If one would have learnt by
just reading books, all those who have read Bhagwat Geeta would have become as
adept and achieving as Arjuna.
If listening lectures could
have transformed human beings, all those who sit through sermons and satsang
would have become saints.
On the one hand surveys report
a measly percentage of MBAs being ready for employment. On the other, leading
business dailies report how premier B-schools are attracting managers, with
baseless promises of turning them into leaders.
What slow-down are we speaking
off? This is not new. For centuries we have been wasting precious leadership
development funds on pipe dreams: send them to a branded school and they will
come back as cutting edge leaders. What happened after they came back to their
workplace? What value did they create? What quantum leap did they take their
respective organization through after having attained leadership nirvana?
All talk about ROI and
painstaking efforts of learning officers aimed towards calculating it, are
seemingly more directed towards keeping their jobs intact. Nothing, much has
been done to show how the current paradigm of ‘content-in, leadership-out’
development is not only ineffective but grossly flawed. Nothing much has been
done to highlight that, to develop an individual to take on leadership or any
other role, it needs specialist abilities to enable the process of learning,
not just subject- matter-expertise and academic qualification to roll out
content. In fact the latter is often a hurdle. It is more likely to make the
teacher / trainer stupidly arrogant about the position he / she adorns and the
ego bloated with prefixes and suffixes that embellish his /her name. This
unquestionably is a dis-qualification for anyone who claims to be a facilitator
/ enabler of learning.
What puzzles me, ROI or no ROI,
despite the futility of such programs to deliver tangible results being proven
over ages, why do we continue faltering again and again in choosing wrong
leadership development strategies and making wasteful investments in them? Why
do we not, for once, stop, look around, consult those who are specialists and
then decide on a strategy that can bring business impact out of leadership
development?
There is one more reason for
leadership development programs to not work. Assuming the process of learning
and development is done right; those who come to learn find a huge chasm
between what they learn and what they are expected to practice as leadership.
Look underneath the veneer of leadership glory talked about in seminars. What
do you get to see day in and day out being practiced, particularly in business
organizations? Passing the buck? False agreements? Scapegoating? Thermometer management of symptoms with short
terms fixes? Strategic short changing of customers and employees? And
everything that can help a manager cover his / her back side? There may be
exceptions and that is worse. The leader-to-be is utterly confused. Which to
follow? The exception or the rule? What will be more socially acceptable at
workplace?
Learning happens through an
intricate interplay of three elements: enablement, engagement and environment.
While enablement can still happen effectively, quality of engagement (at least
on paper) can also be ensured through elaborate role definition and fixing
of KRAs, how would one deal with an environment full of inconsistencies in
practices? Also between what is preached and what is practiced? The aspiring
leader comes back to work, developed in the workshop, more alien than ever. He
does not have an environment to apply all that he has learnt. He is not
supported by the informal social fabric prevailing in the organization to
practice the leadership values he has imbibed. He is better off going back to
where he was before he went for the leadership development program. After all
he has a family to feed and a quarter dozen EMIs to pay.
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