McKinsey recently made a case for why leadership programs often fail. Unfortunately, too many organizations would corroborate this case. Yet legions of leadership development professionals are still grinding out solutions and those very organizations are still spending what amounts to billions on them. Both providers and buyers are locked in a costly cycle of ineffectiveness and dissatisfaction. Of course, the effective and satisfied are out there. There are just too few of them. How do we address this? We need to reframe and revalue – not devalue – leadership development programs in order to tap their intrinsic value.
Many reasons for leadership program failure are widely recognized. Reasons for success, by comparison, are not. Quality of content is seldom a reason for failure or success, so we don’t need a call to action to improve it. (Moreover, well-designed programs based on solid intellectual property are abundant.)
At Kotter International’s Center for Leaders, we believe that what surrounds and binds content requires much more strategic and tactical attention than it typically receives. To begin to reframe how we think about leadership development programs is to start well before any solution is designed or delivered. Critical success factors languish in areas that leadership development professionals tend to bypass because they seem unimportant or abandon them because they are difficult to achieve. First among them is assumption setting.
Too often, leadership development programs start behind the eight ball of poor internal marketing and communications. A study of hundreds of surveys given to leadership development program participants that asks the question “Were you informed of the program’s description and objectives prior to attending” shows that the vast majority responded “No.” The individuals or functions responsible for leadership development routinely neglect to communicate the facts and realities of their offerings – besides content and competencies – that contribute significantly to their value.
We have observed that there are polarized tendencies within functions that provide programs. Some inflate their programs’ effectiveness to offset a prevailing belief that they are ineffective. Others assume a defensive or apologetic posture based in a covert concern that their offerings just might be ineffective. In short, they set the wrong assumptions or don’t set any at all. The result? Participants that expect too much or too little.
We strongly recommend setting the right – that is, the realistic – expectations based on accurate assumptions. We believe it is essential to:
Be honest about limitations. Clarify what each leadership development solution can and cannot provide a participant, a team, a function. There is a vast difference between what a learner gains from spending two hours listening to a guru and a 2-day business simulation. Between straight knowledge transfer and skill development. Don’t assume your potential participants will readily internalize and accept the limitations. It’s the role of the programs’ stewards to name them.
Describe how different learning modes suit each learner differently and have their own inherent limitations. Interacting with others in a live setting can be energizing or depleting. Reading material in an asynchronous online environment can be instructive or inert. Receiving coaching over the phone can focus the mind or dilute it by allowing for multi-tasking. They will need to expect what to give to each in terms of time, energy and application. Post-program scenario planning can be helpful: they should begin to envision how they will apply their learnings even before they’ve gone through the program.
These points might underwhelm because they emphasize details, nuances and tactics, but they are among the crucial pragmatic aspects that set a program up for success.
Establish ownership and accountability: Leadership programs and those of you who design, deliver and manage them can only lead the horses to water. If you set up a 3-part ownership arrangement in which participants take 90% of the responsibility for the application of what they have learned, their managers own 9%, and the senior executives 1%, then the chances that program meets its objectives are much higher. The triumvirate will not stay aligned and accountable to each other, however, unless they hear the ownership message over and over in public and in private.
Define the program’s context: Be clear on where leadership development sits in relation to every other investment the organization has made in performance improvement. To compare a single program’s significance to those that surround it past, present and future is to show participants the breadth and depth of your organization’s strategic intent for development. If you’re not able to articulate how a particular program fits into an individual’s development plan, his/her team or unit’s objectives, and the company’s goals, then you’re marginalizing it. If you’re not able to illustrate how a particular program connects to other development initiatives that the individual has or may participate in, then you’re casting it as an event.
Are the above three suggestions common sense? Yes, but they are not commonly practiced by those responsible for leadership development programs. (Two books can help with this: The Business of Learning by David L. Vance and Running Training Like a Business by Adelsberg and Trolley have been useful to me over the years because they provide a spectrum of realistic, practical advice and tools.)
Common practice requires courageous and confident communications from human resources, organizational development and leadership development professionals in business environments that too often tend to discount them. Are you consistently delivering messages that are practical, balanced and unapologetic about what your solutions can and cannot do? Are you squarely defining the parameters of ownership? Painting the big picture in which all offerings sit?
Such assumption setting should be an aspect of most of an organization’s communications about its leadership development programs. This includes a range of touch points from online information, marketing material and presentations, to 1:1 conversations between human resources and potential participants. They mustn’t surface as afterthoughts. If you have got a seat at the table, your functional and line leader peers will respect your honesty and pragmatism.
While our natural default is to focus first on program content – the bricks of development – we know that establishing clear assumptions through communication - an ingredient in the mortar – is a critical success factor.
Subsequent pieces in this series from Kotter International will examine other ingredients in the mortar - that which what surrounds and binds leadership development program content.
