“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.â€
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Ajax, our guide dog puppy in training is being stretched each day to reinforce new habits and to learn new things. As a leader, we are learning about the importance of “developmental assignments to help him to respond to new challenges in a way that doesn’t stress him but stimulates an eagerness to learn and grow. The trick is finding the right “developmental challenge” so he is not overly stressed and one that isn’t too easy or just boring.
Some new research offers some insights about the importance of “developmental activities” to enhance the skills of talent. It also sheds light on how developmental “challenges” can have detrimental outcomes if it is too taxing or promotes too much anxiety. Since 45% of the $56 billion that organizations spend on leadership development we might expect that we have a pretty good return on investment. Actually, formal training programs contribute less than 10% of a leader’s development and estimates are that over 70% of all leader development really happens informally and through on-the-job experiences.
Based on a study of 225 on-the-job experiences with 60 managers, research by DeRue & Wellman (2009) suggest that the relationship between developmental challenge and leadership skill development exhibits a pattern of diminishing returns ((DeRue, D. & Wellman, N. (2009). Developing Leaders Via Experience: The Role of Developmental Challenge, Learning Orientation and Feedback Availability. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 859-875)). Their findings suggest that developmental challenges (a feature of the experience) are positively associated to leadership skill development but only up to a certain point. If the developmental challenge was too stressful or evoked too high a level of anxiety the value of the development experience actually caused “cognitive overload and diminished leadership skill development.”
Most interesting, these authors found that the pattern of diminishing returns were most apparent for interpersonal and business leadership skills suggesting that enhancing social competence and emotional intelligence through developmental experiences might need to be very carefully orchestrated.
Finally, the authors found one antidote to minimize these “diminishing returns.” It seems that talent who had access to feedback was less likely to experience the negative impacts associated with high levels of developmental challenges. Although the authors only measured “availability” of feedback, it is likely that quality and frequency of feedback will also shape our developmental experiences are assimilated by talent.
I am learning how “tone of voice” is so important to Ajax in learning to differentiate between commands (“leave it” and “down” have a certain directive tone but “come” is much more playful).
Lessons about Developmental Challenges for Leadership Development
1. Compare your talent’s current skills and competence level to those required by the developmental challenge or on-the-job experience. The personality of the individual you are dealing with is critically important–for example, those who are more entrepreneurially oriented (high on openness to experience) will be most comfortable taking new risks and dealing with the most ambiguity and even failure. Those most neurotic are likely to be easily overwhelmed in new situations that “stretch” them to grow and develop.
If the reaction of the talent is to report high levels of anxiety, fear or of they “freeze” and demonstrate “behavioral paralysis” you have inadvertently overwhelmed them and should immediately re-evaluate the challenge or reduce its complexity or difficulty.
2. Built in greater frequency and availability of ongoing feedback (both praise and feedforward) as this seems to help moderate any negative impacts associated with overly difficult developmental challenges.
3. Look for ways to enhance peer support to reinforce new behaviors, analyze and share difficulties and build a supportive community for new behavioral learning to take place. These forms of support can occur through both informal social networks as well as structured relationships. Helping talent develop informal support and peer coaching might be one of the most important ways that organizations can enhance the developmental value of on-the-job experiences.
4. Encourage any mechanisms to facilitate self-refection (e.g., developmental journals, peer support meetings) and transfer of learning from the on-the-job experiences back to the job.
Well, I’m off to take Ajax for his next Guide Dog puppy training. It’s really designed for me to become a much better leader of future leaders. I hope they don’t challenge me too much today…Be well….
[tags]StressScan, health stressors, financial stressors, stress, health, job burnout, hassles, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack[/tags]
Ken Nowack
Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)
