Utech Leadership Collective vs. Custom Training: Finding the Right Fit for Your Leadership Development

Leadership development is crucial to maintaining skills at the right level and ensuring organizational leaders understand how to effectively lead their teams. This is especially true for family-led organizations, which naturally have unique dynamics that need to be navigated. As companies grow and change, leadership skills must also adapt to meet the business needs.

For this reason, The Utech Group has developed various leadership workshop solutions. Two of the popular options are the Utech Leadership Collective and Custom Training. The Collective is an interactive leadership program where leaders in different industries and with different backgrounds develop awareness and skills together, while encouraging one another to become change driven leaders. Custom trainings are explicitly designed to meet the unique needs of a leader and/or their team. So, how do you decide between a Collective vs. Custom Training?

The Need for Leadership Training in Family-Led Organizations

All organizations need a professional, knowledgeable and skilled leadership team. This is especially true for family-led organizations, where personal relationships can add a level of complexity to everyday business operation. And as the organization grows and more people are added, the ability to successfully lead and problem-solve to meet the challenges must also grow.

There are many reasons 48% of new businesses fail within the first five years, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor, and one of them is a lack of skilled leadership. The business owner, family and non-family managers added during business growth may be able to develop and sell products or services but do not know how to lead employee teams, balance family and team dynamics, foster a culture of learning and growth, resolve conflicts, and effectively communicate. While experiential learning is important, supporting it with structured or customized leadership development is crucial.

Family-led businesses have some unique characteristics compared to non-family organizations. For example, at some stage of a family-led business, whether the business leadership primarily focuses on preserving family relationships or building a successful team becomes an issue. Preserving family relationships usually means accepting leadership decisions and behaviors of some family members and is not necessarily beneficial for the overall business.

Building a successful leadership team in a family-led business requires integrating family dynamics into desirable leadership behaviors that support the desired organizational culture. The issue that often arises is that acting as a family can lead to communication issues, decisions perceived as biased, a culture of exclusion in that non-family leaders are never fully integrated into decision-making, a lack of equal accountability among leaders, and other challenges. Often, it boils down to family-led businesses growing beyond the stage where they can rely on family skills and dynamics rather than the critical leadership skills needed to lead and manage a growing business.

What’s The Difference Between a Collective vs Custom Training?

Team development is an ongoing process, and it begins with leadership self-awareness. The differences between a Collective vs. Custom Training concern structure vs. personalization. However, both training models intentionally address leadership perspectives, styles, behaviors, and challenges. The approaches are journeys to greater self-awareness, which is critical to growing as leaders.

The Utech Leadership Collective is an interactive 12-month leadership program that consists of 8-12 individuals from various non-complete organizations. Each month, participants are pushed to develop a deeper understanding of themselves regarding perspectives and competencies though a curriculum developed and guided by Utech team. By engaging in exercises, scenarios, and discussions, participants gain insights into their leadership styles, develop strategies to tackle workplace conflict, and identify areas for growth. Collaborating with and hearing from other leaders also fosters learning opportunities and encourages participants to challenge their perspectives and approaches. For leaders in family businesses, the Utech Leadership Collective can help leaders understand their unique leadership style, gain deeper insights into family dynamics, and explore how these factors influence individuals, behaviors, and values within the organization.

No Collective is alike, and each collective training dynamic is unique, due to the variety of participants. Utech can also develop a Customized Collective, tailored to a specific organization or team.

Advantages of Collectives

There are many advantages to utilizing collectives to develop successful, resilient leaders. The following are some examples.

• Family leaders may develop limited perspectives due to a lack of diverse perspectives in the leadership structure, so gaining outside perspectives broadens self-awareness and business challenges.
• Can gain fresh, innovative ideas by learning from others.
• Reveals unique leadership styles and behaviors due to the family dynamics.
• Increases transparency regarding the effects of leadership styles and behaviors on decision-making and the workforce.
• Explores various leadership style and behaviors for achieving business-related goals.
• Reveals unrecognized leadership behaviors or leadership styles developed in response to close-knit family management as some members assume duties they are not prepared to assume and are placed in positions due to family relationships.
• Can learn from and be challenged by other leaders about different approaches and solutions.
• Can gain confidence to make informed decisions through interactions with other business leaders.
• An excellent option for better understanding and mastering change management skills through interactions with other leaders.

One of the comments Collective participants often make is that they learn their problems and challenges are not unique. Business leaders across industries deal with many of the same issues, have the same skills gaps, identify with common family relationship issues, and struggle to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. They also frequently learn that their self-awareness is skewed, meaning how they see their leadership style does not jive with how others see it.

Leah Hess is the Operations Manager at Gillespie Production who completed Utech’s Leadership Collective training. She wrote about her experience, saying she learned a lot about herself and her leadership styles. The Collective met monthly with two leadership coaches and ten other industry leaders. Though a lot of information was covered, she summarized three key learning points she uses to maintain the right direction as a manager.

First, she identified her defensive behaviors to raise self-awareness and enable managing those behaviors to improve relationships. To her surprise, eight of these behaviors influenced her leadership. Second, she learned to “Battle Ideas, Not People,” meaning she learned not to take feedback personally and to recognize tension can lead to challenging ideas that lead to better outcomes. Third, Hess learned that great leaders build teams that can perform without them.

Advantages of Custom Training

Custom training applies to your organization, a specific team, or an individual. It is developed to address issues and leadership needs of your organization. Unlike traditional training, it targets specific challenges and goals with a custom curriculum. For example, custom training for a family-led leadership team could discuss “elephants in the room” like succession or improving family member interactions for the company’s good. Some of the advantages of custom training include the following.

• Adaptive to business or leadership needs
• Flexible format to meet learning styles, i.e., coaching, workshops, self-paced learning programs, etc.
• Timeframe established to fit participant availability
• Can focus on particular family dynamics
• Can cover sensitive topics like successor training
• Aligns goals and expectations
• Enhances communication
• Can focus on specific skills gaps

The custom training program is more personalized than Collectives. UTECH consultants work with you to identify your specific needs and then develop a training program around those needs. The program can be developed for an individual or a team of participants.

Choosing the Best Leadership Development Option

Choosing between a Collective vs. Custom Training begins with assessing what you see as your leadership challenges. What are your needs? Can your leaders benefit more from interactions with other business leaders, or do your leaders need specific skills gaps closed? Do you have leadership challenges common to all businesses or particular family dynamics that are not working well? While both Collective and Custom Training can strengthen soft skills like conflict resolution and communication, the following are a few guidelines to help you choose.

External Expertise Keeps Leadership Development on Track

In assessing a Collective vs. Custom Training, keep in mind that Utech consultants are coaches and guides in both settings. Engaging one or more external leadership development specialists to educate your team members adds valuable insights, keeps the development process on target, and provides guidance on applying the insights and skills in the workplace.

Many factors determine business longevity, but capable and skilled leadership is essential. Your organization cannot thrive without it. In the end, everything depends on it. This is true in any business, including the family-led company. Avoiding leadership challenges, family dynamics, and development needs does not improve anything and eventually leads to business stagnation or decline. Leadership development is essential to long-term success, and today, there are excellent options for delivering the ideal training.

The Utech Group offers a variety of leadership development options that include dig-ins, Collective levels, and custom training. Get in touch with us today to learn how we can assist your leaders in skills development.

With 30+ years of experience, our team of experts is here to help you grow and develop as a leader.  If you’re interested in learning more about what we offer, CONNECT WITH THE UTECH TEAM TODAY!