It is not enough to send people to leadership courses. You need to think about why it is needed in the first place. It sounds simple enough, so why does training so often fail?
Leadership expert John Adair claims that too often to less attention is paid to leadership development. Good leadership is fundamental to good business so it makes sense to equip people with the right skills for the role. Yet, John Adair says, despite being one of the most important aspects to get right, it is rare to find an organization willing to spend more than 24 hours thinking about leadership training before sending out on a course.
It is clear that all organizations are under time pressure but there is also the assumption that you don’t have really to think that much about leadership training. You just reach out for the latest theory slap it into a program and outsource it. Problem solved. But not really! That is why so many leadership programs are failing. We believe there should be a thorough organizational analysis that takes into account the objectives for the firm and the individual   training needs. The problem is that too many people are looking for a quick fix. Leadership experts say: “You need at least a five year horizon to grow and develop leaders”.
The golden rule is ownership. Euripides sais: “Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head”. Leadership development is core to the business so companies should always keep control of their leadership development program. You may get help and advice on it but never hand it over. And there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all training. You can’t teach leadership, you learn it. Trainers are not the most influential people on leadership in an organization; it is always the leaders in the organization. The winning combination for developing any leadership strategy is the trinity of the chief executive, HR and a leadership specialist. If you got those three working together, magic can happen. And look for a leadership specialist/ trainer who not only instruct and help people build into their own repertoire the body of knowledge about leadership, but also inspire and make people want to fall in love with leadership. Once you get into that kind of spirit, things start really to change.