Is Training Effective Enough at Changing Leadership Behaviours?
I was interested to see in the ATD newsletter this week some research from Udemy about how Poor Management Is a Major Cause of Turnover.
It seems that unfortunately, all too often, the number one reason for employees to leave their place of work is because of poor leadership. 60% of people surveyed in the research said that their managers needed more training.
This just goes to show that in the modern-day work world, training managers and leaders is more important than ever.
I would question though, is training alone effective enough in truly changing leadership behaviours?
McKinsey’s 2017 leadership development review would suggest not.
They found that organisations with successful leadership development programs are much more likely to have a requirement in place that leaders go beyond the training and actually apply their learning into the context of their job role and workplace. McKinsey also observed that successful leadership development programs are three times as likely to provide coaching to support leaders in leading change effectively.
Beware though – ‘they get a coach’ as a learning transfer strategy isn’t as straightforward as it sounds in terms of ensuring a leadership program creates behavioural change. Often the coaching intervention is quite separate from the leadership workshops. If the coaching is not aligned to the learning outcomes and the overarching business impact then quite simply the learning will not be transferred. And from the perspective of a global roll out, if there is no consistent coaching methodology or framework that is used across the board, you will have no standard and could get mixed results at an individual level.
Another trend I’ve observed as a way to tackle learning transfer for leadership development is allocating a specific business focused project for the learner to apply their new skills and behaviours to. I’d go as far to say that this is by far the standard method of getting the learning closer to the business. The inherent problem with this approach is that the learning often stays with the project, and is not then transferred into the day-to-day role of the leader. While it does create business impact for the specific initiatives and projects, which of course can add real value, it doesn’t help change general leadership behaviours across an organisation.
Interestingly, the ROI Institute® argue that we need to go even further than changing leadership behaviours. Quoting UK headlines about the Met Police being accused of “wasting” £10 million on leadership training, they suggest that we need to focus on the “why” of training more than ever before.
I fully support Patti Phillips’ view that the “why” for leadership training must focus not only on leadership skills, but also business impact. Successful initiatives should start with the end in mind with clear business objectives, and design for success.
It’s a great read that I highly recommend with numerous examples, and concludes by suggesting that many leadership development providers are tackling this issue in a big way and connecting initiatives to the business, which is great.
Let’s hope people can ensure transfer is added to the mix so that the learning is transferred in a measurable way to business impact.
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