Today’s employees won’t be motivated to perform or remain in a workplace that relies on outdated “command and control” styles of leadership. Instead, David Rock, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer NeuroLeadership Institute, suggests that in order to succeed, leaders and organisations must place human values at their core.
With up to 75% of people saying that the most stressful part of their job is their immediate leader we can see the urgency for development in this area.
Leadership development requires a powerful combination of technical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills. Leaders however can tend to excel at technical skills, be promoted based on this competency, but have no knowledge or developed capability around how to effectively lead people.
This gap is creating a significant lack of trust in leadership. According to the Australasian Leadership Institute, 76% of Australian employees don’t completely trust their leaders, a huge problem because employees also believe trust in leadership is the biggest issue impacting their work performance.
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
Leaders know how to care – they do it with family and friends all the time. So the development area isn’t learning how to care – it’s learning how to care at work. In fact, an inspiring, motivated and caring leadership style has been associated with enhanced mental wellness of individuals, higher engagement, productivity, and people performing at their best.
However, moving the needle cannot be achieved by simply giving people knowledge and telling them to think differently. It must be achieved through a structured learning approach both in and outside the “classroom” which influences behavioural change.
According to one of the biggest leadership studies in Australia in over 20 years, the Centre for Workplace Leadership at the University of Melbourne (1) found that Australian organisations don’t have the right management or leadership skills necessary to meet challenges of the 21st Century. When looked at in combination with their finding that Australian leadership development practices are ambiguous in their payoffs for employee performance and engagement, we start to see the need to move away from “more of the same” leadership development programs which just aren’t cutting it.
In order to create real behavioural change, we have to look beyond the training room. The Centre for Creative Leadership performed an analysis of 30 years of research and found that the optimal formula for workplace learning is a 70-20-10 blend of challenge assignments (70%), developmental relationships (20%) and coursework/training (10%).
We also know from The Study of Australian Leadership that
Additionally, Olivero, Bane and Kopelman found that training on its own improves productivity by
There’s no formula for best-practice leadership, but as this research shows us, there are best-practice building blocks that leadership programs can be tailored to depending on organisational needs.
Watch this short video to hear from Chris Di Dimenico on their experience with The Integrated Approach and how this example of best-practice leadership development allowed them to develop leadership capability and ultimately impact wellness in their day-to-day.
Chris was a participant in the pilot program run with the McConnell Dowell-DECMIL Mordialloc Freeway extension project.
Developing your leaders is an investment.
At a minimum, it’s an investment that reduces the risk of losing employees or creating a culture that is psychologically unsafe.
At a maximum, it’s an investment in fostering an organisation of people who have higher levels of wellness, good mental health and who enjoy where they work.
As we’ve seen, there are many aspects which can impact the success or failure of your leadership development programs. We’ve distilled these into three key areas.
Scroll through the images to see them.
Call To Action
Review this case study on how Lysander incorporated the three critical principles of a successful leadership program in their Integrated Approach to Wellness. As you do so, use it as a guide to prompt thinking on the effectiveness of your current leadership offerings.
1 Personalise learning through resources aligned to learner’s interests and development needs
In the Integrated Approach, Lysander used evidence-based culture and behaviour change approaches and proven leadership development tools such as CLS360 diagnostics to support leaders and senior decision-makers to recognise where individual and organisational dysfunction and “below the line behaviours” existed and the impact this had on wellness and performance (theirs and their people).
Recognition creates commitment to change and concurrent leadership skill development and coaching enabled these leaders to drive and embed behavioural change with qualitative evidence showing increased workforce wellness as a result of the improved leadership.
2 Create effective learner-driven experiences to accelerate learning adoption and build required skills
In the Integrated Approach, Lysander developed a journey that went beyond the horizontal learning most organisations concentrate on (functional / technical competencies) to develop behavioural and leadership competencies focused on how and why they deliver work outcomes in the context of collaborating with others and solving problems related to wellness.
This focus on vertical proficiency allowed them to look at behaviours, professionalism, mindset, emotional intelligence and cognitive frameworks so they became equipped to deal with the complexity of their environment.
In addition to deep knowledge and experience in leadership development, being external facilitators also meant that Lysander could create an atmosphere of neutral and unbiased facilitation, bringing fresh perspectives, asking the difficult questions that confront assumptions, and moving the group towards a way forward when dealing with controversial issues without the understandable reluctance internal organisational facilitators may face when needing to challenge people in leadership positions.
3 Make learning a habit, not just an occasional event
In the Integrated Approach, Lysander worked with the client to understand the issues they were facing into as well as time constraints of learners to develop a structured learning journey supported by professional coaching and embedding activities to help leaders apply their learning and develop new habits in line with desired behavioural change in the workplace.
It wasn’t about finding learning opportunities – it was about helping leaders recognise that every interaction is an opportunity for growth whether in formal learning or with boots on the ground, and facilitating the formal and informal development in a psychologically safe way where leaders felt supported while also being challenged.
Taking it Further
The tension between time and money invested into leadership development vs delivering to client requirements and project outcomes is real.
The important thing to note here is that underdone solutions and quick fixes aren’t likely to create real shift from the traditional command and control approach to a place where transformational leadership mindsets and behaviours are embedded and people are willingly following.
When we get to this point, mental health and wellbeing starts to look after itself. The hurdle is often appreciating the commitment needed to create significant change in this space and being the voice in the organisation to help key influencers to also buy into this.
When holistic leadership work is undertaken, great things will happen.
Where to Now?
Sources
Leadership, C., 2021. Centre for Workplace Leadership. https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/cwl/about