1. The trouble with American
leaders is a lack of self knowledge.
2. The trouble with American
leaders is their lack of appreciation for the nature of leadership
today.
3. The trouble with American
leaders is their focus on concepts that separate (communities, nations,
disciplines, fields, individuals) rather than connect.
4. The trouble with American
leaders is their ignorance of the world and of U.S. interdependence
- a lack of world-mindedness. (Today referred to as global.)
5. The trouble with American
leaders is their inattention to values, forgetting to ask "why" and
"what for" - instead focusing on how and what.
6. The trouble with American
leaders is that they do not know how to make changes, to analyze "social
architecture", and to create a team that can make something happen.
7. The trouble with American
leaders is an insufficient appreciation of the relevance of stakeholders,
of the implications of pluralism, and of the fact that nobody is really
in charge. Therefore each leader is partly in charge of the situation
as a whole.
8. The trouble with American
managers is that they are not sufficiently aware of the context or
the external environment, of whatever it is they are responsible for
doing.
In my experience, training
and assessing thousands of managers and executives, that the list remains
as relevant and problematic today as ever. Despite hundreds of thousands
of publications on the subject of leadership, the dearth of leadership
talent remains. In the evaluation of most who study such things it has
worsened, especially in the public sector where the resources for learning
are more generous by far than in the private sector. Our own research
leads us to the conclusion that three problems persist.
1. The vast majority of organizations
and leaders alike do not see the need for personal development. Most
have never had any leadership training. For nearly all a week of training
is the total training they have had in their entire career. The financial
success of the technocrat and the emphasis on entrepreneurism in the
past two decades has lead to a sort of interpersonal arrogance in many
organizations. This has led to a dramatic resurgence of union/organizing
activity in the past few years.
2. The training that is offered
teaches people about leadership or about methodologies but too often
does not provide near enough experience, coaching, or practice to build
skills.
3. The modeling of leadership
and the opportunity for mentoring by accomplished leaders does not exist.
So often we have found that
leaders attending our extremely experience and practice based leadership
courses are most challenged as real learning begins to occur, far beyond
anything that occurs in academically based or on-line types of courses.
On-going coaching or mentoring is a critical element. All of our courses
now include follow-up and organization-wide commitment. Stephen Covey's
most powerful courses, in like manner, involve repeated attendance over
time. Nevertheless many leaders continue to spend their $69 to attend
an entertaining or motivating lecture or road show of some sort (the
myth of sales training involves similar exposure to motivational tapes
and lectures) and call it "training".
In a similar manner, too
many organizations continue to use a 12 minute psychological inventory
or personality test in the false belief that testing a candidate will
help them make better choices. The value of an audition process, replacing
the notoriously poor track record of interviewing or of psychological
testing for the purpose of selection has been proven in hundreds of
serious studies. This is how we assess leaders for our client. We give
them the challenge or the problem and let them solve, present, sell,
decide, innovate, or demonstrate their ability or whatever else you
need to know, we evaluate while we watch and assess. Testing and interviewing
does not work because the candidate does not know himself or herself
well enough to give accurate answers. Again the research on this subject
continually proves that the less competent the candidate is, the more
competent they truly believe they are. They simply have no way to know.
Yet the more competent the candidate is the less competent they believe
they are. The more the person knows, the more aware they are of how
much more can be learned.
Before you consider any training
or selection process, ask yourself "to what degree will this experience
close the gaps in these 8, nearly universal, needs." Ask others in your
organization to read over the list of 8 propositions. Chances are anyone
you ask will agree with each, and perhaps even be able to expound on
all, as you yourself have probably done. In the same way they can discuss
the practices of basketball, golf, or child rearing. The question you
must resolve is "can they do what they know needs to be done?". Invest
in real development and in proven selection techniques. The investment
is minimal and the payoffs can be measured exponentially.
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