a deadline
  • Keep communication open through the duration of the task
  • Provide feedback after completion

Motivating a Team

Studies suggest that positively motivating a team is a great way to improve employees’ effectiveness and efficiency.

In the leadership training program, you will understand how a motivated team feels when they are recognized for their hard work. You will be learning the fundamentals of keeping your team members motivated

Make Good Decisions

What was the last big decision you made at work? Perhaps you had changed tactics last minute when you were trying to close a sale or tried something new on social media to reach a larger audience.

Decision making is one of the most important skills you can learn as a leader. Just as we all have a personality type, we also have decision-making types. These are other aspects to discuss under a leadership training program

Managing Conflict

You are tired, and your team has been working hard to meet a deadline. Right at the last minute, it all falls through. Everyone is emptied, and tensions have started to rise.

Did you experience this?

Managing conflict might be one of the stricter leadership training topics. The trick is to keep calm and communicate. But it’s one of those skills that are usually easier in theory than they are in practice.

The type of techniques you will learn on an excellent management training course will include:

  • Confronting the situation
  • Collaborating to problem solve
  • The formal complaints process
  • Understanding why conflict arises
  • Handling narcissistic personalities at work
  • Managing stress and emotions

Performance Management

Performance management is the process of creating an environment at work that allows people to perform their best and aligned with the company’s objectives. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to make sure your team is performing.

So, here is the question, how many times a year do you monitor and feedback your team’s performance?

Performance management is a continual process.

It is a continuous cycle of setting goals, planning how to achieve those goals, reviewing the progress, and further developing the team’s skills.

In the leadership training program, you will learn:

  • Conducting annual appraisals
  • Giving feedback
  • Empowering employees
  • Using performance management tools
  • Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • Implementing personal development plans

Learning these techniques in leadership training programs for managers will provide you with the knowledge to successfully monitor, analyze, and progress with your team’s performance.

Digital Leadership Skills

Every organization needs to embrace new technologies if they want to flourish. And, those with the most capable digital-ready leaders will continue to stay ahead of the curve.

When you are in a leadership training course, you will learn how to get your business updated digitally. This might involve syncing up calendars on Gmail, communicating using Skype, or any other digital tools that help people communicate faster and work more efficiently.

How CTO Academy Help With Leadership Skills?

CTO Academy provides leadership training programs that are focused on helping tech leaders build up the managerial and soft skills required to become an effective leader.

We know you have the technical skills nailed. We’re here to help you build your leadership skills.

Learning those skills is what will make you stand out in a competitive crowd and achieve the career and reward you want.

Download Our Free eBook!

90 Things You Need To Know To Become an Effective CTO

CTO Academy Ebook - CTO Academy

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