Why Most Leadership Training Doesn’t Work. And What to Do Instead | #41

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

So welcome back to Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others. After a couple of weeks of Voices of Leadership episodes, we got something slightly different for you today.

The last two weeks, I've been speaking to Karen Nolan about why social value is defining modern leadership. And then Daniel Walton, how to create a profitable business from a focus on social value. And those two episodes are really worth listening to.

Some fantastic points made by both those guests. But by popular demand, people wanted somebody else this week. So welcome back, Rich.

Hi, Dave. All right, thank you.

If only I'd been inundated with people asking for you back, but I thought it sounded good. So this is a leadership unscripted episode where you and I dive into a topic that we think is really important that people are asking us a lot about.

And this one's got quite a provocative title, why Most Leadership Training Doesn't Work and what to do instead. So, Rich, how do you feel about that title?

I think we offer leadership development as opposed to leadership training. There's a training aspect to what we do.

But I think this episode title is provocative for organizations like ours and for organizations that buy in organizations like us to do their. In inverted commas, leadership training.

Well, it's a very big, multi million, maybe even billion pound business around the world.

What we do, I mean, we only do a small part of it, obviously, but there's a lot of people buying a lot of development, learning, training, whatever you want to phrase you want to use.

And I think be good to bust some myths today, Rich, about, you know, what good training is, whether you call it management training, whether you call it leadership development, we believe there's a difference when we can cover that today. What I'd like to do today, Rich, is do some myth busting. Yeah.

About things that are often said to us that we hear said around management training, leadership development, et cetera. So there is assumption, I believe out there that leadership can be taught through good quality content. So we can probably talk about that.

There's a difference, I think, and I know you think between transactional and transformational learning. But is that a commonly held understanding as to what those two things mean, what it really takes for people to change?

Because you often hear the phrase a leopard will never change its spots. Well, there's an element of truth in that, but we could probably talk about that myth as well.

And, and also just Learn how people can invest in leadership development that delivers real value. Because ultimately that's the point of it, is it's going to deliver some real value.

Yeah.

Because leadership training is expensive and it's very difficult to draw a line between, you know, if you like a learning workshop and that workshop delivering value and bottom line for the organization.

Yeah.

And when budgets are under pressure at the moment, you can understand why people, you know, we'll think, well, is that really what we want to spend our money on now?

Yeah, absolutely.

You and I have said this before. We'll say it again today. Learning and performance are not separate things.

So if you want optimal, sustainable performance in your business, you need a culture where learning is part of that culture. Would you not agree?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

But the way you do the learning actually can be a multiple of different things. So that's really what I want to dive in today.

How do we do this properly and bust that myth that, well, it's just not worth spending money on developing leaders, management training, whatever you call it. So, rich, why do you think that sometimes training doesn't work?

When people buy in a solution, whatever that solution might be, why might it not work?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's many, many reasons for that. And it comes to the concept of the difference between what we call transactional and transformational learning, which we dive into.

But I mean, essentially, you know, when you think about, you know, what are some of the core leadership challenges out there?

Things like, you know, leaders feeling imposter syndro, leaders not feeling confident, perhaps leaders that are behaving in a way that betrays their lack of awareness of the impact of their behavior on other people.

They're not easy things to change in the context of a workshop where you'll say, giving them a coaching model to have a coaching conversation, that's all very well, but actually, in order to have a really good coaching conversation, you need to shift your mindset to one that is from I know best as a leader to one actually where I'm trying to have the conversation to allow the other person to come to the answer for themselves. And that requires letting go.

That requires sort of almost like an ego transformation, you know, so these are not things you can change in a single workshop.

No. And I think too often people jump to, what's the solution? What's the methodology we're going to use?

To take, for example, we want all of our leaders to coach. Why wouldn't you want that? I totally agree. It's a good idea.

But as you said, just Teaching them what coaching's about, how to do it doesn't mean you suddenly transform the culture in your organization. Because there's two things before that. One is mindset. Most human beings, if they resist change, it's got something to do with mindset.

And the other thing is motivation. Most of us need motivation to change. What is the reason why that we want to change? And I think those two things often forgotten.

Let's talk about methodology. Ah, but you've missed the two most important things that come before that. Mindset, motivation. So I think you're right.

This is actually multi layered and it's not as simple people would have you believe.

No.

And in the current context, actually, where money is a key driver, you know, money is short in this country and in a lot of organizations and across the world, it's very easy to get focused on what we call transactional type learning.

Where, you know, you can, you can see practical things, practical tools that people can take away and that's all well and good and appropriate, but that's not going to shift fundamentally people's mindset. So you need to equip people the tools. You need to give them the spanners or the screwdrivers or whatever.

But actually fundamentally, if they don't have the right mindset to use a tool, the tools aren't going to be very effective. So you can teach somebody how to coach, but you can't make them a coach just in a single workshop?

No.

And I think also when we're buying in expertise from people like Zentano, for example, to help develop leadership within the business, one of the other things to remember if you're the person who's bringing that expert in, is have you got clarity of context as to why you're doing this in the first place? One of the things you and I always ask potential clients is what's the context in which you're doing this?

And there's usually some kind of cultural shift that's trying to happen in the business, which we are a part of. We are not the only part, we're not the only solution to that, but we are part of the answer to it. So what is the context?

What is the reason why you want to develop your leaders? What space do they have to reflect?

Because we can come in and do our bit for you, but there's another part of the learning cycle and we'll come on to that later. Do people have time to reflect and what support will they get internally? Because.

Because it's not just the job of the external Provider to do the learning, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And if you think about those things, I think what you just said makes the case quite powerfully if you think of your experience inside an organization. I've been in organisations where there have been countless culture initiatives. Let's change the culture.

And often I've seen organizations think, actually, let's change the culture by communicating what our values are and putting our values on the wall or on a screensaver, or send people information about what the culture shift that the organization wants. So information doesn't equal transformation.

Actually, when you think about what needs to happen inside an organization for culture shift to happen, there needs to be sharing of the same mental models. The language you use has to be a sort of common language. So when you use a particular word, that same word means the same thing to other people.

You're talking about behavioral attitudinal shifts in people. You don't change people's attitude by sending them an email about the attitude you want to see.

That requires time and feedback and reflection time and all those things. So the reason why a lot of training and culture initiatives fail is this mistake that actually you can just tell people what to do.

Yeah. I think you made the point earlier on. Transactional learning is often there's knowledge transfer. Yeah. So you gain some new knowledge.

You might even, I don't know, be taught a skill. Yeah. So you were talking about the concept of give them a toolbox, give them the toolkit. Yeah.

So they got all these new tools they can use, but that alone, whilst it's useful, is limited.

If we're going to make transformational change, and that's the case that we're talking about today, is actually, if you really want to do this properly, do it transformationally. There's a whole other world of things that you need to consider and do. So could you unpack for us what we mean by transformational change, Rich?

Yes. So let's explore that concept a bit more deeply about the difference between transactional versus transformational.

So if I can use the analogy of driving a car or riding a motorbike, I'm a particularly keen motorbike rider, so that analogy really works well for me. My wife and I, we just recently, very recently in the last two years, learned to ride motorcycles.

Gone through a whole process of, you know, learning to ride on a small 125, and now we ride bigger bikes and we've just gone through our advanced rider training.

Now what's really interesting about driving a car or driving a motorbike, there's some transactional stuff that you have to learn, which you learn in the very early days.

You know how to, you know, how to feather the clutch, how to handle the throttle carefully, how to operate your brakes, you know, effectively all of those things. If you get those things wrong, you can really unsettle a bike.

So there are sort of practical things you have to learn in terms of riding a bike or driving a car. The same principles occur. What's really interesting, we went through an organization recently called IAM RoadSmart.

So they're an organization that do advanced rider training.

But what's really interesting, you know, they give you tools and a system to use, but fundamentally what they're trying to do is to do a mindset shift with riders. So safety becomes at the root of everything that you do in terms of your decision making.

Okay, so what's really interesting about the advanced rider training that we did, it's very coaching orientated and coaching based. So it took us through a process of where, you know, you do.

You do an observed session, and then your observed rider would ask you questions at the end of it. And then after the observed session, you get sent feedback. And then the idea would be that you do reflection on your observed ride.

And then you go out and practice what you've just done. And after every ride, you're encouraged to reflect on how safe was that ride. What could I have done differently?

What techniques and approaches could I have used to have made that ride even safer?

So they're taking you through a process where you do stuff, you're observed, you're given feedback, you're taking time to reflect, you go away and practice again, and you build a virtuous cycle of actually shifting your entire mindset.

So actually, at the end of the eight to 12 observed sessions, fundamentally, your mindset is completely different in terms of how you approach driving and riding a car.

So even my car driving has changed quite fundamentally in terms of how I approach getting into a car and, you know, engage with the road and road users and all that sort of stuff. And still now, after a free motorcycle ride, I take just a little bit of time to reflect, what could I have done differently?

And it's that same principle, if you think about that same principle of, you know, you do stuff, you get feedback, you reflect, you go away and practice, and you go through this virtuous cycle of learning. That's what good leadership training does.

And I think you hit a really important point there about the importance of doing the reflection, whether that reflection is just in your head. Whether, whether it's written down, because there is different ways of doing the reflection. But obviously it's about making time to do it.

And I think herein lies one of the big problems with leadership development, management training, whatever you call it, inside of a business.

If they don't have that culture that says you're allowed to have some reflection time, some time to step back from your day to day stuff that you're doing and actually just do what you've just described.

Yeah, And I think the other thing just to bear in mind is actually what we're talking about, to use the technical term, is called adult learning or adult development. And it's a term that's banded around a lot, lot.

But I don't think in the context of organizations, I don't think it's properly understood because actually if you take a person through the process of adult development, you're going through a fundamental mindset shift where they go through stages of development.

So I mean, if you like, I can share with you what I think is a really interesting model around adult development by an author and a researcher called Robert Keegan, psychologist and researcher. And he's done a huge amount of research around the stages that people go through when they develop as adults.

Because going back to that point you made earlier, until the day we die, we can rewire our brain to fundamentally think and behave differently. So our mindset and our consciousness can shift profoundly all the way through adulthood.

And Robert Keegan in his research tracked the sort of mindset shifts that people go through. He saw them as sort of stages that built on each other.

So for example, what I'm not going to go through in detail because it's quite a complicated model and quite technical, but one of the stages that commonly adults find themselves in when they come into the workplace, and particularly when they begin their leadership journey, is what he calls the socialized mind stage. So this is where actually people define themselves through other people.

So their family, their culture, their workplace, the team they're in that they want to fit in, they want approval of other people and they want to avoid conflict.

So if you think about that mindset, that stage of development, if you've got a middle manager who's, you know, got a team and they're completely, well, not completely, but largely driven by wanting to seek the approval of others and not to get into too much conflict, actually as a leader and a manager, that's not a great place to be leading from. And actually what you want to do is to get them to the next stage.

Of development in Robert Keegan's model is what he calls the self author in mind, which is quite an interesting term, the self authoring mind.

So this is where people actually start to see themselves is having their own sets of values and beliefs and goals that they can hold separately from the people around them. So in other words, they lead from within. It's what we call self leadership.

So a leader can start to set the direction based on their own personal belief and their own autonomy and give people belief in their own autonomy and trust them to go away and do stuff.

So you made some really important points there rich in that explanation. So this mindset shift that we're talking about, so there's an element of increased self awareness because we can't change what we're not aware of.

So we have to do some self awareness. That self awareness then means that should we choose to, we have the ability to self regulate, to change the way we think and behave.

But what you're also talking about, which I find really interesting, is actually you almost develop a new identity level of yourself.

And that's the bit I think, that people don't always understand is that this transformational change that most businesses are probably seeking because they want to make some sort of cultural shift in their business that requires identity levels for people to change. And it also, there's another complication here. It means the culture's got to change in the business.

You can't just change the person if the culture in the business isn't conducive for them to go back into and be that person who's developing themselves.

So if you think, if an organization wants that sort of nuance to change and they want their leaders to be able to step up and to self lead, you've got to give people the space to reflect and to have their own voice.

So if, as senior leaders in an organisation, you have a culture where you suppress this individuality and the means for people to, you know, to change their sense of identity and to find their voice, you know, that fundamental shift in adult learning is not going to happen.

No. So let's talk about adult learning.

I know we've covered our own model of adult learning before, but I think it's worth, in the context of this conversation, just talking that through again and how this relates to doing this leadership development properly.

Yeah. So do you mind, Dave, if I just use the analogy of motorbike riding again?

Because it's something that's relatively recent in my experience and I think it translates really well to the sorted model so if I just explain the sorted model. Imagine the letters S, O, R and T in a circle, if you like, with arrows connecting each letter.

So you start with S at the top, got an arrow going to O, an arrow going to R, an arrow going to T, and then back around to S. So in other words, there's this virtuous learning cycle. So S in this model stands for stuff happens, things we experience. So, for example, you go out on a motorcycle ride.

So if I go out on a motorcycle ride and then I park my motorcycle in the garage after the ride, and I don't even think about what happens and how I rode and how well I, you know, how safe was I, and how well did I manage my motorbike? Actually, the next. Next time I get on the bike, nothing is going to change. No, nothing's going to be different.

So in order for me to learn and for my mindset to shift around that, actually what we need to do is take time out to reflect. So the next letter in the sorted model is O, which stands for objective view, or if you like, the fly on the wall view.

So in order to start the process of learning, you need to take a step away. That's the objective view, the fly on the wall view.

And using the motorcycle example, I think back, take time to think, what happened on that ride in that situation where I was approaching that junction? What could I have done differently to avoid the that occurred? Take a step away and you're prepared to ask yourself the difficult questions.

Which moves us on to the next letter in the model, which is the R, which is rethink and challenge. Because you take those reflections and then actually you're prepared to think, well, maybe I could have done something differently.

And that mindset shift around. Maybe I could have done something differently is really important if you think in the context of driving and motorcycle riding.

Often what happens is when we experience something on the road and say somebody pulls out in front of us, often the first thing we do is to blame the other person.

Yep.

So with advanced motorcycle riding and advanced driving, what they teach you to do is usually in most situations, there is something you could have done differently that probably wouldn't have put you in that unsafe situation.

So, for example, if you'd have been looking ahead and planning more effectively and been more observant, you could probably have predicted that car was going to pull out and you could have slowed down.

So in other words, you have to say to yourself, it's not just that person's fault that pulled out in front of me, if I'd have planned earlier, I could have done something differently. So that requires humility and parking, the ego and to say, actually I could have done something differently in that situation.

Yeah.

Which takes us to the next letter in the model, the T, which is then, okay.

So based on that knowledge and that reflection, next time I'm out on the road, I'm going to think and plan ahead more and look ahead more and, you know, particularly when I come to junctions, I'm going to be watching for that car.

I'm going to anticipate the fact they could pull out, you know, so you, you fundamentally change your attitude to road users because you take responsibility for yourself and your own and your own driving and you're not blaming other people. That's a fundamental mindset shift. Okay. And then that takes you back around the cycle, you know, so you go out on another ride and you reflect.

You think, what could I have done differently? Don't blame other people. And then you go back around the cycle. So if you think, take that model and apply it to leadership development.

That's why we propose leadership programs and not leadership events.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because a workshop, if you're buying a workshop or a couple of workshops, you're just buying some events. Really there. That's what you're buying.

Yes. Yeah. Learning is a process, not an event. Okay. So the danger is organizations make the mistake.

You know, somebody lacks confidence, well, let's send them on a confidence course. So that might have some value.

But confidence requires a fundamental shift in mindset, which means people have to go around this sorted cycle a lot of times in order to. For that mindset shift to happen.

So a program of learning which takes people, gives them the content to engage with, that's fine because it helps them to rethink and challenge, but you give them the space and encourage them to reflect, and encourage them actually to critically reflect. That's the key thing around leadership.

You know, too many leaders, you know, think about a lot of people that get recruited into senior leadership positions. They're probably very bright. They've probably got there through, you know, being very skillful at what they do.

But at the same time, they've probably got a lot of, if you like, self confidence in their own ability.

And it can be a real challenge for people at those sorts of levels to be willing to challenge themselves to say, well, maybe actually in that situation with my team, if I'd have behaved in this way, perhaps the outcome might have been different. That takes humility.

It does. I remember when I first really remember experiencing imposter syndrome, which was a number of years ago.

And I would go into these senior team meetings that I was part of with people who had done some really good things. They built businesses, they'd sold businesses.

But I come out of those sometimes thinking, yeah, actually, but they've done some stuff that I haven't done.

But when I started to sort of do what you said, come away from those situations, step back, just think about what was I thinking, what was I feeling, what was I doing? Is that helping me? Doesn't feel like it's helping me. And actually, I need to shift this.

When you get to the rethink and challenge part of the model that you were just talking about, the critical reflection, one of the things you have to do is examine your own assumptions about yourself, about the people in the room with you. You know, and actually, some of those assumptions are wrong. I could have assumed they had the knowledge that I had, which they didn't necessarily.

Yeah. So actually, by challenging what you think, you know, by challenging assumptions, that's part of what this critical reflection is about.

I was able then to think, okay, right, I'm going to take action. I'm going to try something different.

Based on that reflection I've had and the rethinking challenge that I've done, I'm going to try a different way of managing this situation, which is when I started to actually move away from that feeling of imposter syndrome. And then this didn't take. It wasn't an overnight thing. It took a number of months to be fair.

But it was going through that cycle that you were just talking about.

And that requires leadership in organizations. If you're going to take your organization through a culture change and going to take your leaders through a process of leadership development.

You know, leaders are often resistant to change because they want to protect their own ego. They may be fearful of expressing their vulnerability in front of people. You know, actually, some of the stuff. Some of the.

Some of the stuff that we might challenge people on in a leadership program might threaten their sense of identity. You know, going back to the Robert Keegan model that we were talking about earlier.

So actually, you need to create these, like, knowing spaces, if you like these places where people can be vulnerable, they can reflect, they can challenge each other and support each other through a process of learning.

But that needs to be done in the context where actually the organization itself that's commissioning the training and the development, you have to create the culture to allow all of that to happen.

Yeah.

So what we're obviously saying here is sometimes if you've tried leadership development in your business and you feel it hasn't worked, is there a case to answer that? Well, part of that is because of the culture in our business.

I'm not saying that's the reason in every occasion, but I can certainly think of situations when that has been the case.

And I think leadership development has to be a partnership between the organisation working with the organisation to do the leadership development and the organisation itself partnering. Because you don't outsource responsibility for leadership development and culture change to a training company.

Both of those parties have to work together because there needs to be the right culture, the right follow through.

If after a workshop you cover in a workshop the coaching approach, which fundamentally requires you letting go and helping people to come to the answer for themselves, and then you go to a senior manager and they don't coach you, they just tell you, and that's their default approach. Well, that's going to undermine all of that stuff you've tried to cover up off in the workshop.

And that's another reason why, you know, I talked about making sure we understand the context in which we're doing it. And that goes a stage further. You could benchmark. Well, how do you know that is the situation?

So we've just done a really interesting exercise with a new client where we've interviewed a number of their senior people to get a benchmark of what the culture looks like in their business. And I think that type of exercise is a really useful exercise because it gives you the context in which to do the development that's needed properly.

Yeah, because if you get that right, if you have this like shared ownership and shared success between the organization and your learning, you know, your learning provider. Actually if you get people to think differently, you shift their mindset, that means they're going to act differently.

And when they act differently, they're more influential, they engage with their teams more effectively. And that has a profound effect on the bottom line, you know, because people will perform better.

If you get leaders acting and thinking differently, that's going to have a ripple out effect in the organisation.

So, Rich, if I'm a senior leader, maybe thinking of purchasing some development help from a business like ours, what should be my sort of plan? What should I be thinking of? What are the things I should be doing to actually do this properly? So where do I start?

Yeah, so I think it's important to think about this holistically and systemically. So, you know, don't do leadership training and development piecemeal and in bits.

So for example, you know, I use the analogy don't buy learning events, buy learning journeys.

So if you're going to go to a learning provider, look at how they structure their program and look to see that they build reflection, peer support, peer challenge, sort of mentorship support, you know, through the line managers in the organization. Make sure all of that stuff, stuff is covered off. In terms of how the program is structured and how it's led, I would.

Go as far as to say also make sure they know how to do the mindset change as well.

Exactly.

Not every learning provider, I believe, does the mindset shift. Stuff that's needed.

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's really important that you allow people to take time to reflect and honestly reflect.

I think sometimes the time for reflection is seen as like a luxury.

So it's almost like, well, if, you know, people feel guilty if they're not doing stuff and actually taking time to reflect and do a bit of journaling or keeping a learning journal or something, that might seem to be a luxury. But actually if you allow people to go through that process, give them time to do that, I mean, that will reap dividends in the longer term.

But it's a long term thing. This is a long term thing.

The other thing to say is it's really important to involve line managers and if you like, the culture influencers in the organisation.

So, you know, the mindset shift and the values you're trying to embed in your leadership program has to be lived out by your senior people because, you know, we've seen that so often where, you know, we've talked about some things, their mindset shift in a workshop and then people, it's happened on so many occasions. People say, well, I don't see so and so in our business doing that.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely, you know, so.

It'S very easy to undermine some of these key learning moments in workshops through just really poor behaviour at senior leadership level.

So what you're talking about there is actually we're not trying to tick a box here. We're not just trying to change the individual. And once we've changed the individual, happy days. Everything's rosy in the garden.

Actually what we need to do is focus on change.

If we're not happy with how things are working right now, what is it that needs to happen and change in the system in which our managers and our leaders are operating? So I think we've got to think of it on a systemic level as well as an Individual level. Would you not agree?

Yeah, absolutely right. It's both. And I think so. You change the system so you create the safe space and the space for people to reflect and to be vulnerable.

But also you give individuals the tools and the approaches and the models for them to reflect and go through that process of learning through the sorted model that I described earlier.

Yeah.

And those people listening to this podcast who maybe have listened to previous episodes where we talked particularly about whole brain thinking, that's another good model to use to think about commissioning development of this type. So your analytical view of this would be, okay, well, what's working now? What's not working now?

Have we got some sense of what's going on in our business? Have we got some kind of evidence and facts to back that up? Then the big picture of you would be, well, where do we want to go in the future?

What's the vision of where we're going versus where we are right now? And there needs to be some sense of context. As I said earlier on, the relational bit would be who needs to be involved.

And I think your point is not just about necessarily the people who are being trained. There's other people in the business that need to be involved as well.

And ultimately then I think it makes the final bit, okay, well, what specific actions are we going to take? It makes that bit easier if you've done those first three bits but don't just go to the last bit, which is, okay, what do we need to do?

Because actually, so you've missed a lot of context there, a lot of important information there.

So my closing remark, I guess from our perspective, from the Zentano perspective is we as Zentano, we don't sell training, we develop leaders.

Yeah, that's definitely the mindset in Zentano. And that's the point.

I try and get across to people when I'm out and I'm networking or meeting people outside of our business and they ask what we do, you know, I very much don't tell them, well, what we do is we sell management training. That's not what we do. We develop leaders and we develop leaders to make the organizations that they were for better places to be.

And that has a knock on effect into the wider world as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's why our business exists.

Okay, Rich, so my sort of final thoughts on this, there may be people out there listening to this thinking, well, I've already tried leadership development. It was a bit underwhelming or, oh, I think I may have wasted some money on this.

Just take a step back and think, okay, what kind of development am I actually investing in? Where are we now as a business and as an organisation? Where is it we want to go? Who do we need the help for and why?

And then decide on the methodology. And you may need to go and then speak to a few providers like Zentano to find out what is the right route and pathway to build for your people.

So, on that note, Rich, thank you for being back. I'm sure the listeners will be delighted that you're back.

Thank you. Yeah, and it's good to be back.

Having said that, next week I'm actually ditching you again because, well, next week I've got a special guest coming on who has got an interesting way of developing people transformationally in the business. So I'll say no more than that. Just leave that out there.

But next week we have a special guest who's going to talk about something called rapid transformation therapy. And until then, it's goodbye from me.

And goodbye from me. Thank you.

Bye. Bye.