Skills and training for directors and owners

Sources of leadership training

As a business owner or director you could benefit from leadership training. That is, training designed to help you maximise your own and your business' performance.

Leadership training will help you:

• inspire your team
• influence others
• bring about positive change in your business

A wide range of courses is available to help owners and directors develop their skills. Your local Business Link will also be able to advise you on management and leadership training available in your local area.

Leadership training is as much about personal development as it is about learning set skills through formal training. For this reason, mentoring is often chosen as the best way to develop leadership potential.

Mentoring is an informal, generally unstructured process in which a mentor, usually someone very experienced in business, spends time developing the inner resources of the mentee. It is not a teacher-pupil relationship. Rather, the mentor is more of a guide and somebody against whom ideas can be safely sounded out.

Networking is another important type of skills development for business owners and directors. A wide variety of business networks exists - including those for new businesses, young owners and women owners. These allow you to learn from people running similar businesses and facing similar obstacles.

For both networking and mentoring, your local chamber of commerce and your local Business Link are useful initial points of contact. You can locate your local chamber of commerce using the British Chambers of Commerce website.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• The core skills all businesses require
• New skills required by growing businesses
• Key skills for owners: strategy
• Key skills for owners: delegation
• Key skills for owners: building a management team
• Key skills for owners: managing your team
• Skills and training for company directors
• Sources of leadership training
• Here's how management training improved our business

 

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