Using Blended Learning to Train Employees on Leadership

Leadership training and development is a must for every company and leader. Training usually focuses on the essential skills to make influential leaders. Effective leadership training has the most important impact on the company's success. Managers are role models for their team members, and they determine how they will act in the workplace.

Does your business invest in effective leadership training? This article explains the most important reasons and benefits you should consider in training your leaders besides the methods of a blended learning approach to help you achieve the best results.

Key Benefits of Effective Leadership Training:

Leadership training can make great leaders. It takes a lot of time, energy, and resources. However, you should focus on the return on investment and the lasting positive impact on your organization.

1. Increased Productivity:

The idea of leadership revolves around caring for and understanding the feelings of others. Emotional intelligence is one of the qualities of a successful leader. Where an emotionally intelligent manager will be sympathetic to the idea of motivating employees, it makes them feel appreciated. As a result, productivity will increase as leaders and managers will gain emotional skills through training to deal with the workforce.

2. Employee Retention:

A large percentage of employees who quit their jobs do so because of their bosses rather than the job itself. It is hard to deal with ineffective leaders, that’s why people prefer to quit. However, you can train your workforce and reduce recruitment costs by adopting leadership training.

3. Increased Employee Engagement:

Everyone likes to know if they are progressing well in their career. In addition, they want to receive constructive feedback and feel worthy of praise. Workers who receive feedback interact more than those who do not. Successful leaders know the importance of giving feedback, and training programs teach leaders how to provide feedback to motivate and increase employee skill levels.

4. Effective Leadership Style:

Leaders can apply the suitable leadership method for your business which happens by training. There are different styles of leadership, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In addition, leaders can develop their own leadership style to which team members will respond well through training.

5. A Greater Sense of Responsibility and Accountability:

Leadership training programs promote features, such as accountability, integrity, and responsibility for managers, which can be important to the organization's performance.

What is a blended learning curriculum?

It's a good idea to incorporate learning methods to develop a great learning experience. The blending of methods will ensure that leadership training is delivered correctly. Blended learning can include different types of delivery methods in the same training programme, such as e-learning, theoretical education - classroom - and training led by a virtual teacher. This is why blended learning is an excellent choice for delivering your own leadership training.

Why should you adopt the blended learning approach?

Today's practical life is full of tasks, which makes it difficult to meet project deadlines and attend leadership training. Therefore, organizations should use blended learning methods for the following reasons:

1. It is flexible:

Leaders can learn at their own pace and schedule, and they don't have to worry about missing task deadlines.

2. Scalable:

The blended learning method can take on leaders from different geographic locations and time zones. Therefore, it ensures that all managers in different branches get training simultaneously.

3. Best learning method:

Blended learning can be a combination of e-learning and traditional training that allows companies and leaders to benefit from the advantages of both types.

4. A standard practice:

Since most of your competitors are likely to have adopted this approach, you should join them and enjoy its benefits.

Methods for blending learning delivery methods to achieve the best results:

First: Use live training only when needed

Theoretical training has been the traditional approach to providing leadership training within an organization for years because of its importance, but that doesn't mean it should be the default training option for all types of training within your organization, where the desire for direct delivery technology decreases for the following reasons:

1. Difficulty of planning:

It is difficult to coordinate all of your leaders to attend training sessions at the same time, especially if they are in different locations and have different shifts and work teams.

2. Time wastage:

With theoretical teaching, learners must attend several sessions, which means spending more time away from their main tasks. Therefore, this may lead to workload issues that may negatively affect your career.

You should use the direct method only when you get the most benefit from it and not as a default option. For example, the theoretical approach is ideal for sessions that require group work or presentations for better understanding, and this will allow employees to fully participate in the sessions and gain extensive knowledge to be successful leaders.

Second: Using e-learning for company-wide learning

You can also use e-learning as part of your blended training, as it is suitable for training most people, and it allows people to learn at their own pace although you should set deadlines to ensure everyone finishes training by a specific date.

1. Include videos in training to save time:

If your training sessions are run by specialized experts from teams or trainers from within your organization, having them do the same sessions over and over can be exhausting. The best way to ensure that learners continue to receive personalized, high-quality training is to record lessons provided by teachers, and then convert them into video-based training.

This means that your leaders do not have to move away from their desks every time they have to attend a training, and that they will acquire the same skills and knowledge.

2. Training led by a virtual tutor in order to reach remote employees:

If you have leaders in different countries or across the country, a virtual trainer-led training will be a good option to provide effective training to all of them at the same time. This method allows teams working remotely or in different locations to try out leadership training sessions with their co-workers at the same time. In addition, they can ask their tutor questions during the live training, and collaborate with others.

Leadership training is a must for every organization because of its benefits, such as increased productivity and improved leadership methods. Blended learning is also a great option for training because it gives learners an opportunity to work in groups and interact with trainers and peers, while taking lessons virtually, to suit their schedules.