Leadership Development: Are you getting your monies worth?

I received a text and from the message I knew my client was fed up.

My VP must dislike me because no matter what I and my team accomplish it’s never good enough. At each update she just blasts us and says it’s not enough. I thought my job was to make operations happy and all I’ve heard from them is "wonderful job!"

What do I need to do to please her!!!!

I picked up the phone and called her immediately.

My client was hired by a 100-year-old mid-western retail company in the midst of a turnaround to work in the supplier procurement office for She was over one of 4 teams reporting to the Chief Procurement Officer and now 7 months later her team was getting high praise from vendors, the Operations management team and across the company a reputation for delivering results.

As she worked to get a sense of the past, she discovered the project she was charged with supporting the Operations Department's vision to create a delightful on-line customer experience. What they didn’t tell her at the time of hire was she was leading the third attempt to get it right.

Over 40 years of statistics point to “nearly 50% of new hires fail within the first 6 months”. As we reviewed her first 7 months, 7 people left the Procurement department. A number that HR was now focused on. The question at hand was "Why were so many leaving and why were the other 3 teams were underperforming?"

The interesting thing about this assignment is my client wasn’t the expert over the technical side of the strategy which tells you a lot about her ability to get things done. She correctly surmised for her to be successful we should focus on learning how to turn around an underperforming team whose members didn’t report to her and integrate newly hired top talent on a project that had fail 3 times before.

When I explained that too many executives stopped learning how to lead once they took the class on leadership she was horrified. Most employees assume one of the qualifications for an executive position is a demonstrated ability to manage people well. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true.

I measure success by the results you achieve. In the year 1998 Business Week estimated US businesses spent about $17B on leadership training. In 2014, Bersin by Deloitte estimated the spend at about $15.5B is spent annually. Certainly a drop in spending but what's even more shocking is numerous studies about adult learning have found that adult learners in a lecture setting (which includes off sites, simulations and role plays) forget nearly 50% of what they learn within two weeks. And consider that the most highly trained leaders are often not able to translate their knowledge into experience well you can see why there's just not enough leaders capable of navigating the kind of seismic change facing business today.

Good let along great leadership has a long gestation cycle. Great leadership skills are developed through a process much like apprenticeship programs. You can learn the basics from a book, attending a class, and/or handing the tools but mastery comes when you do real, valuable and relevant work and have access to the knowledge of someone who can help you refine your approach. At every level there's a new devil... each level requires you to adjust your leadership style to fit the challenges at hand. Do it right and the effectiveness of talent is increased and improves the bottom line. Do it wrong and turnover increases the cost of doing business and hurts the bottom line.

In this case, the cost of hiring is passed along to customers and in a business with thin margins it’s just another missed opportunity to reduce the cost of doing business.