Last updated on March 29th, 2024 at 10:28 am
Corporate Leadership: Here’s what you need to know
Corporate leadership involves directing the daily operations of the business and steering it towards its goals. Beyond the focus on operational and financial strategies and personnel matters, good corporate leadership also inspires the organization to imbibe a can-do mentality. It also requires current leaders to groom the next generation of leaders through suitable training and mentoring to ensure that the business keeps evolving and growing organically.
Typically, corporate leadership comprises a management team and a board of directors. The board of directors is chosen by the shareholders and comprises select members of the management team and other directors.
The management team is responsible for working with the business’s workforce to deliver targeted business results.
On the other hand, the board of directors is not involved with the routine operations of the business. It is accountable to the shareholders and is expected to provide advice and counsel to the management team. The board mitigates the risk of fraud by following established corporate governance practices.
Essential Corporate Leadership Skills
The skills that distinguish outstanding leaders from the rest include:
- Strategic Skills: Good corporate leadership requires the leader to look beyond daily operations and direct the business’s operations to align with its vision and goals. Good leaders strategize to change the status quo and get the entire team involved and motivated to implement the business’s strategy.
- Communication: People are enthused by leaders who communicate openly, transparently, and clearly. Leaders, through effective communication, need to be reassuring during tough times and elicit collaboration even when faced with difficult deadlines. Communication should convey confidence, balanced with humility and realism. It is also important for leaders to communicate their appreciation of good work and assume accountability for anything that might go wrong.
- Fostering Partnerships/Relationships: Good leaders understand that businesses grow through joint manship. Therefore, they work on building and fostering relationships and partnerships across all levels of the organization and with customers and vendors.
- Influencing Skills: The best leaders lead by influencing and not merely giving directions. Positively influencing the people in the organization conveys collaboration and collective responsibility, encouraging the adoption of the business’s vision and enhancing engagement and motivation.
Developing Organisational Leaders
Effective leadership also requires establishing a culture of learning. Corporate leadership skills training helps groom a leadership pipeline. It helps the organization keep pace with evolving technologies and changing workplace practices.
Although individual strategies for corporate leadership training could vary among industries, the most commonly used tools include workshops, seminars, courses, coaching, simulations, mentorships, etc.
Corporate leadership training requires investments in time, money, and effort. The returns are obtained through enhanced productivity, greater engagement, lowered employee turnover, increased profitability, and competitive advantage.
A study conducted a few years ago surveyed over 13,000 business leaders and more than 1500 HR personnel drawn from 2031 organizations across the world. The study found that leadership training:
- Increased productivity by 36%
- 56% of leaders who received training were more engaged than 44% who did not receive any training
- Leadership training increased customer satisfaction by 71%
- Enriched the corporate culture
EndNote
Corporate leadership and executive management skills take time to be developed. The human resources and learning and development teams in organizations can no longer see themselves merely as administrators. They are the business’s partners and must draw up learning strategies and advise the organization on identifying and closing talent gaps through planned and structured learning programs.
Imarticus Learning can be an ideal partner for all the learning needs of your organization. We are a learning delivery organization with the expertise of working across industry verticals – financial services, analytics and AI, business analysis, and core technology.
Imarticus has trained, through its corporate leadership development programs, over 35,000 professionals from leading firms such as IBM, KPMG, Genpact, Moody’s Analytics, Motilal Oswal, etc., to name a few.
We partner with businesses to identify the leaders of tomorrow and help them build on their leadership foundation to gain a competitive edge.
