My team and I recently completed the design and delivery of a three-day in-person leadership development seminar for a large multinational financial institution. If you’ve done this kind of work before, you know that a colossal amount of effort goes into every aspect of this kind of event. Everything from designing content, arranging speakers, communicating with participants, to organising the venue, is critical, detail oriented, and extensive work.
It was all worth it, because afterwards we got the kind of feedback every facilitator hopes for: several unsolicited positive comments from participants thanking us and describing why the experience was valuable. The feedback demonstrated the value of some very specific design choices we consciously made early in the process. These choices followed three key principles:
- Centre on the Learner
- Be Outcome Focused
- Create Authentic Human Experiences
We strongly believe applying these principles will enhance any leadership program and are sharing our design choices and experiences to help anyone considering improving leadership capability in their organisation.
Center On The Learner
Sometimes in our haste to create big-bang, important, senior leader-driven programmes we commit the same mistake responsible for the proliferation of successful start-ups eating the lunch of large multinationals, namely we forget to focus on the customer. To avoid this, at the start of the project, we spent over two days interviewing potential participants. Many of my consultant colleagues advised against this: "They won't know what they need to learn so it will be a waste of time" was the general sentiment. To some extent they were correct. However, developing leadership capability isn't just about transferring knowledge; it is also about personal behaviour change, and growth.
At some level we all know what we should do to be a better leader – things like: Caring about and motivating our teams; Creating strong collaborative networks; Construct compelling business cases. We often fail to do these things because we are distracted by the day to day goings on. Therefore, being a better leader requires a personal decision to change your day to day habits. We can't make anyone do this, we can only support them. So, to facilitate the process we must better understand these people and leave them to make the decision of how to change and why.
The first learner-centric step was to make it very clear to the nominees that the program was optional and that it would require significant commitment. We explained leadership growth requires additional effort on top of the day to day effort sustained over at least six months. If this wasn't the right time for them for personal, business or other reasons, that's okay. The result was that about 15% of nominees dropped out and, because people who make a choice themselves are more committed to their chosen course of action, we were left with a highly motivated and engaged participant group, which showed in the quality of discussions and effort put into the program.
We also provided deep self-awareness tools (360° feedback, personality assessments, and reflection on purpose exercises) so they could better understand their personal motivations and the impact they have on others. A professional coach then met each of them one-on-one before the seminar to make the insights clear and present a case for change.
Be Outcome Focused
At the same time, we introduced the concept of a "Leadership Challenge" which is both learner centric and outcome focused. Participants were asked to identify a project that would require stretching outside their comfort zone and building new skills. Alignment with their manager was key and the challenge, if successfully completed, must deliver significant benefit to the organisation. Stakes were built in as well. Participants will meet monthly with a senior leader to discuss their progress and present to the CEO after six months.
This "Leadership Challenge" also ensured that discussions throughout the three day seminar remained outcome focused. Participants were constantly considering how to apply the models, information and stories we were sharing to their specific stretch challenge. Because success is not guaranteed, everyone was motivated to extract every last drop of value from the content.
Create Authentic Human Experiences
Perhaps the most important decision was to actively create authentic human experiences. Social Learning Theory influenced this thinking. Numerous studies demonstrate involving social relationships and role models in development accelerates progress. Humans are social animals. Our brains are wired to attend to what our peers do and authentic experiences help demonstrate the effectiveness of "soft-skills" such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and creating psychological safety, which are proven to help leaders be successful.
Our first step was to group everyone into small teams of four or five and hold a facilitated call where each member introduced themselves. They received a program overview, discussed how their experiences could be helpful to one another, and shared progress on preparation work and current thinking on their "Leadership Challenge". This was a less formal call where we made an effort to tell some jokes and ask each-other questions. As a result, everyone arrived at the seminar already feeling part of a supportive, collaborative environment.
Authentic talks from senior leaders were key to setting the tone for the program. Throughout the program leaders shared personal experiences, including mistakes and vulnerable moments from their careers. The stories contained great lessons and advice but were so much more powerful coming from an authentic person not afraid to share some weakness. Most senior leaders had been consulted on the program design so key messages hit home and were regularly reinforced.
Lastly, we created many opportunities to connect and learn from peers. These ranged from a two-hour evening team peer coaching session to short exercises where advice on how to apply a model to your challenge was shared. Many valuable conversations and new connections were made. Nearly all participants are strongly interested in continuing this peer coaching/learning.
A More Cost Effective Approach
Leadership program designers are often steered towards bringing in expensive top-of-their-field external speakers to wow participants, or perhaps to analyse mountains of data and spend extensive time designing and buying learning content that is "the perfect fit". Our experiences demonstrate that focusing on the people, having high quality interactions, and being specific about outcomes, is just as or even more effective, and generally less costly.
Justin Paul, Fortune 500 HR leader & consultant has helped executives in over 20 countries build their leadership capability. Currently CEO, Latchmere Performance Solutions Ltd, Justin@Latchmereconsulting.com
Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult’s Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to update business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.
