Hi it’s Ed Oakley. We’ve discovered some significant problems with leadership development that impact your ability to develop and grow leadership throughout your organization – something critical to your success. And, I’m excited to share with you over several brief videos the breakthroughs we’ve had in the process of dealing with those problems
You know that the soft skills side of your job, the people side, the leadership side, is very important to your success and your security in your career. You do know though that people who aren’t good at the people side are vulnerable. Their jobs are vulnerable. They are at risk in their roles.
The so-called “hard part of the job”, the “technical aspects,” the parts we’ve put most of our education and experience hours into, can more and more be outsourced. That’s bad news. The good news is that the leadership part can NOT be outsourced. And, it is in high demand. So the soft side, the leadership side is critical to ensuring your success in the future — more so than ever before. If you didn’t realize that, you probably wouldn’t be here.
There’s a problem with that however. It is very challenging to learn and really implement leadership on your own. It’s difficult to read a book or go to a seminar or watch a webinar all on your own and be successful in actually implementing it.
Now, it’s not impossible. But it is challenging. Think about the many things you’ve learned intellectually, but have never actually implemented. There’s a lot you “KNOW,” but you haven’t actually mastered, because you haven’t done it. Knowing and doing are very different. Can you relate to that? A doctor who knows how to do a surgery, but has not actually done it yet, is not someone I want operating on me.
Let me share an interesting story around this. I was working with a major pharmaceutical company that had an internal two-week management development process. They sent quite a few people through this management development program, and I and EL was a key part of the training process.
They also sent a few select people to a $35,000 summer executive program at a major Eastern University. Once a number of executives had attended both the executive University program and the internal program where they learned together as teams, a facilitator went out and interviewed all the executives. He asked a question, “what has been the value of each of these two programs?”
The responses were very telling. Consistently, they said that the $35,000 University Summer executive program was a lot of fun, they met a lot of interesting people, and probably made some friends that will be lifetime friends. They also learned a lot about themselves. From a practical perspective, however, the internal team-oriented management development program was far more valuable and more effective. That was consistent. In those internal sessions, they learned a lot more about how to be more effective leaders, as well as team players.
See it is extremely challenging to go off on your own and learn to be a better leader. How many times have you taken something you’ve read about back to your team – because you thought it was a good idea — and the reception was like a deer in the headlights.
It is much easier, more effective, and far more fun to learn, develop and implement as a team. Because when you do it as a team, you’ve got the opportunity to focus on specific organizational objectives and goals. When you have everyone on the team aligned on accomplishing the same goals while they’re learning leadership abilities, and how to achieve those goals, it’s easy and fun to do. There’s a supportive group focused on the entire team’s success. And there’s far more accountability.
And that was the difference in the internal management development program. it was team-based.
Now having said this, if you can afford to bring us to your site and do a face-to-face seminar or workshop, then I suggest you stop watching this video, pick up the phone and call us, and make plans for doing that team and leadership development solution-oriented workshop.
However, if you’re resource limited, either time or money or both, keep watching because we have a solution for you that changes the game and makes our work — the work of enlightened leadership solutions — proven with some 50,000 people from 67 countries over the last 23 years, accessible to a whole new group of people, teams and organizations. We’re changing some old paradigms in the learning and development industry. Stay tuned!
Let me share an accidental example of this team-based learning in action. In this case, administrative management and executives of a major West Coast University were going through a year-long leadership development program led by our company. I personally facilitated one of the sessions on-site there at the University, and several people made comments that they were getting a lot of value out of the weekly videos that they were receiving from us as part of this year-long learning process. I was, of course, pleased, because I personally created a number of the videos. But I certainly wanted to know more. “How are you using the learning videos?” I asked.
Without exception, the people who went out of their way to acknowledge the value they were receiving from the weekly videos said it was because they were sharing the videos with their team and discussing the concepts in the video, including what made sense about it, how they could use it on their own teams, challenges, solutions, and especially how the ideas, concepts and tools could be useful in accomplishing their challenging goals.
Do you see what they were doing? They were creating their own team-based learning by taking advantage of our weekly video series , and it wasn’t part of the requirement of their learning process. The best managers just saw the opportunity and jumped all over it.
Think about what happens. When you focus on your own team goals and objectives, you’ve got the whole team working with you, and you hold each other accountable for accomplishing those objectives – while you’re all learning to be better leaders – and yes, leadership can and should come from anyone and everyone on the team – when it is appropriate for them to do so.
Now, when we talk about the idea of having your whole team involved in a learning and development environment, do you automatically think,”oh geez, the cost of learning just went up!” Did you think that? Well… you’d be wrong.
We, ELS, are completely changing the paradigm of pricing in learning and development – at a time when leadership development at all levels of organizations is so critical. Imagine developing your whole team and all it’s members for the price of training just one person. More on that in an upcoming video.
Ok, that’s enough for now. In the next video – coming in a few days – we don’t want to bombard you with too much – we’ll talk about another key aspect of developing your leadership skills that is very important for you to know and understand. I’m excited about the breakthrough this new piece represents.
Now, please do me a favor. Make any comments: positive comments, negative comments, or any questions, concerns, anything that’s on your mind about any of this, please make your comments below. I would love to see them.
We’ll talk again soon.
Ed
