Management Development Training:
Finding the Right Partners Through Purposeful Engagement
What are businesses looking for in their management development training? There can be few decisions more important for a business than finding the right help in developing their leaders and managers. After all, managers are central to the growth and health of an organisation.
At Apex Leadership we believe in developing a partnership that is mutually beneficial, a purposeful engagement.
Management Development Training: what are you looking for?
Our approach is based on research and experience gained whilst managing client contracts for a UK business school. The research was based on two elements.
Firstly in-depth interviews with a range of clients, followed by a thorough review of related national reports. The interviews were designed to obtain client feedback about our work with them, whilst the literature review was used to determine whether our findings related to wider trends.
The client interviews encouraged customers to discuss their feelings on the way we’d worked with them, on various projects, over several years. The respondents clearly expressed just what they were looking for in any partnership with a consultancy or training and development business.
3 Critical themes to make management development training a success
Our findings were supported by analysis of the wider literature, and revealed three critical themes. Effective support for management development training should be based on:
- The ability to offer genuinely customized solutions
- A partnering approach which is built on relationships
- Input from people with experience, expertise and a track record of success
These findings have led us to develop a practical model to help ensure that engagement between client and provider is effective. We call this model Purposeful ENGAGEMENT.
How do you get the best results out of your management development training?
In our experience, the best results come from a mutual commitment and involvement from both provider and client.
For our part, this begins with taking the time to understand the client’s – needs, aspirations and situation. It also comes from encouraging client involvement in the design and delivery of their management development training, or other interventions.
Such an approach is the real key to a productive, successful, mutually beneficial relationship – to a purposeful ENGAGEMENT.
To find out more about the research arguments behind a demand-led approach to management development trainings see our article: Leadership Management Training: New Demands for Business Schools.
You can return to our main discussion to improve the relationship and effectiveness of academia with business here: Academia into action