4 ways to reframe leadership development

I'm interested to find use cases of online approaches to leadership development but meaningful examples seem to be thin on the ground.  

My interest is in collaborating with people who either are or would like to take a wholehearted approach to using online methods to teach leadership and management.  And by wholehearted, I mean placing online learning upfront as the primary source of teaching.  Not a blend with the classroom, but the primary content resource. 

Learning that has required mandatory oversight, for example regulatory topics like safeguarding, and GDPR, or training to support the implementation of new systems or induction, have made the switch to online learning much faster.  Some of what has driven this has to do with the need to produce evidence to regulators.  And this ticking the box rationale has created an image problem when applying online approaches to higher order social and emotional topics.

The best that can be said of online learning for leadership development is that it is now not uncommon to find programmes that blend synchronous classroom sessions with a-synchronous e-learning.   But, in my experience at least, the classroom session remains the primary teaching method and the online material is treated as something like homework to be done pre or post workshop by the super-committed.    

Online content to teach leadership and management practices is now widely available and much of it is of a very high quality - licenced off-the-shelf content from CrossKnowledge, SkillSoft, Cegos and others to the free to use resources like TED videos, podcasts, books, etc.    

Reframing leadership development

Whilst there will never be a one-size-fits-all approach, I do think there is a significant opportunity to apply online learning to leadership development.  Doing so would be strongly learner-centric, would produce deep learning and consistent quality every time as well as delivering the tried and tested cost benefits of e-learning.

To move in the direction in which I'm interested would require leadership development to be reframed.   

Self directed development

Mainstream practice in leadership development is typically a classroom event of some kind, mirroring our early experiences in education. 

In a corporate setting, I have long been uncomfortable with the ways in which classroom courses spoon-feed learners.  Self-directed learning is not what is done.  Instead, everything about the learning is directed by the trainer: the learning need, objectives, content, the sequencing and so on will have been defined by somebody other than the learners themselves.  The provision of 'take-outs' that summarise the 'top 10' things that need attention make it too easy for the student and remove any challenge.   

I'm curious as to why everybody involved - from the sponsors to learning and development departments - default to acting as gatekeepers of the learning process rather than enablers of self-directed learning.  I think it's because the status quo exerts such a vice-like grip on practice that we take for granted what's in plain sight.  And training and coaching suppliers have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo too.

However, if we create the conditions in which we enable and truly challenge and expect learners to take responsibility to self-direct their learning they will do so.  All the time we make decisions for them we are lessening the impact.  Which is a paradox of course since the purpose of every management training event, whether explicit or tacit, is, to some degree or other, to enable personal behavioural change. 

The enablers of a self-directed approach follow below. 

1. Creating a space to learn...mastery generates confidence

People like to feel competent and, in my experience, the drive to challenge oneself and really being able to master something creates deep learning and confidence.  But this can only occur if the learner is expected and allowed to follow their interests.  

This might seem like common sense, but it's more subtle than we might think.  Our interests, our hopes, our dreams are quite ephemeral.  They can appear briefly before disappearing just as quickly as we meet others' expectations.  If we treat these interests as being something like waiting in a hide to see a wild animal, we can get a sense of how patient we have to be to allow these interests time to surface and to be worked on.  The pressures on training programmes to produce quick fixes are enormous and work against providing an open space to learn, but it's really important if we want to produce deep-seated, long lasting behavioural change.

2. Enabling workers to forge their own path and make their own choices

However tempting it is to define and prescribe what others need to do to develop social skills like leadership and management, doing so is the wrong way of approaching things.  Management competences are difficult to develop because they are nebulous and messy and are essentially acquired through experience.  

When it comes to leading and managing others, learners aren't empty vessels waiting to be filled.  They come with their own experiences of life and the learning should release what's already inside of them.  Context is everything and it's the learners who are best placed to know what they need.  

And if it sounds like I am making a tacit case for coaching to feature more strongly, I'm not.  I know coaching is popular and is often included as an element of post-course support to help make learning stick, but it's an example of another prescribed approach by L&D.  At face value, the offer of coaching support seems helpful but its prescription in the design assumes that the learner either can't or won't make a behavioural change without professional intervention.  This needs to be challenged. What might be the alternatives?   

Learners are resourceful and if we structure a programme or course to encourage self-directed learning, which might for example include problem solving challenges linked to a learner's context, then we are more likely to help the learner help themselves to find their own path.       

 

3. Create a framework or scaffolding   

Some level of structure is important to provide purpose, direction and motivation.   Things like start and end dates for the programme of learning, an assessment process - I like and use end-of-programme presentations - and some level of completion reward, like a certificate, are important.

As noted above, at a deeper level, the framework should create a philosophical 'space to learn'.  Something that genuinely and patiently enables people to confront uncertainty and ambiguity.  To be able to allow them to surface the questions and issues that come from their lived-experience, rather than a generic set of needs arrived at from aggregating the training needs of a larger target group.    

4. Content - curation not dictation

Since there is already a large base of licensed off-the-shelf courses and free resources, the most helpful task that we can do is to curate those materials that are likely to be useful.  There may well be some courses or resources that should be treated as mandatory but the balance should favour the elective elements chosen by the learner.   There should also be the scope for the learner to find and use their own resources.  For example, well curated resources can often open up pathways to other content and learners should be encouraged to follow their interests.

Conclusion

At the heart of my interests in management and leadership development is to develop approaches that enable self-directed learning.  Online learning isn't the only means to this end, but in the corporate context it has a great deal to offer in terms of  quality, time and cost.  Displacing mainstream practice and replacing it with online approaches won't be for all but I know it works - if you are interested, please follow these links [Online leadership -does it work?] and [Do we need management courses? - revisited 3 years on...] to my own use case which relate to a consultancy assignment I did with a global mining company. 

An area that I am exploring further is how Learning Experience Platforms might help to enhance a self-directed learning culture.  For example, peer-to-peer learning and semantic analysis of natural language processing look like fruitful ways to engage learners and produce deep learning. This excellent white paper by Ben Betts, HT2 Labs guide to Learning Experience Platforms is well worth a read.

I'd welcome comments and if you would like to make contact, please email me.  See my profile for details.

Photo by Oli Gibbs on Unsplash