Hope Springs Eternal for HR & Leadership

Author: Dave Crisp

18 May

Yet another article, this time on the Training Zone UK site, points out that poor leadership abounds – case in point being the troubled banks – despite the great amount of leadership training offered today, which is especially widespread in those very organizations. Great point. We teach it, but it isn’t learned. Or perhaps those who actually emerge at the top of organizations are frequently the ones who pay no attention.

Here we have the core puzzle of leadership development. The best training programs are established by many of these poor leaders who get to the top. The programs focus on skills that make for better leadership. In my own experience, top leaders were invited to speak at company training programs and gave impressive speeches touching on all the key principles, which they then ignored applying in their own behavior, with disastrous results.

Nevertheless, the article goes on to say, we will see dramatic improvement in future thanks to today’s insightful training. Really? If so, it clearly won’t be the training, but the attendees who make the difference. We’ve been teaching servant leadership, situational leadership and dozens of other effective models for 50 years. Still only a handful of truly effective leaders exist in top roles today.

We point the finger of fault in many directions – business schools, lack of measurement, poor HR – but we don’t face the likely fact that it is all of us and none of us who are to blame. Slowly, but surely we advance and tolerate poor leaders because they have the old-fashioned look of charisma, control and confidence that others lack and we can’t see anyone else being ready. We ignore evidence, training, common sense and examples of the best leadership styles to promote.

Only if a new generation of leaders and staff refuse to work with or for poor managers will we see this start to change. Will that be Gen X or Y or Millennials? Time will tell. In the mean time, the hard drivers, who think they have all the answers will likely continue to surge toward the top while the ‘continuous learner’ types who would make far better choices continue to question their readiness, along with everyone who makes the selections.

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