Why leadership-development programs fail January 20, 2014 by ebharrison Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale. But although most companies recognize that this also means adjusting underlying mind-sets, too often these organizations are reluctant to address the root causes of why leaders act the way they do. Instead, what we often find is a long list of leadership standards, a complex web of dozens of competencies, and corporate-values statements. people are eager to acquire knowledge and skills that will help them advance in their careers tab. When businesses fail to track and measure changes in leadership performance over time, they increase the odds that improvement initiatives won’t be taken seriously. hereLearn more about cookies, Opens in new Why Leadership Development Programs Fail and What You Should Do About It. McKinsey Insights - Get our latest thinking on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Practical resources to help leaders navigate to the next normal: guides, tools, checklists, interviews and more. We use cookies essential for this site to function well. Unfortunately, too many organizations would corroborate this case. A medical-device company got this balance badly wrong when one of its employees, a participant in a leadership-development program, devoted long hours over several months to what he considered “real” work: creating a device to assist elderly people during a medical emergency. IT’S A SIMPLE CONCEPT, BUT ALL TOO OFTEN IT FAILS BECAUSE OF ITS INHERENTLY LOOSE MEANING. People create and sustain change. Feedback demonstrated that he was now behaving like a group representative rather than someone defending the narrow interest of his own business unit. It identified some interesting figures on the importance – and failures – of leadership development: Almost two-thirds of the respondents identified leadership development as their number-one concern; A major European industrial company, meanwhile, initially met strong resistance after launching an initiative to delegate and decentralize responsibility for capital expenditures and resource allocation to the plant level. Another approach is to monitor participants’ career development after the training. Finally, try to monitor the business impact, especially when training is tied to breakthrough projects. Why Leadership Development Programs Fail Mckinsey Whispered Resume Leadership Skills Secrets The manner in which you tailor your resume to target various businesses, give precisely the exact same amount of consideration to your selection of referees. Why, then, do so many leadership development efforts deliver lackluster results? Decoupling programs from real work. Flip the odds. Why leadership-developme nt programs fail | McKinsey & Company From www .mckinsey .com - January 22, 2014 12:58 AM Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale. Use minimal essential From an article in McKinsey Quarterly titled; “Why leadership development programs fail”… “Becoming a more effective leader often requires changing behavior. McKinsey demonstrates that behavioural change is required to … ... we found that successful leadership-development programs were roughly five to six times more likely to involve senior leaders acting as project sponsors, mentors, and coaches and to encompass adaptations to HR systems aimed at reinforcing the new leadership model. Given the demotivating effect of this message, the employee soon left the company. Pierre Gurdjian is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office; Thomas Halbeisen is an associate principal in the Zurich office, where Kevin Lane is a principal. Three were standard fare, but with a thorough-explanation, rationale and suggested resolution of the problem. Colleges and universities offer hundreds of degree courses on leadership, and the cost of customized leadership-development offerings from a top business school can reach $150,000 a person. McKinsey designers highlight the photos and illustrations that helped us tell the visual story of a remarkable year. Please try again later. The third targeted support-function managers who narrowly focused on operational details and costs, and set out to transform them into leaders with a broader range of skills to identify—and deliver—more significant contributions to the business. When managers were able to focus on changing the systems and working approaches, the bank’s productivity rose by 15 percent. When he presented his assessment to the board, he was told that a full-time team had been working on exactly this challenge and that the directors would never consider a solution that was a by-product of a leadership-development program. Absolutely. Too many training initiatives we come across rest on the assumption that one size fits all and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of strategy, organizational culture, or CEO mandate. One CEO we know commissioned his own 360 degree–feedback exercise and published the results (good and bad) for all to see on the company intranet, along with a personal commitment to improve. our use of cookies, and During my twenty-plus years as … For years, organizations have lavished time and money on improving the capabilities of managers and on nurturing new leaders. Pankaj Ghemawat, “Developing global leaders,” McKinsey Quarterly, June 2012. On the one hand, there is value in off-site programs (many in university-like settings) that offer participants time to step back and escape the pressing demands of a day job. Home / corporate meditation, corporate wellness, leadership and meditation, resources / McKinsey Article: Why Leadership Development Programs Fail Failure to measure results of leadership training. Most transformations fail. The authors wish to thank Nate Boaz, Claudio Feser, and Florian Pollner for their contributions to this article. I was relieved to see this section coming in to the top four problem areas as to why leadership development programs fail to deliver. If the answer is to grow by capturing organic opportunities, the company will probably want people at the top who are good at nurturing internal talent. US based companies spend over $14 billion annually on leadership development. Academic studies have shown this, and our experience bears it out. (and How to Make it a Success) LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CAN BE GENERALLY DEFINED AS ANY ACTIVITY THAT ENHANCES THE QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION. Unleash their potential. McKinsey Insights - Get our latest thinking on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. The first took experts at tendering (then reactive and focused on meeting budget targets) and sought to turn them into business builders who proactively hunted out customers and thought more strategically about markets. How many were appointed to more senior roles one to two years after the program? To meet this challenge, it established a leadership factory to train 1,000 new leaders within three years. Unless core cultural programs are established, how can any short term leadership … See The State of Human Capital 2012—False Summit: Why the Human Capital Function Still Has Far to Go, a joint report from The Conference Board and McKinsey, October 2012. Just as a coach would view an athlete’s muscle pain as a proper response to training, leaders who are stretching themselves should also feel some discomfort as they struggle to reach new levels of leadership performance. In January 2014 McKinsey produced a research paper “Why Leadership Development Programs Fail” In the research paper McKinsey suggested the following reasons: 1. Please use UP and DOWN arrow keys to review autocomplete results. The ability to push training participants to reflect, while also giving them real work experiences to apply new approaches and hone their skills, is a valuable combination in emerging markets. tab, Engineering, Construction & Building Materials, Travel, Logistics & Transport Infrastructure, McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility. The sales managers continued to enter into suboptimal and even uneconomic transactions because they had a deeply held mind-set that the only thing that mattered in their industry was market share, that revenue targets had to be met, and that failing to meet those targets would result in their losing face. As soon as the leaders realized this, and went deeper to understand why, they were able to commit themselves to concrete steps that helped push them to change. In the case of a European retail bank that was anxious to improve its sales performance, the skill that mattered most (but was in shortest supply) was the ability to persuade and motivate peers without the formal authority of direct line management. A brilliant leader in one situation does not necessarily perform well in another. We have found that when a company cuts through the noise to identify a small number of leadership capabilities essential for success in its business—such as high-quality decision making or stronger coaching skills—it achieves far better outcomes. Similarly, a nonprofit we know recently sought to identify the revenue increase attributable to its leadership program by comparing one group that had received training with another that hadn’t. On the other hand, even after very basic training sessions, adults typically retain just 10 percent of what they hear in classroom lectures, versus nearly two-thirds when they learn by doing. In the process, we’ve identified four of the most common mistakes. One approach is to assess the extent of behavioral change, perhaps through a 360 degree–feedback exercise at the beginning of a program and followed by another one after 6 to 12 months. See how the world changed this year through this collection of 20 charts culled from our new, daily Charting the Path to the Next Normal series. January 2014 | byPierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane These projects were linked to specified changes in individual behavior—for instance, overcoming inhibitions in dealing with senior clients or providing better coaching for subordinates. We use cookies essential for this site to function well. How many left the company? Please click "Accept" to help us improve its usefulness with additional cookies. | Brain Based Leadership Proceed with caution however, as this is an easy idea to come up with but difficult, potentially expensive and definitely time consuming to execute. Once the issues were put on the table, it became clear that the business-unit leaders were genuinely concerned that the new policy would add to the already severe pressures they faced, that they did not trust their subordinates, and that they resented the idea of relinquishing control. In this company, it was critical for the sales managers to persuade the IT department to change systems and working approaches that were burdening the sales organization’s managers, whose time was desperately needed to introduce important sales-acceleration measures. This mind-set shifted only when the company set up a “control tower” for reflecting on the most critical deals, when peers who got the new message became involved in the coaching, and when the CEO offered direct feedback to participants (including personal calls to sales managers) applauding the new behavior. The answer sounds straightforward: tie leadership development to real on-the-job projects that have a business impact and improve learning. On the one hand, there is value in off-site programs (many in university-like settings) that offer participants time to step back and escape the pressing demands of a day job. Please click "Accept" to help us improve its usefulness with additional cookies. Learn more about cookies, Opens in new Promoting the virtues of delegation and empowerment, for example, is fine in theory, but successful adoption is unlikely if the program participants have a clear “controlling” mind-set (I can’t lose my grip on the business; I’m personally accountable and only I should make the decisions). Our flagship business publication has been defining and informing the senior-management agenda since 1964. Identifying some of the deepest, “below the surface” thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and beliefs is usually a precondition of behavioral change—one too often shirked in development programs. Moreover, when upward of 500 executives were asked to rank their top three human-capital priorities, leadership development was included as both a current and a future priority. Something went wrong. 4 ways to improve your program impact Nowadays, companies invest a lot of time and money in developing leadership skills by offering expensive leadership development programs to their (top) talents and leaders. Article|McKinsey Quarterly Why leadership­development programs fail Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale. Context is a critical component of successful leadership. Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale. Yet targets can be set and their achievement monitored. Almost two-thirds of the respondents identified leadership development as their number-one concern.2 2. Here are two of my favorites from McKinsey’s list: McKinsey Quarterly has another good article on Why Leadership Development Programs Fail. The fourth issue was especially insightful. Each is usually summarized in a seemingly easy-to-remember way (such as the three Rs), and each on its own terms makes sense. Learn about Once the trainers looked below the surface, they discovered that these leaders, though highly successful in their fields, were instinctively uncomfortable and lacking in confidence when conversations moved beyond their narrow functional expertise. A recent article by McKinsey & Company, one of the most prestigious consulting firms, Why Leadership-Development programs fail, notes four major reasons leadership development programs fail. How many senior people in the organization went through leadership training? American Express quantifies the success of some of its leadership programs by comparing the average productivity of participants’ teams prior to and after a training program, yielding a simple measure of increased productivity. Reinvent your business. By analyzing recent promotions at a global bank, for example, senior managers showed that candidates who had been through a leadership-development program were more successful than those who had not. Each participant chose a separate project: one business-unit leader, for instance, committed his team to developing new orders with a key client and to working on a new contract that would span more than one of the group’s business lines. Yet legions of … Only when they were convinced that the new approach would actually save time and serve as a great learning opportunity for more junior managers—and when more open-minded colleagues and mentors helped challenge the “heroic” leadership model—did the original barriers start to come down and decentralization start to be implemented. Only 7 percent of senior managers polled by a UK business school think that their companies develop global leaders effectively,3 3. collaboration with select social media and trusted analytics partners According to Mckinsey most Leadership Development programs fail. Instead, he continued to encourage innovation and new thinking—hallmarks of the culture that had previously brought success—until he was finally replaced for underperformance. Leadership-development programs that gauge success and make necessary adjustments are critical to successful behavioral changes, including changing perceptions of mindsets, necessary for strong leadership. McKinsey recently made a case for why leadership programs often fail. It’s true that some personality traits (such as extroversion or introversion) are difficult to shift, but people can change the way they see the world and their values. Overlooking context 2. Flip the odds. Digital upends old models. Context is as important for groups and individuals as it is for organizations as a whole: the best programs explicitly tailor a “from–to” path for each participant. Take the professional-services business that wanted senior leaders to initiate more provocative and meaningful discussions with the firm’s senior clients. Most transformations fail. leadership development.1 Colleges and universities offer hundreds of degree courses on leadership, and the cost of customized leadership-development offerings from a top business school can reach $150,000 a person. 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