The Apprenticeship Levy provides a fantastic opportunity to bring new leadership and management skills and knowledge into your business. It not only formalises your employees’ experience and knowledge through the internationally recognised Chartered Management Institute level 3 and 5 qualifications, but it also gives them the tools and techniques to succeed in their roles and increases self-confidence.
It not only formalises your employees’ experience and knowledge through the internationally recognised Chartered Management Institute level 3 and 5 qualifications, but it also gives them the tools and techniques to succeed in their roles and increases self-confidence.
This confidence can be as simple as confidence in the ability to plan and lead a project, influence decision, or confidence in their ability to become a manager or business leader.
Leadership and management training programmes tend to focus on building confidence in applying business processes from academic theory, but often overlook building confidence and adaptability in an apprentice learners’ own leadership voice.
Our voice is a vital part of our working lives and the way we wield it changes the way we are perceived and how we influence decision.
Whether your apprentice is pursuing a Level 3 and will face the first challenge of interacting with their peers now as their manager, or they are expanding their capabilities with a Level 5 qualification, finding confidence in their leadership voice is a key element to becoming an effective manager and leader.
Your voice goes far beyond the words you say. In fact, sometimes the medium means more than the message. Understanding the physical voice and how you make sound, along with the psychological and physiological effects of the voice on the body, prepares you for any leadership scenario.
Having the knowledge to be able to marry your physical presence and nonverbal communication with how you deliver your message minimises the possibility of misunderstanding and, instead, becomes powerfully inspiring.
Learning other languages
Managers and leaders also need to learn to speak the language of their colleagues to be able to positively influence decisions across the business.
Every function in a business has its own acronyms and language, take for example marketing. Marketers will talk in their functions about brand salience, reach and share of voice, but if a marketer goes into a meeting with their CFO to discuss next year’s budget, using terms like ‘reach’ will undoubtedly not achieve the budget they were looking for.
Instead, they need to talk the language of the CFO and use terms like brand equity, market share and return on investment.
As a leader and manager your approach to each situation must be nuanced and malleable: an adaptable voice allows you to play many roles.
Finding your leadership voice forms a foundation on which to build yourself and your employees as leaders and managers.
All of our Apprenticeship Levy programmes incorporate training in finding your leadership voice and its inner power. The positive impact this is having can be seen across our customers and in the healthy leadership pipelines that are being built as a result.
Consider these three steps:
- Reinvigorate your in-house leadership and management apprenticeship training: Does your current training programme include training on leadership voice confidence? The likelihood is that it doesn’t and you’re not maximising your employees’ potential.
- Reinvest in your own voice: do you have confidence in your own leadership voice? Make it a priority to develop yourself and model good behaviours for your teams. Voice practice is an exercise in mindfulness. Take a moment before and after each interaction with your teams, colleagues or managers to assess how you utilised your voice and what you could have done differently. Self-reflection is key as a leader and manager in all facets, but especially with regards to your voice.
- Refocus your feedback: after presentations and meetings, consider adding voice elements to your feedback. Encouraging staff to pay attention to their voice and the way they speak (not just what they say) is an essential part of the process of developing good voice practice.
If you’d like to maximise the potential of your leadership and management apprenticeships, why not schedule a call with one of our consultants to discover the possibilities of our programmes.
Or if you’d prefer, why not download the e-brochure for more detail on our approach to creating leadership and management programmes which maximise your Levy.