Many professionals face a career hurdle transitioning from an individual contributor or early manager to a senior leadership position. Oftentimes your current role’s skillset is not comparable to the skills and awareness necessary to succeed as senior leadership. If you are an early- or mid-career woman with ambitious career advancement goals, a leadership development program, like EWF International’s Emerging Leaders, may be right for you. Leadership development training not only benefits the trainee, but the whole organization. Companies with leadership development programs are stronger and more agile.

Read on to learn more about how female leadership development can benefit you and your organization.

The Most Important Leadership Traits for Women

One of the most common leadership development points brought up for women is improved confidence. The perception of career women being less confident than their male counterparts is grounded in two points. The first, women face a higher competence threshold in their positions compared to men. The second is when women are confronted with failure, they have a higher tendency to internalize the failure leading to reduced confidence.

In addition to confidence, another key leadership trait is developing emotional intelligence and self awareness. This can help you to develop a better leadership style and meet your team members where they are emotionally. Increased self awareness and emotional intelligence can help you improve team resilience and prepare them to handle difficult situations. It helps you read rooms, adapt, and improve your communication with all levels of the organization. Improving your communication develops your ability to navigate professional politics.

Leadership development also helps you build the hard skills to improve your business, strategic, and financial acumen. These skills are inextricably tied to senior leadership success. Due to gender perception bias concerning confidence and executive presence, women often do not get the same exposure and coaching on these hard skills as their male counterparts.

How to Choose a Leadership Development Program

There are a few key identifiers to look for when choosing a leadership training or leadership development program. One of the most important is finding a program that matches your leadership philosophy. For example, you may believe people have an innate talent for leadership that can be drawn out using inspiration and motivation. Or, you may believe leadership is similar to a hard skill and can be taught and cultivated through practice. It’s important you find a leadership development program that reflects your personal leadership philosophy.

Beyond leadership philosophy, consider what learning style works best for you. Perhaps you would better retain leadership development material if it was presented in an intensive, immersive program over a few days. It’s possible you may better retain the material if it was spread over multiple weeks where you could experiment and see the results of the guidance as you learn. Are you interested in a virtual program, or does an in-person program provide you a better experience? Consider this criteria as you compare leadership development programs.

About EWF International’s Emerging Leaders Program

EWF’s Emerging Leaders program is a 12-month leadership development training program designed for early- and mid-career women ready to supercharge their careers and deliver better results for their companies. Emerging Leaders is a dynamic combination of discussion, assessments, and workshops. The program goes beyond traditional management training and includes strategies to overcome the challenges specific to women in business and leverage their strengths. The course is broken up into four three-month modules.

Emerging Leaders Leadership Training Curriculum Includes Four Modules:

  1. Career Navigation & Business Acumen
  2. Communications & Self-Awareness
  3. Managing Perception & Building Influence
  4. Performance Management

A new virtual program is launching on October 14, 2020. For more information, click here.

Paying for Leadership Development

If you’re interested in a leadership development program like Emerging Leaders, you may be wondering how to pay for it and who pays for it. Many companies set aside budget funds for employee training and leadership development is one type of training that can be paid for by these funds. Many employers understand the benefit and value of training their talent. When you present your request to attend the selected leadership development program, it’s important to showcase both the benefit for you and the organization during your request. If you are interested in presenting a leadership development program opportunity like Emerging Leaders to your boss, the below sections can help you frame the training as both a benefit for you and your organization.

For more tips on how to present your leadership development training for corporate sponsorship read THIS BLOG.

Unsuccessful in gaining sponsorship for your training? Paying out of pocket is another option. Paying for a leadership development program is an investment in your career. Additionally, a good leadership program offers a maximum return for minimal investment. In fact, 85% of Emerging Leaders graduates negotiate a raise, promotion, or land a new opportunity within a year of completing the program. A pay raise, promotion, or new position can often repay the cost of leadership training.

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Leadership Development Benefits for You

One of the biggest benefits you will get out of a leadership development program like Emerging Leaders is improving your understanding of the language of business. As previously stated, this is of extra importance to career women as the potential for gaining higher leadership roles is tied to your strategic, business, and financial competence.

Another major benefit you gain from leadership development training is how to bridge the gap between being an individual contributor/early manager and being senior leadership. Senior leadership is an entirely different skillset. The best way to learn this skillset is through a leadership development program.

Leadership Development Benefits for Your Company

Leadership development programs help a company keep and cultivate quality talent. When a company invests in their employees, they reap multiple benefits. Investing in an employee builds engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty between the employee and their company. This is especially true for marginalized employee groups. In return, employee show more patience with the company as it tries to fix other issues. It’s less likely the company’s quality talent will go looking for new opportunities if they feel valued by their employer, even if the current situation is less than ideal. This all serves to build a good reputation for the company. A company with a good reputation has a distinct advantage when it comes to hiring the best and brightest talent for their team.

The training received from leadership development improves an organization’s structure, making it stronger and more agile. It helps to develop the company’s pipeline and creates leadership depth in the organization. This makes it much easier to fill positions that come open due to promotion or loss.

Ready to Supercharge Your Career?

Check out EWF International’s Emerging Leaders Program. Our leadership development program is full of battle-tested tools, strategies, and insights to help you figure out what you want and chart your career path to get there. It’s practical, immediately useful, and proven to help women like you get promoted, negotiate raises, and find greater professional fulfillment.