Leadership Development
One of the few things that seem to be uncontroversial in business is the importance of leadership. We might not all agree on the definition of (good) leadership, but I have yet to meet someone claiming that leadership does not matter.
Recently I have finished the book Teams That Work by Scott Tannenbaum and Eduardo Salas, which I highly recommend. They too talk about the importance of leadership behavior (so far so normal). But what really intrigued me was the fact that they also name leadership development as one of the organizational conditions that drive team performance. They argue that it makes a huge difference how an organization develops its leaders, especially whether the development is focused on forming and leading teams or merely on managing individuals. That made me think. I agree with this statement, but I am afraid the problem runs deeper than this. It’s not only that most organizations don’t offer this kind of leadership development - they don’t offer consistent leadership development at all!
I believe there is a set of implicit assumptions prevailing in many organizations which are causing this issue:
“Assumption 1: Only managers are leaders
Assumption 2: If someone is good at their job, they must also be a good leaders
Assumption 3: If someone was a good leader at their previous job, they must be a good leader in their current job
Assumption 4: If someone needs leadership development, they will ask for it”
In my experience, none of these assumptions hold true. Let’s have a closer look at each one of them.
“Only managers are leaders”
There are surely dozens of different definitions of leadership. One that stuck with me is this one: Leadership is power by followership (I think R. Heifetz wrote this). Pick your favorite definition, and it very likely centers around the ability to influence and guide people. Formal authority might help with this, but it’s not a necessary condition. In any organization we will find all sorts of leadership roles, some are managers and some are not. Unfortunately, many organizations focus on training and mentoring for managers exclusively. This leaves out other important leadership roles like project managers, staff engineers, or Scrum Masters - just to mention a few.
“If someone is good at their job, they must also be a good leader”
Many have heard of the Peter Principle: People in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence. While this is certainly cynical and exaggerated, there’s some truth to it. A great designer is being promoted to design manager and now suddenly has to deal with challenges they have never dealt with before. Or an engineer has been promoted to the role of Staff Engineer, and now this person is not expected to write code anymore. Instead, they are supposed to facilitate discussions on the best technical solution and then align everyone on this solution. The skills that made them great as a designer or engineer are not the same skills that will make them great design managers or staff engineers.
“If someone was a good leader at their previous job, they must be a good leader in their current job”
All too often we hire an experienced leader from another company just to see them fail in our organization. One main reason for this is that we overindex on transferable skills. In our interview process we might screen for things like collaboration, project management or communication skills. Now we have found a great candidate who not only has all these skills but also has several years of experience in exactly this role at another company. What could possibly go wrong? This person has great starting conditions, but they also need to learn task-specific skills for their leadership role in our organization. That is: “how we do things around here.” For instance, someone might have learned in their previous job that it’s best to only share information if someone asks for it. Now they move to a company where information is shared with everyone, unless explicitly stated otherwise. This person will have a hard time in their new job, if they don’t receive the right training and guidance.
“If someone needs leadership development, they will ask for it”
Even if companies have great leadership development programs, it’s not always clear who is eligible and how they can be accessed. Some people will proactively search for them and eventually succeed. Others will assume that the right program will be presented to them and might spend a long time waiting.
But there’s a second, probably even bigger issue with this assumption. People who need development the most, are often unaware of this fact (Dunning-Kruger Effect). So why would they ask for it? From this perspective it would be much better if everyone who’s new to a certain role receives training, coaching etc. by default.
What to do about it?
If we agree on the issues I have outlined above, these might be useful things to explore:
If we have great leadership development programs in place, how might we make sure the right people are aware of them? Would we benefit from encouraging every new leader to participate?
If we have good leadership development programs in place, but they are limited to managers, how might we make them accessible to other leadership roles, as well? Or how might we create a separate track for non-managerial roles?
If we don’t have good programs in place (or we can’t get the right people in), how might we create something lightweight we can run ourselves? Having designed and run several such programs in different organisations, I can share some of my personal recommendations:
Form cohorts, i.e. small, stable groups of leads that meet over an extended period of time in the same constellation.
Create a safe space to it make it easy for folks to not only ask questions, but also share their own personal problems and experiences.
Make sure to leave enough time and space for participants to talk to each other, and not only to the instructor. Encourage them to discuss real-life examples.
If feasible, it’s preferable to cut the curriculum into smaller chunks. So meeting eight times for two hours might be more effective than meeting for two full days.
There’s certainly much more to say about this topic, let me know if there’s anything specific you would like to read about.
