Many of us have worked in various organizations where major financial resources were devoted to leadership training. During these training programs, we observed that leaders and team member perceptions varied from thinking it was a great opportunity for continuous learning, provided time away from daily work tasks, greatful that the company was making an investment and many new innovative ideas were embraced. Although the training for the most part was valuable, a year later nothing had really changed in the overall performance of the operations or for individual members of the leadership team So you might ask yourself what went wrong?
If you were to take the time to survey the employees who participated in the training, you may find that everyone was inspired by the training but organizational situations and barriers prevented them from being able to apply what they had learned. One example I will offer to further demonstrate how this happened is a situation that is quite common in the work environment. During the training there was a lot of emphasis placed on the value of teamwork and collaboration. However, in several departments, there were a few poor performing employees who management had failed to deal with by taking appropriate personnel actions. This inaction had led to communication breakdown, ongoing conflicts and longstanding resentment between individual team members and with the manager. As a result, collaboration and supporting one another was simply unrealistic. Does this sound familiar?
An article, published in the October, 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review entitled, “Why Leadership Training Fails – and What to Do About it”, provides insights for organizations. The author suggest that leaders need to explore a different way of thinking about learning and development. The good news is that research does indicate that education and training gain the most traction in highly visible organizational change efforts when championed by senior leaders. They motivate employees to change while eliminating barriers that prevent team members from applying what they have learned from valuable training programs. In addition to training, leaders and team members can benefit from hands on coaching. In conclusion, leadership training requires a comprehensive approach which can be extremely successful as demonstrated by overall organizational performance.