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On Leadership training

In Leadership BS - this is the authors take on what is wrong with the leadership industry. It is 1, well intentioned, values laden. 2, set of prescriptions - lots of shoulds and oughts. 3, that are mostly not representative of most people in leadership roles and 4 are recommendations that are almost certainly not implementable and may be fundamentally misguided. 

In which case, what should a training program look like?

1. Assessments, observations, honest feedback (the most difficult part in my view). This is difficult because unless observations are unbiased and feedback is honest (best from peers) this cannot happen. Also leaders are leaders - people do not share honest feedback to leaders for a variety of reasons. Assessments are also expensive - so often they are the first thing that is ditched (second being the next one)

2. Lots of practice. That comees by investing in long term behaviour change (the second most difficult thing) It is difficult because of budgets and time constraint.  And leaders regular work prevents them from investing in real change because partly they are not rewarded for that change - but for the actual work. All of these are solvable problems, partly by the top leadership ensuring that "this investment" is seen as real work. And partly by building it as part of work, not something extra. 

3. A look at reality and being honest about what people might encounter and how people might tackle it - and this is how I ended up writing my book - Feedback decoded - because I found people asking questions which were not answered in any of the books I read. As a facilitator, please acknowledge the realities of the organization and enable people to see this. This is something I learnt in one of my very early facilitation experience where some participants kept asking about "what if" questions and my partner facilitator kept dodging them with "oughts" and "shoulds". The training format was designed to eliminate this - a business manager (me) and an HR facilitator did this together and we found that the business manager was always pragmatic and came up with practical solutions. This is a lesson I have kept with me for posterity.

4. Nudges to make 3 happen. 

5. This work - the behavioural training/change work has to be seen as "important" by the bosses and the people being trained need to be given the space to work on this change and the difficulty of it acknowledged. 

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