The Best Leadership Development is Relational
Most organizational leaders will tell you that one of their primary needs is for more leaders, at all levels. It’s a universal problem and yet solutions are everywhere. We live in a time of unprecedented leadership development resources yet we still struggle with identifying, developing and equipping people to lead in our organizations.
If you Google “leadership development” you get 7 million results. If you search leadership on Amazon you’ll see over 65,800 books. There are over 5,000 leadership videos on YouTube. So why do we still have a shortage of well equipped Leaders? (Note: I capitalize the L in leaders because I define a true Leader as a person who exhibits intentional influence towards a defined outcome. More on that coming in a future blog.)
I’ve found a major problem in developing Leaders is that too often we’re looking first for a program, curriculum or a special event to equip leaders rather than looking to Leaders to equip Leaders. That’s right, the answer is not so much found in a program but in a person – a Leader.
Real leadership development is most effective in the context of relationship. People-on-people, one-on-one, life-on-life. Leadership competencies are not just taught, they’re caught as the learner interacts with and observes an experienced Leader. That’s why the most effective leadership development is done in mentoring or coaching relationships.
Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of room for classroom learning (virtual or in-person) for skills and competencies, but nothing can take the place of shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face, and walk-with-me kind of learning.
Here’s the tried and true mentoring model that works for any kind of people development: I do, you watch > I do you, you help > You do, I help > You do I watch.
It’s that simple. It’s development in the context of relationship. For centuries this was the model for the apprentice to learn from the master. It works for creating a skilled blacksmith and works for developing Leaders.
Bottom line, any leadership development effort that does not have a commitment to a relational component (i.e. coaching, mentoring) will never succeed in creating Leaders we desperately need.
Aloha!
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About Jason Young. Author, speaker and consultant. Jason Young has been called a “rare breed” when it comes to developing leaders, teams and customer service initiatives. As a former senior-level manager at Southwest Airlines, Jason learned the value of a successful workplace culture. During his 10-years with the airline consistently rated No. 1 in customer service and employee satisfaction, he was a key driver in creating and developing the company’s innovative training programs for its successful leadership and customer service culture that have become renowned in the business world. Today, Jason shares his vision in developing successful corporate cultures and workplace environments with forward-thinking companies, including Starbucks, Coca Cola, Radio Shack and Tyson Foods, to name a few. He has even captured his philosophy of creating high performance cultures in his new book, The Culturetopia Effect. Find out more at www.culturetopia.com