You don't learn leadership at school
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Today I ran across an article on the site of Witan Jardine, a London-based recruiting firm. The title, "Work experience teaches leadership better than academia, says retailer" brought joy to my heart. Then I read the following.
"People learn the leadership skills required to succeed in sales jobs through work experience rather than studying, suggest a leading retail company.
Liz Bennet, Lush's retail director, and Lisa Titcomb, its staff trainer, claim that the skills they often require in candidates are not always learned on academic course.
'Being a retail business, we would definitely appreciate more time being spent on leadership in education,' they explained."
How typical! In one breath we note that you don't learn leadership in the classroom. Then, in the next breath we demand more classroom training in leadership so that when people show up at the door, they're ready to lead.
It's too bad that the brothers Grimm have gone to their graves. They could have cataloged this one with the other fairy tales.
It would be nice if the schools could teach leadership in the classroom and then deliver leaders to your door, no development necessary. But it doesn't happen that way. Here's how leadership development works.
Leaders do not learn to lead in a classroom. You can learn about leadership in a classroom. But you learn leadership on the job.
Leadership is an apprentice trade. You learn it by studying the masters, trying to do what they do, and critiquing your performance. Over time you get better.
Leadership development is a lifelong pursuit. You're never done with it.
Leadership development is mostly up to the leader. But companies can give things a big boost by providing developmental assignments, support, coaching, and meaningful feedback.
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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.
Great article, I agree 100% that you cannot teach leadership in a class room, well you can, but you can only learn leadership on the Job.
However, through coaching you can teach leadership to experienced managers, once you have some experience in management it is so much easier to teach leadership.
Experience is invaluable, so is mind set.
Kept the good articles flowing (I send them to our managers to read)
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Thanks for stopping by, Ian, and sharing your thoughts. Coaching is indeed a powerful tool for leadership development. For to develop leadership skills you need both trial and feedback.
Coaching can encourage and concentrate trials. Coaching can provide feedback and support.
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Although the executive education debate still rages on whether leadership is learned or innate, there is no doubt that the subject is being taught.
"We're becoming learning partners with companies and taking on almost a quasi-consulting role," said Anant Sundaram, faculty director for executive education at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, in The Wall Street Journal on September 17, 2007. "With projects, a company ends up with something very actionable. We also can do individual coaching to maximize leadership development and conduct follow-up work with the talent-development folks at companies."
In October 2003, BusinessWeek reported that 134 companies from 20 nations spent $210 million to enroll 21,000 employees in executive leadership programs.
Since leadership development is not an event, that's a significant investment in classroom activities that may or may not produce company leaders or even better managers.
Stanford University has now introduced leadership coaching into their MBA program and the University of Michigan Executive Education Program is offering a 3-day "Becoming an Exceptional Coach" for $4,350. Compare these classroom training programs with six-months of weekly personal executive coaching for only $6,000 to create a positive leadership mindset.
In today's environment of changing technology and evolving complexity, we don't have to fake it. Yet, we must keep growing our abilities to grasp the success we seek.
Learning what we don't know helps us to understand why we do what we do. As we become more self-aware, we can consciously choose how we wish to improve our lives.
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Thanks for those great comments, John. I confess that I have a bias for executive MBA programs since the students are also working and therefore have something to apply their learning to. When I was in college, I was also working full time and on what we then called "the fast track." I discovered that it was huge benefit to be able to study something and then see how it applied in the "real life" of the moment.
In addition to coaching, I'm a big fan of peer support groups where managers help each other learn the craft.
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