Although organizations spend
more than $24 billion annually
on leadership development, many leaders who have attended leadership programs
struggle to implement what they’ve learned. It’s not because the programs are
bad but because leadership is best learned from
experience.
Still, simply being an experienced leader doesn’t elevate a person’s
skills. Like most of us, leaders often go through their experiences somewhat
mindlessly, accomplishing tasks but learning little about themselves and their
impact.
Our research on leadership development shows that leaders who are in learning mode develop
stronger leadership skills than their peers.
Building on Susan Ashford and Scott DeRue’s mindful engagement experiential
learning cycle, we found that leaders who exhibit a growth mindset
diligently work through each of the following three phases of the experiential
learning cycle.
First, leaders set challenging learning goals in the form of “I need to
learn how to…” For some leaders, the goal might be to become more persuasive or
to be more approachable. With a goal in mind, leaders can identify
opportunities to make progress toward it. These could include a new project, an
international assignment, a job rotation, or simply striving to approach
routine encounters in a fundamentally different way.
Next, they find ways to deliberately experiment with alternative
strategies. A leader interested in increasing their persuasiveness,
for example, might experiment with sitting in a different place or speaking
first or last in a critical meeting. Creating and capitalizing on learning
opportunities can be bolstered by having a coach or peer provide feedback and
act as a sounding board.
Finally, leaders who are in learning mode conduct fearless after-action
reviews, determined to glean useful insights from the results of their
experimentation. Candidly reflecting on what went well, what did not go so
well, and what might work better in future are essential though often neglected
initiatives for learning from experience and discerning what to focus on
learning next. Understanding these principles is important for organizations
not just because it means that leadership development doesn’t have to be
expensive, but also because it means that leadership skills can be
systematically learned and practiced.
How
can leaders enter learning mode? Leaders can construe
setbacks as meaning they have not yet developed the required
capabilities, rather than them being just not cut out for the task at hand.
They can also avoid the trap of constantly seeking out places and tasks to
highlight their strengths, as well as feedback that affirms their innate talents
and self-esteem. Simply asking themselves, “Am I in learning mode right now?”
can be a powerful cue to wholeheartedly focus, or refocus, on their leadership development, as well as their
leadership performance,
and thereby truly learn from their experiences.
How
can organizations help leaders enter and remain in learning mode? Organizational
leaders can help rising leaders focus more on being progressively better than
they were in the past, rather than on constantly benchmarking themselves
against others. They can model construing mistakes as potential learning
opportunities rather than as indicators of leadership inadequacy. In hiring and
promotion, organizational leaders might give priority to those most likely to
grow and develop in a role. Finally, they might conduct an audit of fixed
mindset cues in their organization — such as the use of psychometric
testing to select the most “innately qualified” high-potential leaders; forced
ranking performance appraisals; and winner-take-all reward systems — and tweak
them to focus more on developing than diagnosing leadership
capabilities.
The bottom line is that by supporting leaders being in learning mode,
organizations can develop the capabilities that leaders need to anticipate,
respond to, and continually learn from the stream of emerging challenges to
organizational prosperity.
Peter Heslin, Susan J. Ashford & Lauren Keating
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