Development of Leadership:
common problems

This article discusses some of the problems in the development of leadership qualities and skills. Leadership and organizational change theories can be too abstract, or too narrowly focused.

This leads to problems in practice.

In general, our approach is practical and hands-on. We want to work as closely as possible with leaders’ day-to-day concerns.

And/but … we are not averse to theory … or (worse) theoretically naïve. We’re not dismissing ideas and concepts. We just happen to get frustrated by theory-practice gaps!

Question: What’s a theory-practice gap?

Answer: A head full of ideas that can’t be applied to real problems…

Ever had a conversation like this?

“I prefer to take a systems approach to organizational change …”

“OK. I see. Yes … But Mary really is struggling to get her new project team to gel. It’s been four weeks ... and my guess is they’re four weeks behind schedule! I want to know exactly how you see her problem.”

“Erm … Well, all teams go through a process of forming, storming, nor …”

“I know that. You know that – and so does Mary! But that doesn’t explain to me how are you going to support her or challenge her. Tell me exactly how you plan to handle this … ”

Voilà … a theory-practice gap!

Two gaps, in fact. Well … one chasm, one trench.

The second idea is a bit closer to the action, but still isn’t likely to guide an appropriate, constructive challenge to the way Mary is leading her team.

In the development of leadership, we’re particularly interested in helping leaders express themselves constructively.

That is, express themselves so they achieve what they want by being clear, effective and focused on specific outcomes ... especially when the required organizational shift is clearly identified.

We’re also interested in how the leadership process is derailed.

In the examples above these theories don’t readily translate into practice. As ideas to bring to the situation, they simply don’t suggest an honest-to-goodness approach to leading Mary through her dilemma.

The second one is a little closer to the action – but not close enough to suggest a definite, practical approach to supporting Mary.

Those ideas about systems, teams and organizational change need a vehicle.

For us, the development of leadership means developing an ability to translate a vision into practical things-to-do that work in a specific context and are responsive to the required organizational change.

But a narrow focus is not necessarily the answer, either. It’s possible to focus too tightly – and miss the big picture:

"I’m not a fan of SMART goals. If you already know about these, the first thing I’d like you to do is forget about them.

"[They’re] great for outcome setting for individual tasks but I have yet to meet a person who has achieved a major vision using SMART goals." 

Michael Heppell, How to be Brilliant, page 50.

The scale of the ideas that guide leadership practice need to be at the scale that the situation demands.

The Development of Leadership: the role of experience

Traditionally, the idea has been that experience will sort this out.

You may have been learning on a training course, diploma, degree or an MBA. The source of many employers’ frustration with graduates (for example) is that study doesn’t have a strong enough focus on the ‘Real World’ of work.

There’s almost an expectation that any new learning needs a phase II where what has been studied has to be re-learned and then applied in context.

We really do prize the learning that takes place when ideas are tested by real experiences. Experience is what usually ‘beds down’ abstract concepts and enables a practitioner to apply them.

But experiences occur in a relatively haphazard way, with haphazard timing. So learning from experience can be a pretty haphazard affair!

And - what’s worse - the process of ‘learning from experience’ has been misunderstood. We don’t necessarily learn from experience; or we may take away negative lessons …

“I’ll never be able to lead a team, I can only work one-to-one with people,” for example. That’s one possible lesson that experience will teach (or reinforce).

In some ways all the things we tell ourselves we can’t do are negative lessons drawn from past life experiences.

But are limiting, negative lesson inevitable?

Absolutely not!

If we reject broad theories as too abstract and behavioral goals as – in many situations - too narrow, where do we go?

This article provides a snap shot of one or two of the problems in the development of leadership potential.

Next, we continue our discusssion about the development of leadership qualities in Developing the Whole Leader where we sketch out our general approach to development in leadership qualities.