How Transformational Leadership Training Facilitates Company Innovation

Key takeaways:

• Transformational leadership seeks to inspire employees at all levels and drive innovation by modeling essential behaviors 
• Some organizations may require company-wide change to support transformational leadership 
• ICAA’s Transformational Leadership programs and courses provide students with practical tips and methods to host successful meetings, hold productive conversations, and increase team collaboration  

When organizations want to drive innovation and business growth, they need to start by training their management team. 

How managers choose to lead can directly impact team productivity, creativity, and the employee experience. It’s no surprise, therefore, that poor management is still a key reason why employees leave, with one study finding that 82% of full-time employees said they’d potentially quit their jobs due to a bad manager. 

In the old paradigm, managers were primarily responsible for delegating tasks and potentially providing support as needed. It was a one-way street of instruction. 

They were asked to do more with less— restricted organizational structures, fewer resources, and fewer supports. They may have been asked to implement the latest management fad, and often without the organizational culture or tools to support the change. 

It was, frankly, managing change for the sake of change. 

And while managers did their best, the changes were often superficial, making it difficult for leaders to drive employee buy-in and participation. 

Now, however, employees want opportunities to actively contribute to company growth. They want to feel valued on day one, and great managers collaboratively lead their teams to drive innovation, build employee engagement, and improve retention by encouraging team members of all levels to make valuable contributions.

Ultimately, leaders have to model what they’re talking about. Transformational leadership can help managers become leaders who can inspire collaboration, teamwork, and innovation, all of which are needed to drive strong, tangible, and sustainable results. 

What’s Involved in Transformational Leadership Development

Transformational leadership is the management practice of inspiring and encouraging employees to create and innovate, contributing to the company’s future growth. It involves encouraging employees at all levels to contribute meaningfully, with managers leading by example to create a positive company culture. 

An entry-level software engineer may have just completed a degree program that involved cybersecurity classes. After receiving the most up-to-date education, they may spot a potential gap in current processes. When encouraged to speak up, that employee can address the concern with their manager so a solution can be found proactively and before a security threat actually occurs.

Transformational leadership can facilitate business growth, new innovation, increased productivity, and higher employee engagement rates. Employees who feel that their superiors treat them with respect are 63% more satisfied with their jobs, making them more likely to contribute enthusiastically and bring their full skillset to the table.  

The Four Keys of Transformational Leadership 

People managers and project managers alike can learn how to facilitate groups and, perhaps more importantly, how to support the engagement efforts of others. They can motivate employees to take ownership of projects, collaborate effectively, and contribute to innovation. 

There are four key principles of ICAA’s transformational leadership training: 

• Inspiring employees through comprehensive instruction to co-create a vision together, encouraging team members at all levels to contribute and holding shared values

• Modeling essential behaviors that are aligned with company values

• Strategizing to consider and address underlying contradictions with subtle actions 

• Implementing focused changes that have systematic impacts, capturing the energy and efforts of the teams while avoiding micromanagement 

Benefits of Transformational Leadership Development 

As managers begin to incorporate the four principles of transformational leadership into their management practices, they can drive the following organizational changes:

• Promotes creativity, drives innovation, and boosts productivity 
• Teaches people how to lead and inspire, instead of teaching managers how to simply delegate tasks 
• Increases successful implementation, as team members are more enthusiastic about what they understand and help to create 
• Encourages team members to take ownership of the work they do, which can produce stronger results while potentially increasing employee retention rates 

These benefits can contribute to significant business growth individually but can drive exceptional organizational change together. 

The Process of Transformational Leadership Development 

Transformational leadership development can change how supervisors lead their teams, and it often requires changes both to individual management techniques and organizational culture. 

It’s important to consider how you want to approach leadership training before you get started. Some questions to consider include the following:

• Is it just you personally, on a solo journey to learn new leadership styles?
• Would your organization need a whole system culture change, starting from the top, to effectively implement these new leadership practices?
• Are you part of a small team trying to influence change at a larger scale from inside the organization? 

The answers to these questions will impact how to obtain transformational leadership development. ICAA, for example, offers individual courses, which may be best suited for managers trying to improve their own leadership methods. 

We also host organizational programs, which can be effective for organizations looking to train their managers on a large scale. Our Facilitative Leadership program, for example, teaches the following:

• Group facilitation methods 
• Transformational strategy 
• Organizational transformation
• Leading dynamic teams
• Facilitating Conciliation
• Power of image change
• Participation paradigm 

Finally, we offer an intensive Transformational Leadership course designed for small company owners, C-suite executives, and high-level decision-makers who need to access information quickly. 

All of our programs and courses provide actionable, practical steps that managers can take to implement changes, going beyond basic theory. Three examples include our focused conversation methods, consensus workshop methods, and meetings that work. 

Focused Conversation Methods

Focused conversation methods are group facilitation methods. Your leaders can learn how to help team members reflect together on any subject, increasing collaboration and fueling innovation. 

The ToP Focused Conversation method, for example, uses a four-level sequence of questions that moves a group’s discussion through a clear progression from their initial responses to eventual conclusions. 

Consensus Workshop Methods 

Consensus workshop methods also fall into the group facilitation category and teach leaders how to create understanding and team consensus around complex topics. 

ICAA’s ToP Consensus Workshop method, for example, uses a systematic approach. It starts with a clear focus question, encourages the group to brainstorm responses, organizes the ideas into clusters, and then determines the next steps based on core ideas in each cluster. 

Meetings That Work 

ICAA’s Meetings That Work gives your leaders the practical tools they need to design and hold effective meetings. You can learn how to create strong agendas with three different levels of complexity, along with how to bring your agenda to life and deal with any potential challenges that may occur. 

How ICAA’s Transformational Leadership Development Works 

Leadership practices will directly influence business success. The right leadership training can support your managers to increase collaboration, encourage innovation at all levels, and dramatically increase employee engagement. You’ll be able to retain top talent longer and get incredible performance from enthusiastic employees. 

Leadership training should be a collaborative process. Individuals can inspire and model behavior for each other, creating a shared vision. This is something that ICAA stresses heavily in our training programs, whether you’re starting with an individual course or a full program. 

We worked with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, for example, to use transformational leadership practices to resolve a funding issue that was creating division in the academic staff. They implemented ICAA’s method to engage all professors, administrative staff, external stakeholders, and even some students to create a cohesive plan and find a solution. The plan they created is still in effect today.

We also worked with the Thunder Bay District Social Services Administration Board on several transformations. 

First was merging two organizations into one, so that housing, social services, jobs, and child care were under one umbrella. 

The second was skilling up staff in an appreciative way to ensure staff retention. The third ongoing one is involving First Nations in every aspect of the organization’s service and policy.

In a few short years, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) was transformed from an “unchanging” institution with an assigned mandate and rote routines to an innovative, collaborative, and proactive organization. 

Key results included a shift from a rules-based ethic to a values-driven ethic inclusive of innovation and risk-taking, collaboration and unity, and an external focus on quality, from segregated departments working in isolation to teams working across departments, and the normalization of participatory group processes led by facilitators. Tangible evidence was a cost saving of about $10M.

Want to learn more about how transformational leadership can create organization-wide change for your company? 

Talk to a whole change system expert to learn more about which programs can help you.