Head, Heart, and Guts
I get a lot of calls and e-mails. Every once in a while, they seem to “trend together”. When that happens, and a certain topic pops up more prevalently, I feel the need to address it.
There are a bunch of frustrated CLOs, HR managers, corporate trainers and managers in the trenches right now with a little bit of a budget and the directive to deliver “Leadership Training”. But then they tell me that the CEO doesn’t really want real authentic leadership training, she just calls it “leadership training”. What she wants is people to do more, faster, for less money, and with fewer resources. I hear frustration.
Many executives ask me about leadership training. How can I train my employees to be better leaders?
A lie to make you happy: There are great leadership training programs and you can hire someone to come in and teach a series, or your corporate trainer can teach the series and you can do it for $x per head, or whatever. Your whole company will learn leadership skills and everything will change for you.
The truth you may not like: One size simply does not fit all. There is no such ”magic pill” as leadership training. What’s out there on the market are many good classes, workshops, coaching programs, and training packages. But the truth is they will not produce leaders in short order. (And you have to be clear whether what you’re really wanting is to produce leaders, or whether you are just saying that because it sounds good.) Just sayin’.
Net, net bottom line: You can only produce a good leader by being a good leader. I don’t want this to sound like a rant, but I can’t tell you how many times a week I get a call from a CEO who wants me to “fix” “my people”, “get them to be more (fill in the blank)“, and what really needs to happen is the CEO start being the type of leader he wants to produce.
The leader sets the tone and the corporate culture. I don’t care what the plaques on your wall say; if you are not behaving in a congruent way with your slogans, your mission, and your organizational vision, the people with the strongest ability to lead will only perpetuate what you example.
If you have a really great potential leader, she will notice the incongruency. It won’t feel right. Incongruency is not sustainable. We can’t pretend to be something we’re not, or act in conflict with our values for more than a few months without the telltale signs of burnout, disengagement, conflict, illness, or turnover.
Not everyone will be a leader, either. The truth is: many people would rather be players on the court than be the coach, responsible for the outcome of the entire team.
So, if you are really looking to develop leaders (as opposed to injecting enthusiasm into your ranks for a few days after a conference), you need to look at who you have now, right this moment. Scan your employeesm asking this question: Who has the head for being a leader? Who has the heart? Who has the guts? Think about the rag-tag band of friends Dorothy skipped down the yellow brick road with: they each already had what they said they were pursuing. But they needed something before they could truly recognize it:
1. Experiential learning. Leadership development is a lifelong process, not cosmetic surgery!
2. Relationship. It was their bond that brought out their skills, and leveraged what each of them had.
3. Validation and belief. They all had what they were looking for, but someone had to show them, and believe in them before they truly understood their potential.
To truly develop a leader, first you must be a perpetual student of leadership yourself. Second, you must be willling to invest in that person knowledge, experience, time, money, trust, expertise, and most of all, invest in your relationship with that future leader. If you are not willing to invest those things in someone else, don’t call it leadership development. Call it something else. Be honest.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” - Benjamin Franklin
Tags: Acknowledgement, coaching, corporate culture, Corporate values, Executive Coach, executive coaching, Executive Performance Coach, honesty, Leadership, Leadership Development, Leadership Skills, return on investment
June 10th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Hard to say it is not a rant, but by the same token, it is a darn good one at that.
Who do you suppose is at fault for the so-called process being called leadership training when in reality, what the CEO and the COO want for the troops to be motivated, energized and/or brain washed so as to give it there all when at work?
In any event, I agree with your article that from the top Executives all the way down, it is imperative to “walk the talk” for leaders to be cultivated and groomed to take on such important roles in the company.