Drawbacks of leadership development and training Online or in person, the company will have to shell out money for training. The process also costs the company time. Mentoring a promising employee can fulfill their potential, but it takes time away from the mentor's other tasks. In the case of a European retail bank that wanted to improve its sales results, the skill that mattered most (but the one that was scarce) was the ability to persuade and motivate its peers without the formal authority of direct management.
This art of influencing other people outside formal hierarchical lines goes against the rigid structures of many organizations. In this company, it was critical for sales managers to convince the IT department to change the systems and approaches to work that were burdening managers in the sales organization, whose time was desperately needed to introduce important sales acceleration measures. When managers were able to focus on changing systems and work approaches, the bank's productivity increased by 15%. When it comes to planning the program curriculum, companies face a delicate balance.
On the one hand, face-to-face programs (many of them in environments similar to those of a university) are valuable, since they offer participants time to take a step back and escape the pressing demands of a daily job. On the other hand, even after very basic training sessions, adults usually retain only 10 percent of what they hear in class, compared to almost two-thirds when they learn by doing. In addition, flourishing leaders, however talented, often strive to turn even their most powerful experiences outside the company into front-line behavior change. One approach is to assess the extent of behavior change, perhaps through a 360-degree feedback exercise at the beginning of a program and then another exercise after 6 to 12 months.
Leaders can also use these tools to demonstrate their own commitment to real change for themselves and for the organization. An executive director we know commissioned his own 360-degree feedback exercise and published the results (good and bad) for everyone to see on the company's intranet, along with a personal commitment to improve. Leadership development (LD) programs are popular with many organizations and are offered to their employees. As part of their development program for effective leadership within the organization.
However, there is growing concern about their usefulness and about the problem of most of them. The main problem is that they are ineffective and often lead to poor results. This is because they are usually based on outdated theories and models that ignore the role of emotions in leadership. As a result, many lifelong learning programs produce emotionally weak leaders.
Incapable of dealing with the stress or leadership challenges they face in the organization. Ultimately, this can harm your organizations and employees. Another problem is that professional development programs often don't offer solutions. To leadership challenges that are specific to the workplace.
