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Leadership Training and Development Needs Assessment

Providing the opportunity for leaders in your organization to hone their skills through leadership training and development opportunities can bring improvement and change in the ways business is conducted.

Yet, not every leader needs the same training. How can you determine which of your leaders should be given the opportunity to attend which specific training and development opportunity?

The answer is the implementation of a training needs assessment (TNA) process.

Often, the employee performance appraisal can reveal clues to training needs. Metrics and measurements can also provide insight into what training can best development a leader's skills.

Development of a training needs assessment process is the best means of collecting these clues and creating a training plan for the individual from the data. There's little guesswork involved when the facts are collected and presented through a TNA.

In the TNA, it is important to collect the strengths and weaknesses of each individual leader.

This doesn't mean that areas in which that person is strong can not benefit from additional training, but it is obvious that the weakest skills should be developed first.

By reviewing employee performance appraisals, you should be able to identify and include in the TNA those areas that could best benefit from additional training.

Surveys of customers and employees reporting to each leader can also provide a great deal of insight into training needs. Again, you'll want to select the areas that need the most improvement as priority areas for training and development.

Spending a little time walking around your office or shop can give you a great deal of information about training needs. What is happening that is costing time and money? What can be changed to improve the process?

Obtaining the training and development record of each leader will also help you determine what leadership training and development to approve and in what order.

Implementation of a TNA process should include a form or questionnaire into which the leadership employee can input data initially, identifying areas in which they feel the need to receive training and development.

After obtaining the completed TNA form, review the information and compare it to what you have learned from performance appraisals, surveys, metric measurements and observation. 

Upon completion of your input, you should have a list of training that includes not only what the leader wants but also what the leader needs. Set priorities in areas that show the most need for training and follow through with making this training available to that leader.

You may well find that most of the leaders both want and need certain training. In this case, consider making these training and development opportunities available to all your leadership team.

You'll probably identify some training that only one, two or a few of your leaders want and need. This might be training that can most effectively be provided by allowing these employees to attend outside the organization.

The most important part of leadership training and development is to know what skills your leaders have and what skills they need to develop.

By using measurements to determine where your organization needs to improve and training needs assessment processes to determine which areas training can most effectively result in positive change, you'll be able to make effective decisions and use your training and development budget to get the most improvement for your training dollar.

Copyright © 2005 by Bill Roche. All rights reserved. All material on this site (www.TopResults.com) is protected by U.S. Federal Copyright law. It may not be reprinted in any form, or hosted on any Web site, without explicit permission.

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Copyright © 1998-2008 by Bill Roche. All rights reserved. All material on this site (www.TopResults.com) is protected by U.S. Federal Copyright law. It may not be reprinted in any form, or hosted on any Web site, without explicit permission.