What is the best and most effective way of developing leadership skills ?
A discussion of the setting and format conducive to optimal learning: didactic leadership training in a homogenous student group VERSUS practical leadership experience in the real-life complexity of a diverse groupA discussion of the setting and format conducive to optimal learning: didactic leadership training in a homogenous student group VERSUS practical leadership experience in the real-life complexity of a diverse group
Look at the composition of the group and the participants in your regular leadership development programme. Look at the way that the programme is delivered - by whom, in what format, using which skills ? Look at the detail of the students' actual learning process: what kind of activities take the bulk of the course time ? What tasks are the students engaged in and which aspects of their personality are activated - what parts of their brains are firing and involved ?
Look at the interactions in the learning group, and how much or how little they have in common with interactions at work (i.e. with the kind of interactions whcih the course is eventually supposed to be preparing for).
And then look at the effects of such training events in everyday practice, once the programme is over and everybody is back at work: the application of models acquired, the retention rate of material covered, the translation of theory into practice.
Is this the most effective way to organise leadership training ?
Are leadership skills best learned by practice or by theory ? By doing or by talking about it, or worse: by hearing about it ?
Is a specialised and homogenous training group of aspiring leaders (typically all of similar age and social background) the best way to go ?
Leadership is a multi-tasking, multi-intelligence activity, requiring mental, emotional and social skills in equal measure. It involves many aspects of our being, many parts of our brain. It cannot be performed or acted -it requires the authentic engagement of who we are. It involves many automatic behaviours and interactional routines.
link: Who is the blueprint for your leadership style ?
For these and many more reasons, leadership is best learned by doing. It is best learned by leading a real group. Even better, it is best learned by leading a diverse, multi-cultural, mixed group that is as diverse and mixed as the team the leader will eventually be responsible for.
Because it involves interpersonal relationships and automatic routines, learning leadership is significantly enhanced by live feedback and many action-reflection learning cycles - that means holistic bodymind learning in the 'here and now'.
In summary: what is a lot more effective than specialised, didactic leadership training in the closed, protected environment of a homogenous group of same-age peers, is to expose yourself to the real-life complexity of organisational diversity and the authenticity of actual group encounters, working within the kind of group that you will eventually have to deal with.
That is the kind of learning environment we are trying to create at Communitas - an environment that is as real an organisational group as you will find, but still somewhat protected by the safety of a particular group atmosphere and the reflective presence of the tutor team who will ensure that any challenges you encounter are worked through to resolution and completion. Thus even real-life difficulties and tricky group situations become empowering sources of learning that will provide an unshakable foundation for your future leadership development and practice. This kind of solidity and experiential confidence will be hard to come by in many other training programmes.
Posted by Michael Soth in