“Leadership” is a term that all businesses discuss, and certainly at Bauer Academy we have seen a huge increase in the appetite for leadership training in the last few years, but it can still be a very broad term. Many people think instantly of leading people, but even that presents different challenges at different levels of an organisation and with changes to traditional hierarchies and hybrid ways of working now also added to the mix. So, at Bauer Academy, we’ve considered how we approach leadership training to ensure we can reflect all areas of leadership.
Our training can be divided into 3 content strands: Leading yourself, Leading others and Leading the organisation. All 3 areas are important, and you’ll certainly find a mix in our apprenticeship programmes focusing on building knowledge, skills, and behaviours for new, established, or senior leaders. It’s a split that deliberately mirrors the fundamental principles of EQ encouraging all our leaders to begin by becoming more conscious of their own needs and how they come across to others, but backed up by hard skills such as budgeting, strategic analysis, and project planning. A holistic approach is important as in the real world all 3 of these strands co-exist and leaders may need to continuously develop so as to ensure they excel in each area.
All Bauer Academy training is underpinned by our mantra of “Learn and apply” and leadership training certainly benefits from this philosophy by taking known theories and models but encouraging these to be considered specifically for the needs of a media industry. Our core training team draw on their own industry experience and use case studies and contexts designed to expand learning from a simple recall of approaches, to being able to make these a meaningful reality for a fast-paced creative industry. But whilst frameworks that date back decades may still have relevance, it’s important for us not to simply ‘teach’ these, but instead encourage leaders to develop their own critical thinking abilities and be able to analyse and justify the approaches they take back in the workplace. This approach goes beyond increasing knowledge, to building a skillset that can encourages leaders to be more considered and decisive in their actions.
I believe the demands on leaders have never been as extensive as they are today. Modern leadership includes taking responsibility for culture, innovation, and sustainability. It requires the ability to adapt to multiple environments and technologies. These are all topics that evolve quickly and need to be discussed regularly by leaders enabling them to not only be a good leader today but prepared for the challenges of the future too. And to do this, we believe leadership is as much a mindset as it is a skillset.
Across our portfolio of apprenticeships, training programmes and 121 coaching we endeavour to deliver on our Leadership training mission – “To inspire individuals to perceive themselves as strong, capable Leaders driven by conscious decision-making, relationship building and a desire to continuously improve their own abilities”. We believe strongly in our vision for the leaders of the future and are adding more to our 3 content strands all the time. When it comes to developing leadership abilities, we know that journey will never be fully complete meaning it’s even more important Bauer Academy’s leadership team can support the full breadth of modern leadership.