Beyond the Leadership Development Delusion
My Evolution from Presentations to Products to True Partnerships
Summary
I've been working with leaders since 2006 to help them develop themselves and others. Looking back, I can identify three phases in my evolution, each built around a central offering to my clients:
Phase 1: Presentations As "The Sage on the Stage," I delivered keynote presentations and facilitated workshops.
Phase 2: Products I offered leadership tools and processes as products that comprise a shared leadership language.
Phase 3: Partnership I form a trusted partnership with clients in which we co-create custom solutions to their unique challenges.
The majority of companies rely on the offerings I included in my first two phases of work—presentations and products. For reasons that we will explore throughout this series, very few companies develop bespoke leadership development approaches.
Phase 1: Presentations
A global apparel brand brought me in to speak to 500 of their top brand leaders. At the close of my keynote a woman approached the stage and raved about my presentation. She said it couldn't have been more helpful or timely.
"My team and I have been stuck for months," she said. "Your presentation is exactly what we need to get unstuck. I can't wait to share it with my team."
She went on to pay me high praise for my delivery and presentation style. I was grateful for her feedback and to hear she got so much out of my talk. But as she turned to leave something didn't feel right.
In the face of so much positive feedback, what could possibly be wrong?
I had just delivered a keynote presentation that informed and inspired the audience. I provided practical tips and techniques they could apply to their work. I did my job as a presenter and I did it well.
Still, something didn't sit well with me. As I traveled home, I kept replaying the interaction with the leader in my mind to try and figure out the source of my concern.
I began to imagine her making her way to the back of the auditorium. I pictured her looking at her phone and seeing the dozens of unanswered texts, emails, and messages that accumulated during my talk. She was probably inundated by demands from people vying for her attention.
You get the idea. This is how real life plays out for all of us.
My heart sank as this scenario unfolded in my mind. I realized that despite her best intentions and mine, the insights she gained from my talk are no match for the other professional and personal demands competing for her attention.
I realized that the nagging feeling I experienced after my talk was the realization that I was perpetuating a flawed and outdated model of leadership. I was contributing to the "Leadership Development Delusion" and its mythology. I expected that the inspiration audiences derived from my keynotes would somehow lead to longterm transformation.
I had fallen victim to the magical thinking that infects so many leadership development approaches.
There had to be a better way.
Phase 2: Products
A turning point came when I was sitting across from a Vice President of Product for a global retailer. I had been coaching her for about six months when she said, "Andrew, I'm really struggling with my team, and I don't know what to do," she said, "We don't communicate well and several of them don't get along with each other."
I understood her struggle. My masters program trained me how to assess people systems and dynamics. The problem was that I lacked the tools and frameworks I needed to address the issue in a corporate context.
I couldn't help her.
This realization set me in search of solutions that I could use to address these kinds of leadership challenges. In the months and years that followed I familiarized myself with a host of leadership tools and sought out relevant certifications. The companies I worked with experienced immediate improvements in leadership, culture, and productivity.
One of the first teams I worked with in this second phase of my career was experiencing interpersonal conflict that hampered their ability to perform. The CEO was thrilled when I was able to resolve the conflict and get the team back on track in less than six weeks. Another company I worked with early on experienced a fourfold increase in productivity as a direct result of our work together.
This phase of my work solved for some of the difficulties I experienced as a presenter. Instead of appearing as "The Sage on the Stage," I was able to work with companies for longer periods of time. I got to walk alongside them and help familiarize them with my products, tools, and processes.
But as this phase of my career unfolded, several concerns began to mount—not about the outcomes for my clients, but the means by which I was reaching them.
Challenges in business, especially those related to people, include layers of complexity. In most cases, a simple solution won't do. Yet that's what I found myself offering—simplistic solutions to complex problems. I found myself knowing the solution without fully understanding the problem. I had come to believe that since I have a hammer, everything must be a nail.
Offering products and solutions to companies solved the dilemma I faced as a presenter. I could now bring verifiable change to company leaders and their culture. Now I encountered another challenge: how to craft an approach that addresses the complex issues leaders face rather than view their problems through my solutions.
Phase 3: Partnership
Presentations and products—the first two phases of my work—fail companies for a host of reasons. One reason is that they encourage passivity on the part of the client. The consultant fulfills the role of the SME—the leadership subject matter expert. This typically involves workshops and small groups where the role of the client is to listen and learn. As a presenter, and then as a purveyor of products, my role was to share my expertise. The client's role was to absorb it. That's the agreement.
No small amount of magical thinking perpetuates this tacit agreement between client and consultant. It presupposes that my expertise will somehow transfer to clients like an undetectable contagion.
A turning point in my thinking took place when I kicked off a company-wide leadership process with a group of several dozen key leaders. Judging from the body language in the audience, this group seemed to have more detractors than usual. Many had their arms crossed, or avoided eye contact. One person had his back turned to me.
Rather than proceed with my kickoff keynote as planned, I changed directions. I asked them to break into pairs and answer a single question:
If you could wave a magic wand and improve one issue with the company leadership and culture, what would it be?
The dynamic in the audience shifted immediately. The room quickly filled with energetic discussions. After ten minutes I brought them back together and asked them to share their answers. Things like miscommunication, lack of trust, conflicts, inefficiencies, burnout and turnover surfaced from their discussions.
As the list of issues unfolded, I wrote them on the whiteboard up front. I noticed a change had taken place in the audience. Most were leaning forward in their seats. Not a single person's arms were crossed. Even the person with his back to me had turned to face forward and join the discussion.
What happened?
The great American novelist, John Steinbeck said that "If a story is not about the hearer they will not listen." In other words, the role of an author is to craft a story in such a way that the reader can see themself in it.
This explains the visible shift I observed in the audience. I made the process about them, not me. After all, they're the experts on themselves and their company. I'm the expert on my subject matter. Together we recast the implicit agreement between consultant and client as co-creators.
This experience proved invaluable in my evolution to the third phase of my career. From that point forward I began engagements by clarifying the needs of each client. Then we begin to build and refine a plan that we tailor to their unique challenges. The result is a custom program that our clients own and sustain.
I’ll share more details about this approach in future articles.
Where Does Your Company Stand?
My journey through these three phases taught me that most companies are still operating with outdated approaches to leadership development. In fact, only about half of all companies incorporate any form of leadership development at all. Of those that do, the vast majority are stuck in Phase 1 or Phase 2—relying on presentations or off-the-shelf products rather than developing customized solutions.
Here's how to assess where your company stands. Think about your current efforts to develop yourself and others and whether you agree or disagree with the following statements:
We customized our leadership development approach to the unique challenges we face as a company.
We own and can sustain our approach to developing leaders for years to come.
We seek to develop self awareness and emotional intelligence as opposed to "quick fixes".
If you answered "yes" to each of these questions, you're operating in Phase 3—true partnership. You're also ahead of the curve. Most companies are still trapped in the earlier phases of my evolution.
The Choice Before You
This brings me to a hard truth: companies that dabble in Phase 1 presentations or chase the latest Phase 2 trends may be better off directing their budgets elsewhere. Sometimes doing nothing is better than perpetuating the "Leadership Development Delusion."
Rather than spend tens of thousands of dollars on a keynote speaker or "copy and paste" leadership development program, consider less expensive alternatives. You may find that's a better use of your valuable leadership development dollars.
But if you're serious about developing leaders, you need a Phase 3 approach—one that provides the kind of returns you expect from any investment. For every dollar you spend on developing leaders, you can expect a return in the form of increased engagement, retention, and productivity.