In Australia, approximately 3.2 million management programs are conducted each year[i], yet research shows that less than 15% of learning from traditional management training results in sustained enhancements in leadership behaviour[ii]. Such a state of affairs in not unavoidable and the Australian Leadership Development Centre (ALDC) is committed to raising the standard of both leadership and leadership development across Australia.
By any objective standard, traditional forms of management training are terrible investments. Yet organisations continue to pour billions of dollars into such training, because quality leadership has a significant impact on bottom line results. In fact, a review of research shows that leadership consistently accounts for between 20-45% variance in relevant organisational outcomes.
Why then is there such a low success rate and what can be done about it?
According to Shaun Killian, the founding director of the ALDC, “It boils down to three critical elements. 1. The people being ‘developed’, 2. the practicality and soundness of the program content, and 3. the quality of the program design.”
Despite a popular myth to the contrary, not all people have an equal ability to lead or to develop their leadership. As simple as it sounds, the first personal factor affecting both leadership and its development is motivation. People who want to lead tend to be better leaders and people who are determined to improve their leadership abilities demonstrate greater levels of improvement as a result of participating in leadership development. The idea of using development to ‘fix’ leaders who have no genuine motive to improve simply does not work. The second personal factor affecting both the proficiency of leadership and the success of leadership development is personality. While no single list of personality characteristics guarantees success as a leader, the 21st century has seen an acknowledgement that certain characteristics can help or hinder you success. Much of your leadership impact is dependent on your habitual behaviours, and your personality plays a large role in determining you habitual behaviour. The good news is that you can change deeply engrained habits, but the process is more like the unlearning, re-learning process of correcting a golf swing than it is about traditional knowledge transfer style learning. Even with good intentions to change, the temptation to slip back into old and easier habits is compelling.
A second reason why leadership development programs fail to result in sustained changes in a leader’s behaviour is that the content presented is not grounded in any evidence on what effective actually do. The popularized versions of emotional intelligence are a great case in point. Research shows that emotional intelligence does impact on a leader’s effectiveness but the tools presented in many workshops such ‘check-ins’ do not. Impractical and unsubstantiated management fads soon get dropped by leaders (if they ever took them up at all) because they simply do not work.
The final reason why development programs fall short is the design of the program itself. Leadership is about you do, not just what you know and therefore academic style programs, which tend to dominate executive development, are not sufficient on their own. For a program to have maximum impact it must be designed in way that gets leaders practicing and receiving feedback on new behaviours. Yet even highly interactive programs will not result in sustained behavioural change in the workplace if they are delivered as stand-alone events. Successful program design includes a range of post-program supports such as daily journaling, learning partners and virtual coaching.
The Australian Leadership Development Centre aims to lift the standard of leadership development available to executives and managers across Australia. As founding director, Shaun Killian explains, “When leaders use our services they can rest assured of two things, 1. what they are learning is grounded in evidence on what effective leaders actually do, and 2. we will help them move beyond ‘good intentions’ to change and actually turn those good intentions into new leadership habits.”
You can find more information and specific advice on how to bring your good intentions to life in the member’s only section of our online Leadership Knowledge Network. Register today!