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Why Leadership Training Doesn't Work

daftandbarmy

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Learning is better than training, and it works differently...


Why Leadership Training Doesn't Work

It’s the structure.

Most leadership training programs are designed for ease of operational delivery within an organization, not for habit formation. They are event-based trainings, meaning that the training takes place over a day or two.

In a traditional one-day or two-day long workshop, you’ll increase your knowledge. You’ll learn several key insights and be excited to implement the 5-10 new learnings into your leadership toolkit immediately. Inevitably, you won’t be able to put all of these new learnings into action.

After two or three weeks, you might remember the concept but not how to implement the idea, and you’ll be lucky if you retain even two of the ten key points from the session. According to a Mckinsey & Company survey, adults typically retain just 10% of what they hear in classroom lectures. Cramming all the key learnings into one lengthy training makes logistical sense, but it greatly restricts learning retention.

Leadership training is aimed at giving leaders new skills — at helping them change their behaviors to go from being a top individual contributor to a leader of people. As a leader, your success is dependent on the success of the people you’re leading. It’s quite a shift in perspective.

Simply learning what to do over the course of one to two days doesn’t lead to acting differently in the long run.

How habit formation works in our brains.

Habit formation doesn’t just happen. Our brains aren’t wired to adopt a new habit that quickly. No matter how good and engaging the presentation is, habit formation takes time. It occurs when a new action, like the leadership skill of listening with intention and attention, is practiced over and over.

Each time you practice listening in this new way, neurons in your brain are firing and creating a new neural pathway. The more you practice, the stronger the neural pathway becomes and the easier it is for you to listen.

The neural pathway for listening can be created or rediscovered in one session, but for the pathway to be strengthened, you need to practice deliberately. Role-playing with peers is a safe way to start, but it doesn’t replace the real thing. To practice effectively, you’ll need to try listening in a real-life scenario. Only, once applied in the real world, you’ll get the feedback you need to validate, adapt and adjust your mental model of what it looks and feels like to listen with intention and attention.

Often, real-world practice doesn’t go as planned. Something goes wrong. It’s like trying to ride a bike for the first time -- you’re going to fall. You need to reflect on what went wrong, what could be improved and what you can carry over to your next attempt at listening to learn a new habit.

If you are committed to challenging the status quo, to achieving results and not excitement, to giving your leaders the tools and skills to transition from individual contributors to powerful leaders, here’s a process that works.

Phase 1: Learn

This is where the training on a new skill is delivered to a group of leaders. Leaders learn the skills, as well as why they are valuable and how they can, theoretically, be applied to the workplace. This is where most workshops spend 90% of their time. I suggest only spending 15% of any workshop on the teaching or knowledge-building phase. It’s simply not as crucial as the application.

Phase 2: Apply

It’s in this phase where leaders practice applying the new habits. It happens during in-training application and through real-world application.

In-training application occurs in the moment the leaders learn a new skill. It’s key to put them into practice applying the skill right away. Ideally, you’ll spend 80-90% of the time applying the new skill and reflecting on how it can be improved. By doing this, you are activating the neural pathway and strengthening it.

Part two of the application occurs in the real world, through the completion of a homework assignment. Applying the new skill outside of the safety of the workshop brings a whole new element to learning. It’s no longer structured. It can take a leader out of their comfort zone, which is exactly where growth occurs.

Phase 3: Reflect

Reflection includes holding a short coaching debrief with the leader to reflect on what worked well and what could be done better.

The reflection phase serves two purposes. One, it holds the leader accountable to completing their homework. Two, it allows for the leaders to assess and evaluate how they did and how they can apply the new skills better in future interactions. They likely won’t perfect the delivery of a habit on their first attempt, so this phase is important to reemphasize how habit adoption is a learning process. Even though the leader is not actually practicing the new skill in this phase, the reflection process is still triggering the newly created neural pathway. By the end of this phase, a leader will have visualized, practiced or reflected on a singular habit hundreds of times, turning it from a skill to a habit adopted.

Habit change requires commitment from the organization.

The Learn-Apply-Reflect model is designed to get your leaders practicing skills and putting them into action. The quicker and more frequently a leader can take a learning, apply it to a real-life situation and dissect their performance of it, the quicker a new skill becomes a habit.

Organizational change occurs when the behaviors of the individual leaders change. It starts right here, by working with your leaders on adopting the habits that will make your organization succeed.

Are you ready to commit the time and energy to experience the change you want?

Council Post: Why Leadership Training Doesn't Work
 
Learning is better than training, and it works differently...

Phase 1: Learn
This is where the training on a new skill is delivered to a group of leaders. Leaders learn the skills, as well as why they are valuable and how they can, theoretically, be applied to the workplace.

Phase 2: Apply
It’s in this phase where leaders practice applying the new habits. It happens during in-training application and through real-world application.

Phase 3: Reflect
Reflection includes holding a short coaching debrief with the leader to reflect on what worked well and what could be done better.

In the catch-phraseology of training I prefer "See one, Do one, Teach one" (SODOTO). It applies equally to developing leaders (particularly at the junior level) as it does to continuous instruction (apprenticeship model) in technique and procedure.
 
It appears that the aim of the article is the two day Leadership retreats rather than a long term formal course, so it is of limited value to military training however it does raise some issues that are creeping in to our training system.

-Leadership isn't a topic which lends itself well to lectures or presentations. Each leadership scenario is going to be different because all people are different. You can't give concrete examples like "Do A and Get B" or some sort of leadership formula. You have to adapt and flow through each situation. Classroom training should be relegated to board principles which can be applied as needed. For years we used the death by PowerPoint model and now we have taken that and made them DL courses, which, if possible, is even less engaging than a PowerPoint lecture.

-The only way to learn to apply the principles is to do it over and over again. The CAF loves to teach in a Crawl, Walk, Run format except in terms of leadership. Instead we use watch a video and read some slides then try to run without supervision method. How many of us have even been given a task we have no idea how to do and are told "You are a X now, figure it out"? Leadership is a far more difficult task than rifle shooting or aircraft maintenance, especially in our business where leadership includes being in charge of those tasks but we put very little formal effort into it and almost no informal effort. The RCAF is horrendous for this IMO. in fact the A should stand for Acting not Air. The only people who ever receive their leadership courses in advance of being promoted are people who re-mustered into the RCAF.

-We do not do enough reflection in the CAF generally but specifically when it comes to leadership. Despite being mandated, a lot of people do not receive regular PDRs and PERs are completely geared towards the board and not towards providing an honest detailed evaluation which provides value to the member. Every leader in the CAF should be taking his subordinates aside periodically for mentoring sessions specifically related to leadership. Instead we often make them learn leadership by observing other people around them, most of which have never received good leadership training themselves.
 
It appears that the aim of the article is the two day Leadership retreats rather than a long term formal course, so it is of limited value to military training however it does raise some issues that are creeping in to our training system.

-Leadership isn't a topic which lends itself well to lectures or presentations. Each leadership scenario is going to be different because all people are different. You can't give concrete examples like "Do A and Get B" or some sort of leadership formula. You have to adapt and flow through each situation. Classroom training should be relegated to board principles which can be applied as needed. For years we used the death by PowerPoint model and now we have taken that and made them DL courses, which, if possible, is even less engaging than a PowerPoint lecture.

-The only way to learn to apply the principles is to do it over and over again. The CAF loves to teach in a Crawl, Walk, Run format except in terms of leadership. Instead we use watch a video and read some slides then try to run without supervision method. How many of us have even been given a task we have no idea how to do and are told "You are a X now, figure it out"? Leadership is a far more difficult task than rifle shooting or aircraft maintenance, especially in our business where leadership includes being in charge of those tasks but we put very little formal effort into it and almost no informal effort. The RCAF is horrendous for this IMO. in fact the A should stand for Acting not Air. The only people who ever receive their leadership courses in advance of being promoted are people who re-mustered into the RCAF.

-We do not do enough reflection in the CAF generally but specifically when it comes to leadership. Despite being mandated, a lot of people do not receive regular PDRs and PERs are completely geared towards the board and not towards providing an honest detailed evaluation which provides value to the member. Every leader in the CAF should be taking his subordinates aside periodically for mentoring sessions specifically related to leadership. Instead we often make them learn leadership by observing other people around them, most of which have never received good leadership training themselves.

I thought it was a great validation of the way that militaries generally develop their leaders, and is likely something the business word could learn from us (if they wanted to that is).
 
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