Leadership development in the Moment

Leadership development should be part of everyday work life, but often, it’s not. Julie Winkle Giulioni describes the situation in her post, “‘Pop-ups:’ A Promising Model for Development.”

“Too frequently, development is treated like the businesses in which it operates. Managers have fixed times and places where coaching and mentoring occur. Individual development-planning sessions and performance reviews are scheduled for the same time each year. Development conversations are relegated to formal spaces like offices and conference rooms.”

Instead of formal, scheduled times for helping a team member develop, why not seize the opportunities that pop up in the normal course of business. Leadership development in the moment has lots of benefits.

Leadership development in the moment is perfect timing

Think about how you deal with your children. You don’t wait for a scheduled meeting to suggest something to them or correct a dangerous behavior. You seize the moment when memories are fresh, and motivation is highest. And, you also prevent a behavior from becoming a habit.

Leadership development in the moment is good damage control

If your teammate is doing something that creates problems for others, catching it early and correcting it is a win. If you change the behavior now, you prevent problems in the future.

Leadership development in the moment is the natural way

Formal, scheduled development sessions with agendas of saved-up issues collected over days or weeks or months is just unnatural. It doesn’t work anywhere else in life and it doesn’t work when we’re helping aspiring leaders develop.

Seize the moments, plural, every day to help aspiring leaders develop. Praise progress and effective behavior to help it continue. Catch problems and behavior issues when they’re small and easy to change.

Wally Bock

Wally Bock is a coach, a writer and President of Three Star Leadership.