Leadership development: Why big, bold bets like experimenting with a radical idea matter

Moral Intelligence is a lesser known leadership trait but is essential for a leader, actually for everyone.

While working in the area of human development in an organisation/corporate context, I discovered a few principles that I believe should form the bedrock of any leadership development programme. My view is that these principles are not only confined to corporates, but they also apply to all aspects of life where leadership development matters. Part one of the article had set the context and detailed out 10 leadership development principles.

In this second part, I’ll pick each leadership development principle and link it with a few examples, to make it practical for the readers. Some examples are available in the public domain, and others are based on my consulting/coaching experience, helping different professionals and organisations.

One of the best leadership development consulting assignment that I designed was for a leading information technology services organisation where the business head/CEO clearly defined the context - the organisation was growing at a steady pace, with more than 22 percent operating margin, globally a renowned and trusted brand. Their clients loved them for the ownership and implementation rigour (even if it meant dealing at times with the scope creep). However, the organisation was trailing in the thought leadership quadrant of leading global industry analysis firms; the reason was that the IT leaders couldn’t connect IT solutions to the business situation. A well-defined problem by the client was an easy kill for the organisation; however, engaging in a conversation to define a problem was a big capability gap. What it meant was to build capability in seasoned, successful global IT leaders to connect business levers to the IT solutions. The IT leaders needed to closely partner with the transformation (business consulting) team to unlock higher value for the organisation. Sharing this context helped in creating an effective design for the intervention.

This belief is critical in designing and implementing a leadership development solution. In an organisation where the belief is that leadership is a special gift endowed on select few individuals and others can try as hard as possible but can’t ever attain a certain leadership level, you may design a leadership development intervention with a heavy bias on the assessment side, to identify the golden geese and then allow them to perform the miracle. Whereas if you have an organisation that believes leadership can be learnt, cultivated and enhanced, it will have a culture of mentoring, coaching and tolerance for failures. They won’t look for Midas to turn everything into gold. A great example is Amazon, where the founder Jeff Bezos once wrote to shareholders: ‘If the size of your failures isn't growing, you're not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle.’ Therefore, some bold and big bets like experimenting with a radical idea can be considered in designing a leadership development solution. (To know more about this principle, refer to the book Mindset-The new psychology of success by Carol S. Dweck).

Critical Leadership qualities like resilience, courage and compassion are tested in certain demanding, challenging and unusual situations. Therefore, once those qualities are identified (linked to your organisational culture, context or leadership model), the design of the leadership development intervention should create opportunities to simulate those situations in a not so obvious way. I am reminded of a situation written in a book called The Professional by Subroto Bagchi. In the chapter titled ‘Taking Charge’, he describes a situation where he asked his direct reports to board a bus to a place far away from Bangalore for an annual exercise. On the way the bus was stopped by some angry villagers, the reason cited was that the car ahead of the bus had mowed down a goat. The executives on the bus were taken aback, the mob was armed and most of the executives didn’t know what to do. After some time, two executives got up from their seats, got down from the bus to deal with the villagers. Later they realised it was all staged to check who could be counted upon in a certain kind of crisis situation. An important thing to remember is, some situations/events allow us to test the degree of leadership potential, adjudged through certain qualities manifested/not manifested by different individuals, so that they can be developed accordingly. It does not mean to label folks into ‘Haves and Have nots.’

A good leadership development programme will allow participants to reflect upon their actions, values, priorities and beliefs and then commit to take certain actions, which will allow participants to test some of their methods and beliefs and will also inculcate new beliefs/methods wherever required. To implement this principle, it is critical that a programme should have an ‘application’ opportunity like a field or action learning project; at the same time it needs to have a ‘guided reflection’ opportunity in the form of coaching/mentoring.  The two together create a healthy balance of evaluating existing levels of capabilities and experimenting with newer set of capabilities; also they significantly enhance the impact of formal learning delivered through training or workshops. This is corroborated by a study done by Olivero, Bane and Kopelman. The finding of their study was ‘training alone increased productivity by 22.4 percent, whereas training combined with coaching interventions increased productivity by 88 percent.’

To elaborate this principle, I would like to highlight some points from an interview of Rahul Yadav, who was the co-founder of Housing.com. In his interview to Forbes India, he discusses the key takeaways from his unceremonious exit and his way forward. Rahul shares how initially his behaviour was immature, he was the single point of authority, nobody could question him, his obsession for work and success created certain kinds of beliefs like ‘one shouldn’t hire married people’.

At a later stage, the idea of settling down, getting into a relationship helped him see what life is in a broader and deeper sense, it also helped him realise empathy as a virtue. (Here is the link for the full interview). A leadership development intervention should not be focused only on building/enhancing skills. The inner self of a leader, his/her values, how he/she ascribes meaning to a particular phenomenon, his/her fears, inhibitions etc. all of these need to be built-in to create a comprehensive and impactful programme.

There are many models and frameworks that help to bring out and create this integration, in my experience I found the NEWS model created by Aviad Goz to be practical and effective in applying this principle.

A holistic leadership development programme must incorporate elements from think, act and relate dimensions. If it focuses only on one or two, there must be a strong reason. It should provide opportunities to learn different methods of analysing and capturing data, the latest and relevant approaches in this field. At the same time it should create possibilities where professionals can courageously harness their judgment and intuition in situations where there is limited or no data. Even when there is data available and our judgment or intuition has a different view, one should learn the ways of expressing it. In a world which is characterised by VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) and a huge appetite for data, professionals will encounter situations where data is/will be in abundance or there is limited or/no reliable data. In both the cases, our creative side should be nurtured to create a potential differentiator. Methods that allow us to connect to our inner voice, whether it is mindfulness or creating opportunities to be in flow, should be a part of the design of leadership development interventions. The design should also incorporate elements where participants need to deal with and decide about situations full of perceived opposing forces, e.g. compassion and courage. Discussing real-life situations, business or otherwise from different philosophical standpoints like Utilitarianism vs Kantianism is one of the ways of doing it. The union of technology and philosophy is inevitable in the coming years.

The focus should be on leadership development and not only on leader development. Across levels in the organisation or an institution we need leaders and therefore to focus on only a particular stratum like top leadership or a specific category e.g. high potential employees, is a narrow view. In order to provide opportunities for a broader set of employees within a given amount of resources, creative thinking is required. Use of technology and existing learning resources (available on the internet), enabling managers and leaders to play the role of ‘leaders as teachers’, integrating leadership development with other processes like career planning, succession management etc. are some of the ways to deploy this principle.

An organisation can create and deploy learning and development infrastructure, e.g. partnerships with universities, creating women learning groups, rolling out a training calendar, launching a mentoring portal etc. However, hunger and desire to learn and develop should be intrinsic. At times it is important to understand what method of learning is interesting and practical for certain types of learners, e.g. a constantly mobile young sales force in a highly competitive and deadline-oriented market, may prefer small-size learning packets delivered in audio visual format accessible on mobile devices. To discover, explore and leverage learning opportunities is an individual’s prerogative, one must provide feedback to the organisation to create an infrastructure that makes learning accessible and scalable. The desire to launch an upgraded version of your own professional self on a regular basis is critical for survival and growth, this needs to be understood by all working professionals and should then translate into a call to action.

The design of leadership development intervention should create opportunities for expansion in different arenas. Some examples are cross-functional projects; these provide an opportunity to expand exposure to different parts of the business. A challenging case study may expand thinking in various dimensions and expand the usage of skills and knowledge covered in the programme. Participation in a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative can expand sensitivity in areas that are perhaps yet untouched and unexplored by learners. Creating learning groups physical and virtual expands professional network. Working on a challenging problem/situation expands your view about your own self and your overall capabilities. Leading a team of co-learners presents an opportunity to expand collaboration and diversity quotient. Working in a different market or geography expands views and knowledge about different cultures. Participating in a sensitivity lab may expand an understanding of inner self dynamics. What areas are critical from an expansion perspective should be considered and closed at the design stage of the intervention.

A key question that must be answered during the design phase is ‘How would we observe and/or measure the impact of this leadership development initiative?’ I’ll go back to my first example of the IT services company where I was tasked to develop seasoned IT global leaders in the area of business orientation. The impact was agreed at different levels i.e. short term and long term, as well as qualitative and quantitative. One level of impact was assessed on minimum number of participants from each batch getting an opportunity to work with the transformation team on a consulting project within three months of programme closure for a particular batch. Another short-term measure was programme effectiveness score given by the participants in a survey as well as in a focus group format, conducted by the company’s HR department. A business-linked measure was the completion of business projects initiated as part of the programme and conversion of a certain percentage of projects from each batch into bigger business initiatives involving senior leaders and other teams. Long term impact was to create a ready pool of business savvy global IT leaders that would shift the needle of organisational ranking in the thought leadership quadrant of leading global industry analysis.

In this two-part article, my attempt was to share the leadership development principles, their impact (when they are applied and at times when they are not applied) and the ways to implement them so that we can expect long-lasting, harmonious and appropriate results from such initiatives.