Leadership skills training programs empower you to influence, persuade or inspire others. Well constructed training programs should result in improved, more effective leadership skills for your colleagues and you.

"They say, best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad" - William Shakespeare.

This article describes how excellent leadership skills training courses energize and develop strong problem-solving, decision-making, visionary leaders.

As you work through your leadership skills training program, follow these steps to examine your leadership performances and enhance your skills through practice and continual assessment.

STEP ONE: Use Your Situation To Identify Needs, Problems, Pay-offs and Opportunities.

Effective leaders employ the techniques of perceiving, scanning and reading the hidden realities formed by the social landscapes, transactional patterns or organizational shapes associated with the situations facing them.

Therefore, investing your attention, time and efforts into discovering potential outcomes for each circumstance is certain to bring you very lucrative returns.

You must learn how to adopt reliable methods to question or test, investigate, evaluate and determine your opportunities.

Those procedures should enable you to unlock the possibilities for increasing growth, resourcefulness or productivity contained within your situations.

The success of your leadership training program depends on the quality of solutions, decisions and alternatives your 'scouting' skills are able to generate.

STEP TWO: Empower Your Success With A Vital, Vivid, Vibrant Vision!

Did your leadership skills training course teach you how to write vision statements? Have your statements caused excitement in others, were they inspired by your vision, did your vision survive the test and ravages of time'?

Your visionary view will evolve from the findings, conclusions and answers you developed in Step Number One. Your images, examples and concepts of your future must address those opportunities, solve your problems and satisfy your burning desires.

You'll want to heed Tom Peters' advice, "If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade."

Communicating a truly powerful vision means opening up the curtains and revealing the:

- Blazing glory of your personal and organizational values,

- Sparkling wealth-potential of your human resources and capital assets,

- Glimmering pavilions which reflect the time-horizons of your hopes, love and faith.

In short, you want your vision to describe the physical, intellectual, spiritual and developmental traits of your envisioned reality.

By including your associates, partners, suppliers and customers in your vision-creation efforts, everyone will know:

- What the vision looks like,

- What they think of the vision's merits,

- How others will be motivated by it and believe in its goodness,

- How much and in what ways they will grow when it is fulfilled.

STEP THREE: Take Advantage of Your Opportunities to Resolve Problems

When told about a difficulty at one of his factories, industrialist Henry Kaiser reportedly replied, "Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes"!

Apply the lessons learned through your leadership skills training to discover new solutions, for confidently deciding on priority courses of action and envisioning avenues to better tomorrows.

Effective leaders empower, encourage and enable creative, far-seeing, resourceful people - use your leadership training program to take your people and yourself to a higher plateau.

When you do, you'll enjoy the satisfying success of positive growth!

Mustard Seed Investments Inc. Copyright 2005, All rights reserved.