Is your leadership development effective? Or is the money going down the drain?

 

An estimated $100 Billion is spent worldwide on leadership development every year!

 

Leadership impacts employee engagement and business performance.  Good leadership brings out the best in teams and delivers growth and profits.  On the other hand, bad leadership drains the energy and creates a toxic work culture of disengagement and performance below potential.  Hence companies consider leadership development one of the top priorities. They also invest a significant amount of time, money, and effort into leadership development initiatives.

 

Read: The importance of Leadership: Business impact of good and poor leadership

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There is a huge variety of leadership development initiatives available from a plethora of vendors – training, seminars, coaching, executive education, E-learning, book summaries, and so on.  A 2014 report estimated that out of the total of $160 billion spent annually on employee training in the United States, $24.5 billion were spent on leadership training alone.  Worldwide the total amount spent annually on leadership development is estimated at $62 billion and growing each year. By the year 2020, it may well have topped $100 billion annually.

 

Is leadership development working? 

 

One would think that with these huge sums of money being spent on developing leaders,  employee engagement should be at the highest levels, turnover should be at an all-time low, team cohesion should be going through the roof, and business performance should be at the peak.  But the truth is quite the contrary. Most leadership development programs have little business impact.  In a recent survey, 89% of the CEOs considered leadership development as their top priority.  What percentage of these CEOs thought that their leadership development initiatives had a business impact?  Only 10%!  

 

If you think Leadership Development is a waste of time, you may be right!

 

Kristi Hedges rightly pointed out in her aptly titled article in Forbes – “If You Think Leadership Development Is A Waste Of Time You May Be Right.”  Many talent management professionals and C suite executives have this nagging feeling that their leadership development initiatives – either internally developed or externally bought – are not effective.   CEOs, C-suite leaders, CHROs and CLOs have this nagging feeling that their leadership development needs to get better to deliver business impact, and would readily admit that they need help in doing so.

In an article on their website, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) concluded that – “Companies Invest in Leadership Development, but the Money Is Largely Wasted.” 

 

Read: Guaranteed Measurable Results Delivered For Our FMCG Client

 

 

 

BCG cites 3 pitfalls that are responsible for the ineffectiveness of leadership development initiatives

1. Considering leadership training as an event and not understanding that it is a process that takes time and reinforcement at work. Many companies follow a check box approach to sending leaders to a short duration internal or external training program.  It simply doesn’t work.  Many companies do this year after year with little to show for in terms of business impact.
2. Covering broad themes in the leadership programs, instead of focusing on 1-2 specific skills needed to improve the leadership performance at work.  No two people are exactly alike.  Every leader is different.  They have different education, backgrounds, upbringing, life experiences, and personalities.  Each leader has a unique set of strengths and improvement areas.  One-size fits all approach to leadership development simply doesn’t work! Unless the leadership development is customized to the leader’s specific needs, it will do little to help the leader improve.
3. Measuring and tracking the wrong kind of data on effectiveness – Many organizations and their Human Resources and Learning and Development departments track the wrong kind of data.  Data like man-hours, the number of training programs, initial satisfaction with the training programs, etc. While tracking these metrics is helpful, the real measurement of any leadership development initiative should be the change in behavior and its impact at work. 

To quote Debbie Lovich, who has 20 years of experience in leadership development, “People don’t develop skills from simply reading a book or going to a one-off workshop. They build skills by having to do something, failing, and trying again and again.” 

 

 

 

A 2014 survey by Mckinsey outlined 4 main reasons for the failure of leadership training

 

1. Overlooking the context
   1. Every company, every leader, every team is different.  What works in one situation or environment won’t work in other situations. Leadership development that is not aligned to the specific competencies and specific culture of the company, is likely to fail.
2. Decoupling of reflection from the real work
   1. Most leadership programs fail to help the leader apply the learning to their own work.  Developmental activities like leadership framework or a case study look good in a simulated environment but not in the real world.  
3. Underestimating mindsets
   1. Many programs fail to change the mindsets of leaders in a meaningful way.  Things quickly go back to the status quo when the leaders go back to work.  
4. Failing to measure results
   1. Alignment of leadership program outcomes to business needs and measuring them before, during, and after is essential for the success of the leadership development program.

 

For a leadership development initiative to be effective, it has to overcome these pitfalls outlined by the McKinsey survey.

Read:  9 Reasons Why Executive Coaching Fails in Organizations

 

Would you like to make your leadership development effective?

 

 

We offer our New Age Leadership Triple Advantage Coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable results.  This leadership development approach overcomes most of the pitfalls that derail the effectiveness of a leadership development initiative. 

 

 

 

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

 

that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

 

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

 

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

 

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

 

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

 

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

 

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

 

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

 

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

 

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