When we build leaders, our efforts are often ineffective. People listen but don't execute. They forget 80% of what they learn and can't usually execute 50% of what they do remember. The reason for that is because we focus on individual skills but never spend time developing the most important skill that acts as the basis and a link between all other skills. That's also why leaders don't know how to coach and develop themselves.
When we build leaders, our efforts are often ineffective. People listen but don't execute. They forget 80% of what they learn and can't usually execute 50% of what they do remember. The reason for that is because we focus on individual skills, such as integrity, ability to motivate, talk, and set clear goals, but we never focus on the one skill that links all the other ones together. That's also why leaders don't know how to coach and develop themselves.
When we build leaders, we focus a lot of our efforts on individual skills leaders must possess but we hardly ever focus on the one that acts as a basis for all the others - awareness. By focusing our leadership development efforts on awareness, we make our leadership development efforts more effective and create better leaders faster.
Consider this: We can try to teach the leader how to receive candid feedback, how to be honest, how to possess energy, and how to be passionate about work (all important leadership skills), but our efforts will be wasted if he is not aware of himself. We can teach him how to coach, energize, and motivate employees but our efforts won't be effective if the person isn't aware of others. We can try to explain how people are motivated but this effort won't work if the leader isn't aware of the impact of his actions on others.
The solution is to focus leadership development efforts on awareness. Teach the person how to understand himself, others, situations, and the impact of his and other people's actions on other people and the environment. Once the leader starts to become more aware of himself, show him how to use this awareness to learn more about his own weaknesses and design his own improvement plan. Then let leaders self develop. The more self-aware they become, the more skillful they become in self-developing. You will hardly ever have to explain anything to them. As long as they are aware and are willing to develop, the magic will happen.
The reason leaders don't know how to utilize many of the skills they've learned is because they (1) don't understand them, (2) don't remember them, or (3) have a low level of awareness.
By focusing on awareness, people begin to understand why and how other people behave. Other leadership skills suddenly start making sense, so you solve problem #1. Problem #2 required a different approach, but one of the reasons people forget what they've learned is because they don't understand the material or can't relate it enough to their work. Again, awareness should solve this problem.
As a result, you will have leaders who are more productive, deliver greater impact, have a low employee turnover, deliver a greater return on investment, and are able to develop themselves.
1. Read "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.
2. Start thinking about why people behave the way they do. Try to understand them.
3. Try to understand yourself. Reflect. Think about things you could have done differently.
4. Ask others for feedback. No matter what they say, Thank Them and then try to understand where they are coming from. Don't ever defend yourself.
Hi Matt:
regarding the 80% forgetting, and the 50% execution part, have you found that coaching leaders to use the 80/20 Pareto Principle can result in better rentention and execution rates? Eric Schillinger
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Hi Eric,
No, coaching requires a completely different approach. It's too long to describe in a message like this, but the central idea is that you focus on building the person's awareness of himself and others and then help him understand what he needs to work on.
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I hope this will be viewed as a build, but like the apocryphal Irishman giving road directions I wouldn't start from here. I'd start with a slightly different vocabulary. The end result is that self-awareness becomes just a part of the solution, and not 'the solution'.
Proposition 1. The only person's behavior that one can 'control' or 'change' directly is your own. Yes, I agree that you can help others to change their own - the province of coaching, but that doesn't invalidate the proposition.
Proposition 2. Similarly, the only skills you can properly develop are your own (similar caveat about coaching others). That is why leaders developing their own behavior and skills (what you term self-developing) is so highly desirable and productive.
However, the awareness you described seemed mainly in the context of 'self-awareness'. I'd prefer a term like observation, as it directly implies a reliance on evidence and 'what did you actually see or hear?' and less 'what did you feel?' This is not to exclude the emotional parts of the information. Much of the development of skill will rely on this.
Proposition 3. The onlooker sees more of the game. This means that any team member who is temporarily and metaphorically sitting on the sidelines, will be capable of better and more detached observation of what is going on in the team. A practical example is where the Chair of a meeting picks up on the silence of certain meeting members and chooses what if anything to do about it.
All this leads me to the inclusion of an additional ingredient to the leader's self development program - the feedback from others whether superiors, peers or subordinates. And of course, a development of everyone's skill in giving and receiving such feedback will be necessary, if this is to add value to the leader's self-development.
To reiterate it is intended as a build.
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Clive -
Thanks for your build. You are exactly right. I actually had some of the same things in mind but I tried to stay high level in this hack. But thanks for clarifying!
Matt
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Alex -
Thanks for the pointers. Erhard, Landmark, and the book you've mentioned talk about some of the basics of awareness. I found Dale Carnegie's books to be effective in building awareness as well. Unfortunately, there's no clear path to 100% awareness. One can not ever become fully aware. He can only get better...
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Consider the work of Werner Erhard (see http://www.wernererhard.com) as a requisite foundation for self-awareness. Specifically, check out the book "The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life", by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, Jossey-Bass, February 3, 2009. Also, look into the courses offered by Landmark Education at http://www.landmarkeducation.com/. These concepts provide a powerful foundation for self-aware leadership.
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The above summary will describe some hidden facts about leadership and I completely agreed with the fact that, leadership will help to improve our personality and attitude. It also increases our decision-making ability, leading skills, behavior and attitude, and personality. Here also in this article, we have found some important links about leadership development and how, we can go for coaching, expert instructions and many other programs to develop our leadership skills and attitude.
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