Building leadership competencies through training activities a mediation model with transfer of training

Abstract

In India, post 1991 when liberalization, privatization and globalization happened, the competition among the organization became cut- throat. In this intense competitive scenario, organizations need to be aware of their human resources. They need to keep their human resource constantly up- to-date, so that the employees have advanced skills thereby giving organizations a competitive advantage. Keeping this in mind, the present study, looks into training, transfer of training, and how do these affect the leadership competencies in an organization. A model is proposed for the study which depicts the training activities influence on leadership competencies of employees. For that to happen there has to be transfer of training knowledge for employees, for which transfer of training has been used as mediating variable in the model. Training activities constitutes 3 dimensions namely pre-training activities, during-training activities and post-training activities. The dependent variable, leadership competencies, consists of self-awareness, developing others and building and maintaining relationships. To test the validity of the model, various validity techniques have been used. Construct validity was also checked in the study to ensure validity of measures. Random sampling techniques was used as sampling technique to collect the primary data using a structured questionnaire which was employed across various manufacturing industries in Krishnagiri district of Tamilnadu. Advanced technique like PLS was used to analyze the data. The results reveal a clear picture of the importance of training programs in organizations. It was seen that the training activities like pre-training activities, during-training activities and post-training activities have a significant impact on development of leadership competencies. An analysis vi was also conducted to look into the mediating effect of transfer of training on the relationship between training activities namely activities preceding training, part of training, those activities following training and leadership competencies namely self-awareness, developing others and building and maintaining relationships. Further analysis reveal that senior employees with respect to age have a high chance of developing leadership qualities in employees. Employees with high experience and qualification also learn quickly through training, thereby developing other employees in the organization. Training is an important aspect of any growing organizations or organization which want grow big. A proper training program with structured module and well organized will have a greater impact on the transfer of training knowledge to the employees. When employees are trained well and knowledge is upgraded it was found that they invariably help their colleagues or sub-ordinates to develop by sharing their acquired knowledge through training. If not, then organizations can develop a policy which can enable the trained employees a platform to transfer their upgraded skills to others in the organization. The seniors in this regard play a big role as they grasp the training knowledge quicker and efficiently and can transfer it to the other employees. The employees having vast experience as well as well qualified also play a significant role in transfer of training to the other employees. It is therefore advised to the organizations mainly manufacturing organizations that they should be careful in choosing the trainees for training program keeping in mind the above factors. KEYWORDS: “pre-training, during-training, post-training activities, transfer of training, leadership competencies, self-awareness, developing others, building and maintaining relationships”.