If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new experiences, thoughts and actions. -Verne Harnish
One of my all time favorite quotes (above) from the author of Scaling Up and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: Further supporting this idea is Research from the National Training Laboratories.
Wisdom I’ve Learned in my 15+ years Developing Leaders:
1. Your ultimate effectiveness as a leader will be evaluated on how well you develop others. How are you currently developing your people?
2. Integrate tools and best-practices into your leadership development program to drive engagement/impact. For example:
- For personal accountability, provide an online tracker with specific instructions and follow-up. Model > Coach > Require.
- To teach personal or strategic planning, provide a planning template with instructions and give them an assignment to present their plan to the team.
- For teaching conflict resolution, give them a model and a mock role play.
- To develop coaching skills, give them a model and have them experience being coached and then ask them to coach using the model.
3. The “Talent War” and retaining High Potentials is won by offering better growth/development opportunities. Especially with millennials! They demand it.
4. Keep your tools and best-practices stupidly simple. If your strategies, plans, systems, processes, seem complicated, they are probably wrong!
5. The use of a new tools/process creates experiences that inform Team Beliefs > Actions > Results and shapes your culture. To learn more about behavioral change at an organizational level and to create the culture you’ve always wanted, read Change the Culture, Change the Game by Tom Smith and Roger Connors.