When Leadership Training Fails! What should we do about it?

Corporations are the victims of a global training robbery, in 2015 the US companies have spent over $160bn on training with no sufficient ROI, as employees revert back to old practices.

What Goes Wrong ?

The idea that organizational systems—which define roles, responsibilities, and relationships— have a strong impact on individuals’ mindsets and behavior is supported by a number of studies.

Studies show that organizations need “fertile soil” in place before the “seeds” of training interventions can grow. When the researchers looked at a corporate training program aimed at improving problem solving and communication between managers and subordinates, they discovered that success varied across the company.

Improvements were greater in units that had already developed a “psychologically safe” climate in which subordinates felt free to speak up.

From all these streams of research we’ve learned that education and training gain the most traction within highly visible organizational change and development efforts championed by senior leaders. That’s because such efforts motivate people to learn and change; create the conditions for them to apply what they’ve studied; foster immediate improvements in individual and organizational effectiveness; and put in place systems that help sustain the learning

The problem

Six common barriers prevent trainees from applying what they have learned regardless of how motivated they are.

1. Unclear direction on strategy and values, which often leads to conflicting priorities;
2. Senior executives who don’t work as a team and haven’t committed to a new direction or acknowledged necessary changes in their own behavior;
3. A top-down or laissez-faire style by the leader, which prevents honest conversation about problems;
4. A lack of coordination across businesses, functions, or regions due to poor organizational design;
5. Inadequate leadership time and attention given to talent issues; and
6. Employees’ fear of telling the senior team about obstacles to the organization’s effectiveness.

Six steps to override the barrier to change

Step One :

The senior team clearly defines values and and inspiring strategic direction.

Step Two

After gathering candid, anonymous observations and insights from managers and employees, the team diagnoses barriers to strategy execution and learning. It then redesigns the organization’s roles, responsibilities, and relationships to overcome those barriers and motivate change.

Step Three:

Day-to-day coaching and process consultation help people become more effective in that new design.

Step Four:

The organization adds training where needed.

Step Five:

Success in changing behavior is gauged using new metrics for individual and organizational performance.

Step Six

Systems for selecting, evaluating, developing, and promoting talent are adjusted to reflect and sustain the changes in organizational behavior.

Developing the Organization Unit by Unit

Part of creating a favorable context for learning is making sure that every area of the business provides fertile ground. Soil conditions will inevitably vary within an organization, because each region, function, and operating group has its own needs and challenges.

Usually, education programs are not wrong in substance but failed to align with their local priorities and stage of business and organizational development. In other words, trainees groups were not ready for the training they got.

So companies should invest in capability development unit by unit. The corporate-level unit links everyone at the top—the CEO, her senior team, and key business unit, regional, and functional leaders and their key people.

Individual units must consider their needs and capabilities in the context of their own strategy and goals.

Each unit’s leadership team should periodically go through the six steps we’ve described to discover the silent killers that undermine real change, and each team should have a hand in setting its own change agenda (within the context of corporate strategy and values). Those who follow this approach will avoid the low return on investment that results from top-down programs. Common capability-development needs that emerge from unit-by-unit change can, of course, be addressed through a company wide program.

A New Capability Development Strategy

Even in companies with strong leaders and healthy cultures, discrete units require distinctive roles, responsibilities, and relationships—and distinctive capabilities to function in them. Moreover, each unit is probably at a different stage in its development.

So CEOs and their HR chiefs must be sensitive to local variables when defining an integrated change agenda—one that simultaneously addresses performance improvement and capability development. To do that, they should answer the following questions, first at the top and then in each major unit:

• Is the leadership team aligned around a clear, inspiring strategy and set of values?
• Has the team collected unvarnished employee feedback about barriers to effectiveness and performance—including senior managers’ own behavior?
• Has the team redesigned its organization, management systems, and practices to address the problems revealed by that diagnosis?
• Is HR offering consulting and coaching to help employees learn on the job so that they can practice the new attitudes and behaviors required of them?
• Do corporate training programs properly support the change agenda, and will each unit’s leadership and culture provide fertile ground for it?

If your answer to any of those questions is no, your company is probably (with the best of intentions) over-investing in training and education and failing to put talent development in its proper strategic change context.