How a Mobile App Can Reshape Your Leadership Training Process
Whether you are a manager, CEO, entrepreneur, or executive director, honing your leadership skills and learning how to better serve the employees and customers you work with is always a smart move.
Why?
Well, to start, 84 percent of organizations anticipate a shortfall of leaders within the next five years.
Additionally, in a Global Coaching Client Study by ICF, 86 percent of the companies surveyed were able to at least make their investment back when they invested in leadership training, while 28 percent saw an ROI of 10-49 times their investment.
With such strong results being generated by companies and organizations that are offering coaching opportunities, it becomes more and more clear that leadership training is becoming a must for businesses that want to remain competitive and improve their corporate culture.
But what is the best way to deliver a leadership training program? And how can employers ensure that their staff members are staying on track with their training opportunities?
While there are many ways to develop and implement a leadership development program, few are as compelling and as efficient as mobile learning.
Thus, for the purposes of this blog post, we will be discussing the benefits of a mobile app for leadership training, and sharing some of the most conclusive evidence we’ve gathered to show how well mLearning works in this space.
HERE ARE THE TOP THREE WAYS A MOBILE APP CAN RESHAPE YOUR LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROCESS:
- REINFORCEMENT
At ARC Business Solutions, we recently partnered with Victoria Eastwood of Essential Impact to create a leadership development app called Lead2Excel. It was built in our ARC Reach app, and customized to meet the unique needs of coaching professionals.
Essential Impact conducts in-person leadership training seminars, but then offers access to the Lead2Excel app so that clients can continue to practice what they’ve learned on their own time, via a convenient and easy-to-use coaching app.
This is incredibly wise, since without reinforcement, the brain forgets up to 90 percent of what it learns.
Thankfully, there is intriguing and uplifting proof that mLearning can improve educational outcomes by offering users the chance to reinforce the knowledge they’ve gained.
In fact, in one study, employees who had used a mobile learning app three times a week scored, on average, 20 percent higher than they had on their first exam (for which they had studied the traditional way).
This is even more impressive when you consider that students who studied using textbooks for both tests scored 15 percent lower (on average) on their second exam.
If ensuring your employees retain as much information as possible when participating in leadership training is important to you, making a leadership development app available to them could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
- CONVENIENCE
One of the challenges that traditional leadership training programs are faced with is providing enough information to employees within the allotted time frames.
Often, training in coaching is restricted to a couple of hours (or less), being offered during lunch breaks or during working hours.
Coaching apps are a practical, cost-effective and innovative way to address this concern.
In fact, smartphone learners complete course material 45 percent faster than those using a computer, yet they benefit from retention rates of 25 to 60 percent, compared to retention rates of 8 to 10 percent with traditional training methods.
So, what makes mLearning so convenient?
Well, to start, the average cell phone user checks their device 47 times per day. And since cell phones are carried on our person far more than other types of devices (like laptops or tablets), mobile phones are the surest way to ensure your coaching program is accessible from anywhere, at any time.
Additionally, mobile learning provides the unique opportunity to provide your employees with a microlearning approach to gaining new knowledge. And since microlearning makes the transfer of information up to 17 percent more efficient, your company will benefit from the time you save and the strengthened performance of your team members.
- SIMULATIONS
Just like with other forms of learning, employees who participate in leadership training benefit greatly from skills practice or simulations.
This is because simulation learning is one of the leading ways to help employees gain hands-on, practical skills that can’t be developed by reading alone.
Using simulations, employers can expose their employees to various learning scenarios based on their unique challenges or needs. But perhaps the best part is that employees benefit from fine-tuning their experiential knowledge in a risk-free environment.
This is likely why Brandon Hall Group’s Learning Strategy research found that among high-consequence industries, about 45 percent consider simulations either important or critical to achieving their business goals over the next 18 to 24 months.
In another study, simulation learning was found to improve skill retention by up to 100 percent and reduce the length of technical training by up to 66 percent when compared to traditional training methods.
And since coaching simulations are incorporated into Lead2Excel, employees would be able to participate in simulation exercises from the convenience of their own home, or while they are on-the-go. Participants who complete these coaching simulations consistently say that they improved their coaching skills.
Pretty amazing, right?
When you combine these benefits into one well-designed, customized mobile app, your employees get to experience a modern take on leadership training that many other businesses have yet to capitalize on.
Are you interested in learning more about Reach? Book a demo today.