Life’s just not the same
For many of us Covid-19 has challenged us to think differently about how we run our businesses, departments, teams, how we work with colleagues and even how we live our lives.
When it comes to leadership and personal development, organisations and talent development leaders are needing to think differently and consider how virtual/remote development can support their strategic talent development goals.
Before Covid-19 some organisations were already embracing the use of virtual learning & development, but for many this will be a new venture. Pre Covid-19, many development programmes involved participants coming together in large hotel or conference centre rooms. It’s less likely this will be the case in the future so now is the time for organisations to re-imagine approaches to learning & development, without just transferring what was done before online.
Why leadership development doesn’t work
Our concern is that often we see organisations focus talent development primarily on the acquisition of knowledge, content, specific skills and understanding processes (what we call ‘horizontal’ learning). This focus is useful early on in career development, as it supports technical development, in any given field.
However, there are three issues with this:
As careers develop, responsibility tends to shift from being an individual contributor to leading and delivering through others; this is when personal effectiveness and leadership approach becomes increasingly critical and technical expertise becomes less important.
Leaders develop habits or preferences for seeking knowledge and information to solve issues, rather than looking at themselves and their approach
Talent departments, or line managers encourage the consumption of knowledge, information and skills, when it is mindset, beliefs and behaviours that need developing
And with such easy access to knowledge in today’s information age, leaders can become overwhelmed with too many ‘tools’ for their toolkit. What needs to happen is a shift from developing technical ability to developing personal mindset, beliefs and behaviours which builds leaders who can deliver through others.
The new approach to leadership development
So if we want to help leaders deliver more value for their teams, customers, business and even the world, we should start to help them think about HOW they can apply what they know, how they can change their thinking, different ways of thinking and behaving, as well as recognising their own immunity to change. When this happens leaders can select the right tools from the toolkit and use them well (this is what we call vertical development or adaptive change).
Adaptive change’, the process of developing new strategies and/or learning new ways of thinking, behaving or operating, is often a tough task for individuals. This can often only be achieved through recognising our unconscious assumptions that prevent us changing – or our ‘immunity to change’.
To understand more about how to ensure personal development plans drive behavioural change see our recent blog ‘The Real Reason PDPs don’t work’ by clicking here.
Not only will this drive development and performance, getting the results that are important, but through engaging in the process leaders become much better at helping others have the same experience and ‘applying’ learning rather than only ‘collecting’ it.
We are encouraging a transition from development programmes that focus on knowledge and information acquisition to those that encourage deep vertical learning and application of the most relevant ideas and information. To be honest, there’s not many ideas you can’t get access to with a dedicated 15 minutes of searching on Google or Wikipedia.
Right now there seems to be a plethora of free virtual webinars, breakfast meetings, MOOC’s and online programmes about how to do x y or z – the thought of development that’s free is tempting, but if all that is happening is collecting more information and knowledge.
What purpose is it serving?
Reflection & Action groups
We believe that powerful development programmes demand the application of relevant ideas and promote regular reflection and learning. They are designed to encourage participants to:
Create a real motivation for change – this has to be more compelling than the effort needed to develop
See the relevance and value of the development in their lives
Think for themselves about:
Leveraging the things that support the achievement of goals
Challenging the assumptions that get in the way
Apply learning and insight - committing to clear actions
Revisit their commitments, being held accountable and making further commitments
Whilst this might sound straight forward, we know it’s really hard to do this alone – that’s why great executive coaches are so busy, they encourage all of the above points. Working with small groups or teams in powerful Reflection & Action groups, creates the conditions and environment that drives deep vertical learning, and ensures the practical application of knowledge and skills to drive performance and success.
In addition, participants also benefit from developing the ability to question, be really present, listen deeply and help others solve their own problems – in other words they become good coaches.
By focusing less on WHAT people know and more on HOW they reflect, think and apply learning we may find that Covid-19 has been a great catalyst for more powerful leadership and personal development. Costing less, taking less time and adding much more value. What’s not to like about that?
If you’d like to explore with us how you might re-imagine the talent development of your current and future leaders, please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
CONTACT US AT:
Claire Hack
e: claire@downtoearth-development.co.uk
t: +44 (0) 7881 915657
w: downtoearth-development.co.uk
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