How Do You Best Grow Leaders?

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”

Bernice Johnson Reagon

The last guide dog puppy we raised for the blind named Indy was recently dropped from the program in his attempt at becoming a service animal for someone who is sight impaired (he was diagnosed with a bum hip) so now has changed his “major” from special education to “recreation” and now will become part of our family!

As a volunteer puppy raiser for over 20 years, we have learned quite a bit about the importance of “developmental assignments” to help puppies respond to new challenges in a way that won’t stress them but but will positively challenge them to learn and grow.

The trick is finding the right “developmental challenge” so the puppy is not overly stressed or one that isn’t too easy or just boring.

Finding the Right Developmental Assignment to Develop Talent

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.

Developing leaders is a big business. Annually, 45% of the $56 billion that organizations spent on training is for leadership development so we might expect that it should result in a pretty good return on investment. However, formal training programs contribute less than 10% to a leader’s development and estimates are that about 55% 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 were less likely to experience the negative impact associated with high levels of developmental challenges. Although the authors only measured “availability” of feedback, it is likely that the quality and frequency of feedback will also shape developmental experiences.

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 experiencing high levels of anxiety 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. Build 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-reflection (e.g., developmental journals, peer support meetings) and transfer of learning from the on-the-job experiences back to the job.

5. New research by DDI/Conference Board suggests that the original development ratio (70:20:10) rule first proposed by researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is more likely to be 55% on-the job learning, 25% learning from others and 20% formal learning (e.g., workshops) based on a survey of 13,124 leaders.

This finding doesn’t negate the main premise that neuroplasticity and successful behavior change is accelerated when we get talent to try out new behaviors and receive feedforward along with acquiring more insight and knowledge through traditional formal learning opportunities. 

So, for your “talent stars” (i.e., your high performing and high potential employees) you want to facilitate the right mix of coaching/feedback, on-the-job challenging assignments as well as formal skills based training to “sharpen their saw.”

Right now, Indy doesn’t need any more “developmental assignments” but I’ll keep you posted about our next guide dog puppy we take on a bit later this year who definitely will!…Be well….

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)