What benefits could justify the level of investment needed?

Measuring the outcomes from your investment in leadership development requires a meticulous approach beginning from the planning stage. This is costly and is rarely done. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe the effects of outstanding leadership on organisations. These include:

Improved business outcomes: By definition, outstanding leadership delivers the holy grail of outcomes: improved business results. The potential is not only for some kind of percentage improvement but for a step difference in performance outcomes. These are the organisations that stand out in their field as unequalled, delivering a standard of excellence that sets the benchmark. What’s more, these are the organisations whose performance levels are sustainable because excellence is built in to what they do.

A culture that supports high performance: Outstanding leaders deliver improved performance outcomes by creating a culture and climate which support high performance. You can expect that improvements in leadership across your organisation will lead to increased staff engagement. Outstanding leaders attract outstanding staff to jobs to which they are well suited. These are staff who are ambitious to deliver and who continue to learn. They may not stay forever – some will move on to more senior jobs elsewhere. Still, whilst they are with you they will make a significant contribution to performance outcomes in your organisation.

Work as play: For the kind of staff I have described working in a culture and climate which supports high performance, work has the potential to become play. In the word of Kahlil Gibran, “work is love made manifest”. In these environments, the prevailing values and beliefs of staff create a highly supportive and trusting environment in which people collaborate willingly and with ease and in which the natural processes of work are filled with fun even whilst “delivering the goods”.

Health and well-being: The language of performance improvement can tend to gloss over the deeply personal experience of the individual at work. Improved leadership leads directly to a greatly improved personal (“human”) experience, including far greater personal fulfilment, health and well-being amongst leaders and their staff.

What does it take to bridge the gap between theory and practice?

Clarify desired outcomes: For organisations in which there is a commitment to bridge the gap between theory and practice, holding a clear intention to understand what differentiates the most outstanding leaders and to develop leadership across your organisation in line with these findings is a common starting point. This implies understanding leadership theory and its implications for your organisation.

Start from where you are: Whether we are talking about individuals or organisations, the kind of leadership described by researchers becomes possible when we go beyond surface behaviours to adopt and practise values, beliefs, thoughts and behaviours that are aligned both with the theory of leadership and with who we are. This takes a clear intention and plenty of time, planning steps which take account of where you’re starting from.

Take action in every area of current practice: At an organisational level, successfully bridging the gap between your current practice and your aspirations for the future permeates every aspect of your current practice, from recruiting people who have the clear potential to develop in line with your chosen leadership approach, through creating a climate which supports leaders in their development to providing the support leaders need for their learning. Looking at developing leadership in this holistic (“whole organisation”) way can make the difference between a temporary shift in leadership style and an ongoing and sustained progression across the organisation.

Take account of the needs of the learner: The initiatives organisations commission need to take account the reality of learning for individual leaders, including their most talented individuals. This learning can stimulate a great deal of emotion for people who may not be well schooled in acknowledging or managing their emotions. At the same time, being present to their emotional and other responses is an important part of the learning journey for men and women in leadership roles. Refusing to be present to the challenges that face them on their learning journey (including the inner voices, often known as “gremlins”, that tell them not to make changes) can keep even the most talented individuals “stuck”.

Choose your partners wisely: If you’re serious about bridging the gap between leadership theory and practice, you will choose your partners wisely. These may include recruitment consultants, leadership trainers, executive coaches and more. Especially when it comes to your partners in learning it is not enough to brief them on your aspirations: your partners (trainers, coaches etc.) need to embody the learning you aspire to for leaders across your organisation. As well as choosing your partners with care, you need to reach clear agreements with each partner. The agreements you reach are in themselves an embodiment of the approach you aspire to as well as providing the foundations for a working partnership which successfully supports you in making progress towards your goals.

Leadership development: up close and personal

Early in her life, Susan’s* mother told her “if you want to succeed in your career, you need to outshine all the men around you”. Throughout her career, Susan took care to measure herself against her male peers and to be sure to surpass them in a number of areas of performance.

Susan’s drive and determination made her an asset to her employing organisation and she was rapidly promoted to a senior level. At the same time, her intense effort often exceeded the level of investment needed to achieve her goals and she started to suffer from exhaustion. What’s more, Susan’s leadership style was such that even her most senior staff depended on her for answers to the team’s most significant questions. Susan often felt anxious about taking a break, knowing that her staff depended on her so much. She was also unaware that, by positioning herself as the ultimate source of answers, she was limiting the team’s performance in line with her own limitations.

It took the curiosity, compassion and insight of her doctor to help Susan to identify the link between her behaviours as a leader and her mother’s early advice. Listening to her doctor’s questions, Susan was immediately able to understand that yes, there was a link. Something was driving her behaviour of which she had previously been unaware. At the same time, understanding the link was only the beginning: it was the help of a skilled Executive Coach that enabled Susan to adjust her values and beliefs to support a new leadership approach.

John* joined his organisation from school and worked his way up the career ladder. By the time he was eligible to participate in his employer’s leadership development programme he was already well schooled in the official and unofficial rules of the business.

John came away from the programme with a clear understanding of the impact across the organisation of a largely coercive and pacesetting style of leadership. Leaders exemplified excellence and expected others to emulate them. They often gave orders and rarely took the time to get to know their employees, seek their views and opinions or provide feedback and coaching support. During a period of rapid growth, there had been some benefits to this approach. However, John recognised its limitations and decided to develop his repertoire of styles to provide a clear vision for the future and coaching support for his staff.

Back at work, John found the reality of this journey far more challenging than the theory. He recognised that there was a gap at times between his aspiration and his practice (or “theory in use”). Even when he was seeking to provide coaching support, his direct reports were wary at times, accustomed to his former style and lacking trust in the changes he was beginning to make. The fact that he was learning and his coaching style was inconsistent contributed to the unease of staff members.

What’s more, John was under pressure from his own line manager to push for business results which he thought were unrealistic in a challenging business climate. After a while, John used his learning to begin a search for a new employing organisation in which the predominant leadership style was more closely aligned to his aspirations as a leader.

Susan and John’s stories illustrate both the deeply personal nature of leadership development and the challenges of adapting your leadership style in an organisation. Together, these examples begin to point the way to the steps organisations need to take if they’re serious about bridging the gap between leadership theory and the day-to-day practices of leaders in their organisations.

*Susan and John are fictional characters designed to illustrate the nature of leadership development. Any likeness with specific individuals is unintended.

Given the clarity of the theory, why does so much leadership development fail to “hit the spot”?

From parenting, via education to leadership, it’s rare for people and organisations to dig beneath the surface and identify a fundamental and integrated set of beliefs, values, thoughts and behaviours to which they make an ongoing commitment. Many efforts to develop leaders are not rooted in a clear understanding of research findings and may even be rooted in beliefs and behaviours which are in some way internally inconsistent. No wonder then, that many attempts to support leaders in their development fail to hit the spot! This is about the foundations which underpin leadership development programmes and other interventions.

Why isn’t this gap obvious to those who commission leadership development programmes or participate in them? One reason is that many programmes are limited in their scope so that participants never identify the inconsistencies within a programme. As well as the failure to identify a fundamental and coherent leadership philosophy, limitations also include training at a behavioural level only and failing to provide sustained support to leaders’ development over time.

Perhaps the most significant reason why so much of leadership development fails to hit the spot is because the parties involved – from commissioning clients, their partners in leadership development and the leaders themselves – fail to voice and acknowledge one of the fundamental truths of leadership development: that developing as a leader is deeply personal and involves exploring personal values, beliefs and behaviours. This can mean that development programmes are designed without taking into account the nature of the journey and what it takes to support participants as they learn.