3 Critical Factors for Successful Leadership Training

Leadership

It’s easy to understand the logic of investing in enterprise-wide technologies. Senior leaders recognize that it is better for multiple users to have access to data do things like track sales, manage projects, and share files. Yet, when it comes to leadership development, most executives ignore the enterprise-wide model. They implicitly view their organization as an aggregation of individuals.

Successful companies of the 21st century create a robust, repeatable process for talent development. They do more than offer leadership training as a loose series of stand-alone programs. Instead, they develop a holistic model that couples training with practice and coaching in an environment that includes three critical features: context, practice and reinforcement.

Context is king

In the earliest stages of planning a leadership development initiative, senior leaders should ask themselves a simple question: What, precisely, is this program for and how will we measure results? If the answer is to support a scaled organic growth strategy, for example, the company will need leaders brimming with ideas and capable of devising winning strategies for new customer acquisition while reinforcing relationships with key customers to reduce attrition.

Putting principles into practice

When it comes to planning a leadership development program, companies face a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, there is value in classroom-style programs that offer participants time to step back and learn new skills as a cohort. On the other hand, even after very basic training session, adults typically retain just 5% of what they hear in classroom lectures, versus nearly 75% when they practice classroom training with real world experience.

Reinforcement by course correction

Adult learners, no matter how talented, often struggle to transfer even their most powerful classroom experiences into changed behavior. Not only do they not have enough opportunities to put theory into practice, but they also lack critical insight about how their behavior impacts results. Becoming a more effective leader means adjusting one’s underlying mindset to address the root causes of behavior. A diagnostic tool to assess competencies, assumptions, and personality style, coupled with coaching, accelerates the participant’s ability to identify what is going on, why it is happening, and how to change.

Reinforcement by air cover

Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that leadership training gains the most traction within highly visible development efforts championed by senior leaders. That’s because recognition by senior leaders motivate people to learn and change, create the conditions for them to apply what they’ve studied, and foster immediate improvements in individual and organizational effectiveness.

If you’re not including context, practice, and reinforcement in your leadership development initiatives, you’re probably overspending and getting underwhelming results.

Question: Is your leadership development program actually developing leaders?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News! 

MLK, Jr.: How His Leadership Legacy Marches On In 12 Powerful Quotes

Leadership

Last week, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 90. While it is customary to look to our elders for sage advice, King knew that he was walking a path of imminent danger, but that his words could not be silenced by a bullet. Before his assassination at age 39, King reached deep within himself to find messages that would ring as clear and true today as they did during the turbulent times in which he was called to lead.

Here are 12 quotes from 1960 (at age 31) to 1969 (the night before he was killed eight years later) that are part of Dr. King’s enduring legacy.

1. In the final analysis, the question will be, “What did you do for others?” (Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Sermon delivered in Pasadena, CA, February 28, 1960.)

2. I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other. (Lecture given at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, October 15, 1962.)

3. History has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. (Ibid.)

4. We often end up with the high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. (Ibid.)

5. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, written while in solitary confinement after being arrested on charges of violating Alabama’s law against mass public demonstrations, April 16, 1963.)

6. Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. (I Have A Dream, Address given at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.)

7. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. (Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo, Norway, December 11, 1964.)

8. We must learn to live together as brothers — or perish together as fools. (Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, Commencement Address for Oberlin College, June 1965.)

9. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.  (Domestic Impact of the War, Speech before National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace, November 1967.)

10. I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear. (Where Do We Go From Here?, Address delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention, August 1967.)

11. Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. (The Drum Major Instinct, Sermon given at Ebenezer Baptist Church, February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination.)

12. Either we go up together, or we go down together. (I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, Speech given at the Mason Temple, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968, the night before his death.)

The last words of King’s speech at the Mason Temple were borrowed from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” At his funeral, his wife, Coretta, completed the stanza that King had been too overcome by emotion to add, “His truth is marching on.”

Question: Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Is it time to break your silence about something that matters?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News! 

10 Ways to Assess Reality Correctly as a Leader by Dr. Tony Baron

Leadership

Over the past 10 years, I have been honored to explore and debate the essence of power with Dr. Tony Baron. Specifically, how power impacts leadership, how leadership impacts culture, and, ultimately, how culture impacts performance. 

With a double doctorate in psychology and theology and decades of executive coaching experience with Fortune 100 companies, you can imagine the depth and breadth that Tony adds to the subject. We are currently co-authoring a book that combines Tony’s scholarship and my straight talk about the challenges faced by today’s leaders. Meanwhile, I will be sharing guest posts by Tony from time to time to give you a taste of what it’s like to have an amazing colleague and friend like Tony Baron. – Sheri Nasim

Fake news. Truthiness. Alternative facts. Terms like these are used daily on our 24-hour infotainment channels. With the veracity of news media, coupled with algorithms that determine what news spreads, and even the capability to create digital doppelgangers of politicians and celebrities, confidence in our ability to assess reality correctly has never been more shaken.

Yet, long before the 21st century, leaders have struggled with their ability to assess reality correctly. In his book, Tribes, Seth Godin explains that, for centuries, “[Kings have] traditionally surrounded themselves with a well-fed and well-paid court of supplicants, each of whom has a vested interest in keeping things as they are.” Today’s leaders don’t need supplicants, they need counselors.

Here are ten suggestions for how to assess reality correctly when you’re the leader:

1. Seek counsel from those who are directly involved with the presenting problem.

2. Seek counsel from those who have presented past decisions correctly.

3. Seek counsel from those who have nothing to gain personally from the decision.

4. Seek counsel from those who desire a balance between profit, people, and planet.

5. Seek counsel from those who respond and not react to the problem.

6. Gather as much information as possible from a wide variety of resources.

7. Ask yourself if the people who offer advice are giving you the pros and cons of the decision, or if they are minimizing the pros and cons.

8. Seek what is morally good in the decision process:

a. Look for the objective good

b. Look for the primary intention of doing the good

c. Does the decision benefit all the key stakeholders?

9. Determine if the decision calls for a command decision, consultation decision, or a consensus decision to be successful in seeking reality.

10. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent. Pause and think through the unintended consequences of the decision.

Your team is looking to you as a model for assessing reality correctly. Practice getting counsel, rather than information, and focus on decision quality, rather than quantity.

Question: What are you doing to make sure your decisions are based in reality?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!