A Familiar Tale of Woe...And a Solution
We agreed that our managers knew the business, but most of them weren't very effective with their people. We noticed friction and a lack of cooperation. Disagreements and arguments festered. You could sense the tension out there. Morale was low in many areas. It wasn't the positive, high-energy culture we wanted. We lost several of our best people.
We concluded that our managers needed to be better leaders, and we decided to bring in a top-flight leadership effectiveness program. The trainers were fantastic and our managers raved about it. We were satisfied that it was money well spent.
In the months afterward, we saw an improvement in several managers, but we noticed that most of them weren’t using the new skills. To be honest, these were the same folks doing the same things.
A year later, I look around and can’t say there’s been much change at all. It’s hard to believe that a program of such high quality didn’t get better results in the long run. It’s been a huge disappointment.
This is a fair summary of numerous stories we've heard in recent years. The executives expected and deserved a far better return on their investment. The employees desperately needed better leadership. The programs were excellent. They should have been a big success story for the trainers.
The reasons for these disappointing results are well understood now.
The shortfall has to do with how skill learning actually takes place in the brain. The simple fact is that skill development is a gradual process that requires continuous repetition over time, which stimulates brain cells to physically connect into a neural pathway that enables the skill. If this efficient pathway doesn’t develop, doing the skill won’t feel like second nature and people won’t habitually use the new behaviors on the job. The bottom line: skill learning is a physical process requiring lots of reinforcement, which takes time. The need for reinforcement is even greater for leader skill development, because the new patterns being introduced usually go against the grain of lifelong habit.
The solution is straightforward. If you expect leaders to change their behavior, if you want this kind of return on your investment, your leadership development program should include three fully integrated phases, each of which addresses the realities of skill learning.
The first phase is assessment, employing multi-source feedback. The behaviors featured in the assessment need to be perfectly aligned with the behaviors featured the training program so that participants show up for training focused on specific skills. They know the assessment will be repeated more than once during the months after training, which increases their motivation to improve.
The training needs to present recognizable, memorable behavior models of leadership best practices. It needs to provide a highly interactive adult learning experience that draws on the realities of the organization's workplace.
To actually change behavior, this coordinated program of assessment and training must be followed by an extended period of structured reinforcement, which supports ongoing learning, ongoing feedback, coaching and accountability.
The good news is that ALD has the tools and know-how to implement fully-integrated, customized three-phase leadership development programs designed to produce lasting changes in behavior. The commitment in time and money is probably not as significant as you’d expect. The reinforcement strategies are largely self-directed and the tools used during assessment and training are also used during the reinforcement phase.
How would such a program be implemented in your organization? For a detailed explanation, contact ALD at 888-762-1322.
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