Advantages of completing courses in management

Many organisations recognise the benefits of continuous professional development for their managerial team. After all a well trained team is fundamental to delivering improved individual, team, and business performance for the organisation.

Whist it is tempting to believe that single two or three day training event every year or so will suffice to keep managers’ skills updated, a better approach is to arrange a series of scheduled courses in management that build on one another to create a management development programme.

Many organisations – either because of the size of the managerial team or due to a lack of internal expertise - deliver continuous professional development programmes using a mixture of in-company modules supplemented by selected Spearhead open courses in management. 

There are two key advantages to this approach to training your managerial team. Firstly, it allows a period of skill consolidation and practice between training courses. Managers are encouraged to apply the skills and develop their competence before learning the next subject. This prevents “information overload”. For this reason it is preferable that each course or module is separated from the next by at least 6 to 8 weeks, and that the interim practice is both actively encouraged and monitored by the line manager.

Secondly, the system creates flexibility. Newly promoted managers can be taken systematically through the programme whilst managers joining the organisation can be assessed and then take the open courses they need appropriate to their knowledge and skills. Because of this flexibility this method of delivering training is considered the most cost effective way of improving management performance within an organisation.