I am fortunate that I get to spend most of my consulting work as an Organisational Psychologist in my areas of passion – leadership and culture. Every new organisation, executive team or individual leader brings with them unique challenges and I am grateful for the opportunities to apply my craft in a way that makes a real impact.
Impact is important. I see daily the impact the collective (conscious and unconscious) behaviours of leaders has on the people who work for them. I see how certain aspects of an organisation’s culture are shaped, established and reinforced (for better or for worse). What excites me is that there are a number of simple (but consistent) practices that leaders can adopt that will make a real difference.
What really excites me is when I see that impact transcend the individual (or individual team) and ripple out across both the organisation and, dare I hope, their world outside of work. As Stanford Professor Hayagreeva Rao states,
Instead of thinking about 8 hours work, imagine that you are borrowing the person from their life for 8 hours a day and your job is to give them back in a better state than you took them in the morning
Now there is a leadership purpose!
Why Leadership Development Often Fails
Almost all organisations will agree that developing their leaders is a crucial component of current and future business success. Many will invest in leadership development programs (academic and/or experiential) that aim to teach leaders the key skills, behaviours and attitudes that underpin “good leadership”. Considerable time is spent with leaders in workshops raising self-awareness and generating motivation to change.
Many of these programs are good. In fact many of them are really good. Where most programs fall down however is a lack of emphasis on maintaining the momentum and embedding the learnings and behavioural changes as part of day to day business. As a result, organisations are left asking questions like:
- Why didn’t that great energy, motivation and intent displayed by our leaders in the workshops translate into improved business outcomes?
- Why are the important leadership conversations that need to happen still being avoided?
- Why didn’t my leadership development fix our silo problem?
4 Tips for maximising Leadership Development ROI
If you are genuine about making a real difference in leadership in your organisation (instead of just running good leadership programs), then consider the following:
1. Start with Your Strategy. What are your strategic priorities (assuming they are still relevant) and what are the implications of this for your leaders (what do they need to be doing if you are to achieve your organisational outcomes now and into the future)? This ensures that your leadership program is anchored in something your business is trying to achieve. When leadership programs are stand alone, they run the risk of losing traction to operational priorities
2. Examine Your Culture. What is your desired culture that will support your strategic priorities and how does this differ from your existing culture? I believe you can’t separate leadership and culture. Everything your leaders do (and don’t do) consciously or unconsciously is driving and maintaining your culture.
3. Don’t Neglect the Leadership Team(s). Left to their own devices, some participants in leadership programs will try out new behaviours; others won’t. Having part of your leadership development focused on your leadership teams (particularly your executive team) will assist in building shared accountability for leadership action. Unfortunately, most leadership teams only take time out as a team to examine strategy, where the real value comes from combining this with a good, hard look at how the leadership team is functioning and what it needs to do in order to model and drive desired culture and leadership behaviours
4. Confirm Your Commitment. Before starting any leadership development, ask what you are willing to commit to do to ensure that the ‘new way of leading’ in your organisation becomes embedded as part of every leader’s day to day practice. Are there opportunities for this to be reflected in your values, position descriptions, performance frameworks, reward and recognition systems?
Whether as a leadership facilitator or coach, I am always surprised (and disappointed to be honest) when a leader turns up and claims that they don’t know anything about the session, just that they were “told to attend”. As well as making my job harder, the likelihood of achieving any sort of reasonable ROI decreases significantly.
Challenging Your Leaders
- So, before embarking upon any leadership development initiative, lets challenge our leaders to do the following:
- Develop specific objectives for attending (based on robust conversations with your own Manager re your leadership strengths and challenges)
- Identify what it will look like if you are successful at making those changes (Think as behaviourally as possible. What will others notice if I get it right?)
- Identify what the business or organisational impact will be
- Establish a process to measure progress and celebrate success.