When McKinsey & Company asked over 500 executives to rank their top human capital priorities, leadership development came out on top. But most of those same executives think they need to upgrade their programs, according to “Why leadership-development programs fail,” by Pierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane.
“Only 7 percent of senior managers polled by a UK business school think that their companies develop global leaders effectively, and around 30 percent of US companies admit that they have failed to exploit their international business opportunities fully because they lack enough leaders with the right capabilities.”
The authors go on to identify four common leadership development mistakes and suggest ways to overcome them. Here’s their list.
- Overlooking context
- Decoupling reflection from real work
- Underestimating mind-sets
- Failing to measure results
My guess is that that those mistakes aren’t simple, “Ooops!” mistakes. They’re the results of an unwillingness to do the hard spade work necessary for great talent development.
If you regularly conduct talent reviews and use 360 assessments and other tools, you won’t miss the context. You’ll have ways to assess the results of development, too. Those same reviews can make you aware of mind-set issues so you can address them with development activities.
The other key is more subtle. Don’t think of talent development as a few grand events (training programs, developmental assignments, and 360 reviews) separated in time. Instead, think of development as an ongoing process with frequent reviews and reflection, a giant, lifelong active learning project. This is another case where slow and steady wins the race.
