John Eades* says there are many reasons why organisations struggle and under-perform, but often the problem simply lies with leaders that have never been effectively developed.
When an organisation struggles, it’s easy to point at outside factors like market conditions, strategy, or a team’s performance.
However, more often than not, a failing organisation boils down to ineffective leadership.
In the not-so-distant past, every critical decision was left to the management team.
In today’s rapid-change environment, this practice can and will be detrimental to an organisation’s existence.
Organisations that are highly effective at overcoming adverse conditions have leaders at every level, not just at the top.
Unfortunately, most believe they have leaders at every level because they are designed hierarchically.
However, just because you have managers doesn’t mean you have leaders.
Instead of going into all the differences between managers and leaders, let’s get on the same page about what it means to be a leader.
I have defined a leader as “someone whose actions inspire, empower, and serve in order to elevate others”.
On a recent episode of my podcast, Garland Vance backed this up, the best-selling author and coach saying leadership was a set of skills that have to be practiced, developed, and honed over time.
“There might be people that are born with it, but the people who get really good at it are the ones who work at it,” Dr Vance said.
It’s no secret that some organisations don’t invest in their people. The list of reasons is long, but traditionally because training is seen as expensive, time-consuming, and ineffective.
If that weren’t enough, organisations can spend a lot of time, money, and energy to help develop someone, and they could leave.
Richard Branson’s answer to this is “train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don’t want to”.
While Branson is right, every organisation would be more effective if professionals willingly invested in themselves as leaders instead of relying on their organisation to do so.
Unfortunately, people avoid leadership development because there isn’t a clear and guaranteed outcome like money or promotion.
The less talked about reason organisations don’t invest in their people is they aren’t patient, and they can’t control the outcome.
The world has become short-term-focused; we forget that growth takes time. As much as we want to become great at anything, it takes repetition and experience.
There is no shortcut other than training, effort, and coaching, and even then, the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
Growth not only takes time, it also takes action. Too often, leaders forget that growth isn’t a goal, it’s a by-product of what happens when we take action.
I constantly have to remind myself and others that great leadership doesn’t always show up in short-term results, but its impact is always realised in the long term in the people that experience a great leader.
Here are two simple strategies to ensure you don’t leave leadership development to chance on your team or in your organisation.
Create a culture of growth and learning
Leadership, like many things, is a journey and not a destination.
Many organisations know this and have built internal leadership development academies.
These include things like year-long courses, learning tracks, workshops, coaching, and mentoring, to name a few.
Formal learning is fantastic, but learning can and should take place anytime.
One of the best ways to embed this in a culture is to ask a simple question of yourself and others: “What’s something you have learned in the last 24 hours?”
Promote the coachable
Since the best leaders are learners, being coachable is essential for any leader.
More often than not, a person’s ability to say or do something significant is built on the backbone of hard work, dedication, and being coachable.
What’s interesting about coachability is that it’s not a technical skill or inherent to us.
It’s a mental mindset that anyone can embrace.
Being coachable is how you show the world that you have a hunger to get better and are willing to put in the work and effort.
All kinds of strategies dramatically improve the effectiveness of leadership development programs.
A few of my current favourites include: Provide proven content; include one-on-one or group coaching; subscribe to cohort-based learning.
Whether you use these tactics or not, great things happen if organisations have the desire and commitment to develop leaders.
Front-line employees provide a better experience to clients, managers will have healthier teams, and parents will have a stronger family structure outside of work.
*John Eades is the Chief Executive of LearnLoft a leadership development company. He can be contacted at johneades.com.
This article first appeared at johneades.com.
