When you spend time and money planning a leadership development event, you want everyone who attends to participate, learn and develop. To get the best out of your leadership development event, make sure you avoid these common mistakes.
The Wrong Location
Some businesses try to run a leadership development event in their offices. Although it is generally a cost-saving measure, if your budget will allow, it is always preferable to conduct this kind of event in a different location.
The first benefit of moving your event off-site is that you can choose a location that is suitably designed for the specific type of event that you’re running. Rather than trying to turn an office meeting room into the right type of space, you can select exactly the right layout and seating plan for your delegates to get the most out of their training.
Taking staff out of their normal environment also tends to lead to better attention and participation – you remove the distractions of the day-to-day office environment and allow people to focus on the leadership development event itself. Also, you do not lose people!! It is incredible how often that happens.
Don’t forget to check facilities like transport links, easily accessible car parking, wi-fi access, catering, and the availability of audio-visual equipment if you need it.
No Needs Analysis
Before you invest in putting on a leadership development event, it’s useful to conduct a “training needs analysis”, to identify areas in your business where training will have the most impact. If your analysis highlights that a number of staff need training in the same topics or areas, then an event is the perfect way to deliver that training.
Change management, leadership development, and overall company updates are the perfect types of topics for your learning and development event. Individualised areas of improvement may not be appropriate for a larger event, and could better be conducted on a one-to-one basis.
The Wrong People
This isn’t just about not inviting the right members of staff to the leadership development event, it’s also about having the right executive-level attendance. If you want your delegates to take the leadership development training seriously, you need to show them that the Business takes it seriously too. This is particularly important for management training. Having senior business leaders attend the training sets a clear and powerful message to everyone there.
Of course, there’s no benefit to having leaders attend but spend their entire time on the phone or checking their emails, so it’s important to ensure that they are engaged with the process too. If you have multiple senior level people, it’s not necessary to bring all of them, but representation is important, so whoever does attend should have the credibility and seniority to make an impact.
In my next post, I will cover two more mistakes you need to avoid at your leadership development event to make it a roaring success. Stay tuned!
If you are thinking of running an event, and you need support to programme manage this leadership development event, please be sure to contact us to discuss your requirements.
Thank you so much for stopping by.
Latest posts by Barbara Moorer (see all)
- Top Timeless Tips to Keep Meetings Short - February 16, 2021
- Work Life Balance: 9 Quick Tips for Managing Overwhelm working for yourself - July 9, 2020
- How I Was Inspired to Start a Freelance Business Successfully - July 9, 2020