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Alex Draper
Leadership training is essential, now more than ever. According to Harvard Business Review, "70% of employees report that they don’t have mastery of the skills needed to do their jobs".
The effects of COVID-19, lockdowns and stay-at-home work caused a shift in leadership styles for many across the board. Readjusting to life in lockdown was a new realm for many leaders and managers, so how have your teams been coping?
First of all, what's changing?
- All of us have been thrust into digital transformation whether we like it or not.
- New and flexible leadership skills are being sought out to cover disparate work.
- A very much needed, and wanted focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within the workplace.
The list could be a lot longer, but neuroscientists agree that the brain can only work on changing up to three habits at once, so we can stick to these three for now.
It is a known fact that leadership training gets abandoned by many companies and businesses around the world, but how come when they finally do invest in this area of skills development, they invest in the wrong places? Many send leaders to a top business school, with a top professor who will literally throw the books at them, with outdated models and theories. This is why experiential learning is essential, as it is one of the most effective solutions - you can learn how to cope within real-life simulations, unlike learning in a classroom.
Here are 5 questions to help you think about the way you set your leaders up for success:
Where are you spending all your money?
The higher level management and above? Seems kinda wasteful. By that time they are pretty set in their ways, making tons of money anyway, and those that report to them are not touching the lives of those who matter most, your employees. We should be spending more time and resources on our frontline leaders than the data suggests we are. They touch the most people, they are promoted on IQ, not EQ and they have no idea what they are doing when it comes to leadership.
What are you spending your money on?
Did you survey the leaders on what they think they need to make a positive change, or did you ask the employees? If you are asking the leaders, how on earth does a leader blinded by the Dunning Kruger effect* (most of them) know what they should improve!? You should be listening to the needs of your people to really understand what is missing within their leadership structure, to gain the ability to develop a more successful and happy team.
Why would you want to spend any money on leadership development in the first place?
If you are just ticking boxes, then really you're just burning money. Like anything in life, without a reason for doing it, why do it? Let's do 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Or Situational Leadership. Or Inside Out Coaching. But unless there is a WHY involved, then people are less likely to change. Connect learning with the business, by mapping leadership training onto your existing values, not creating new ones.
Who should we go with for help?
The same vendor we have used for the last 20 years. Or maybe not.
If you ask many business leaders to rate the effectiveness of leadership training, you will get terrible answers. Yet those who hold the budgets still make decisions on emotions versus facts. We ask for measurable returns in nearly every facet of our businesses, how come learning is the one that gets away with not measuring efficacy levels?
How do we deliver excellence to the end user and those they serve?
Work with partners who understand that digital transformation has only just begun; know that leadership is changing before our eyes, and we need flexible, high EQ leaders to lead the humans who come to work every day; people who listen, and listen to the fact there is a wonderful movement out there that focuses on creating more diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
How can DX Learning answer these 5 questions?
At DX Learning, we have a six step process specially designed for rapid behavior change. The end goal for us is to have our leaders to stop managing their teams, and to start leading them with empathy, inclusiveness and connectedness.
Watch our short two minute video to learn more.
Our six DX steps are one of the best practices to help change the way your managers think and behave for the better.
If you are interested in what we have to offer, either book a meeting with Alex or sign up to our newsletter 👇👇👇to stay up to date with new insights and leadership-based content.
*Dunning Kruger effect: "A type of cognitive bias (blind spot), that causes people to overestimate their knowledge or ability, particularly in areas with which they have little to no experience" (Healthline).
