Developing a key leadership or management skill is important to be grow continuously as a leader and manager. In fact, the famous inventor and diplomat Benjamin Franklin is known to have developed thirteen skills a year by working on one each for four weeks. Working on the skill daily for four weeks, allowed him to turn the skill into a habit.

I created a training needs analysis worksheet to determine training needs for leaders and managers. This worksheet can help you to choose a priority skill to work on until it becomes a new habit or something that you become good at.  You may already have a skill in mind that you want to develop and just need to get started. Once you have a skill to work on, I suggest using my goal planning worksheet to turn the project into a goal and plan how to achieve it. The goal planning worksheet has you set a specific and measurable goal so you can better envision the outcome and track your progress.

Let us suppose you wanted to become better at giving feedback to employees. You realize that you easily point out negatives in performance but do not give equal effort to positive feedback and recognition.

A goal statement example could be, I give positive feedback daily to an employee to reinforce a behavior or to recognize a good result. This is a specific and measurable goal statement that can be tracked daily using a type of checklist form to note if you are doing it daily.

Each section of the goal planning form has you think through the steps to realize your goal from listing the benefits to identifying the obstacles and solutions and writing action steps.

In our example of giving feedback, let us say the benefits are to build trust, motivation and morale and improve performance. The obstacles could be old habits and know-how. Solutions could be a daily reminder in your to-do list and a quick tutorial on giving feedback.

Actions steps would follow and, in this case, might be to set up an automated daily reminder and to search for tutorial videos on YouTube or find a good blog article.

Taking a course in leadership or management is always a good thing, but if you do not prioritize a skill to develop you may only leave the training with good knowledge and intentions.

Skill development is like any goal and project and involves strong effort at first and perhaps some training. But to become an effective leader and manager ongoing skill development is highly recommended.

I am talking here about skills for leaders and managers, but the same approach can be used for skill development in any position.Download my Training Needs Analysis Worksheet complete with leadership and management competencies and assess your training needs now.