It is said that “The speed of the group is equal to the speed of the leader.” This statement tends to hold true in most cases.  Think about sport teams, families, businesses and professional organizations.  Leaders typically set the direction, create the culture, and the group responds to the leadership.  However, it is not uncommon to see senior management and executives lacking in the qualities most people equate with good leaders.  Frequently, those in top leadership roles have achieved their status through achieving certain key results.  However, their method of how they achieved these results may not have been “pretty!”

Other people in the organization observe this behavior and then follow suit.  Mid-level managers conclude that it is not important to master good leadership skills and they will model the executives’ behaviors.  As the undesirable behavior permeates throughout the organization, performance is negatively impacted.  Sales dip, costs increase, and employee dissatisfaction and turnover increases

Organizations respond by implementing leadership skills training.  However, interestingly enough, the focus tends to be on middle management.  The rationale is that middle management touches the most people and they are the leaders of the future.  Executives sign-off on this investment and insure that their subordinates spend the time attending leadership development training.  However, the missing piece is that the executives do not see the need to develop their leadership skills.  Their rationale includes:  “I am already a leader”, “I get results”, “I don’t have the time”, etc. The senior management and executive team fail to recognize that they are the source of the undesirable behavior.

Leadership Development Training – The Executive Challenge

The challenge is how can an organization break the pattern and have executive participation in leadership development training if the CEO/President is one of the culprits?

Greg Swenton, CEO of Ryder, Inc. (a Fortune 500 company) stated at Women Executive Leadership, that he recognizes the importance of great leadership.  Ryder’s entire leadership team is measured on key capacities that they deem as desirable qualities in their organization.  To reinforce their commitment all leaders are measured on their effectiveness in these capacities in their performance evaluations.

Once there is buy-in from the executive team to develop their leadership skills, there are various approaches to leadership development training.  Retreats, group classes, one-on-one coaching, mastermind groups, and self study courses provide opportunities to customize training to fit the organizations’ needs.  The best results are achieved when:

1. An integrated approach is applied: It’s best to couple one-on one coaching for executives that attend group classes, retreats or take self study courses.  Most executives keep their guard up in front of others.  One-on-one coaching provides a “safe-space” for the executive.  Most executives find one-on-one coaching extremely insightful and beneficial.
2. Executives are held accountable for their leadership style: Most executives are accustomed to being accountable for hard line results (sales, profitability, growth, etc.).  It’s imperative that the executives are also held accountable for their behaviors.  Accountability should be tied to compensation and promotion opportunities.
3. Ongoing development: Recognize that having a mindset and culture of continuous improvement means that some form of ongoing leadership development training should be implemented for everyone.

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