6 Reasons Leadership Development Programs Fail

I conducted the research for this article in 2018 and it was published by the BabbleWire Learning Group. I believe the findings are still relevant today.

Despite huge sums of money being invested in training and development, evidence and experience shows these efforts are frequently ineffective. Leadership development programs are shown to regularly fail to produce a lasting, measurable impact on the leadership skills exhibited by participants. This article refines the collated findings of numerous studies and investigations into both successful and unsuccessful leadership development programs, to identify the universal factors lacking in unsuccessful programs.

Why Leadership Development Programs Fail

While many organisations report leadership development as being important, even vital, to their ongoing success, those same organisations are shown to routinely implement flawed programs that fail to yield expected results.

Consider one particularly well-tracked leadership development program, run by the Electronic Products Division (EPD) of a prominent American organisation. As outlined by Beer et al. in The Great Training Robbery, the EPD "invested in a training program to improve leadership and organisational effectiveness", the results of which appeared extremely promising.

"Virtually every salaried employee in the division attended. Participants described the program as very powerful. It engaged them for a whole week in numerous group tasks that required teamwork to succeed and provided real time feedback on individual behaviour and group effectiveness. The program ended with a plan for taking learning back to the organization. Pre and post survey results suggested that participants changed their attitudes and behaviour during the program."

Despite the program's immediate perceived benefits by its participants, an independent review of the program revealed that "while managers in the division thought the program had been powerful and engaging, they did not think it had changed the organization's effectiveness, its culture or its performance." (Beer et al, 2016).

Such a narrative is common among the investigated studies. This article identifies a set of shortcomings that frequently hinder the success of leadership development programs, exploring why they occur, and how best to mitigate them.

Based?on?our?research,?there?are six key?reasons?why?leadership development programs?fail:

1.???Lack?of?Organisational Alignment

2.???Lack?of?Appropriate Management Influence

3.???Lack?of?a?Coherent Journey Perspective

4.???Lack?of?Prescribed On-the-Job Learning

5.???Lack?of?Consideration?for?Learning Agility

6.???Lack?of?a?Rigorous Evaluation Strategy

1. LACK OF ORGANISATIONAL ALIGNMENT

A?common theme?of?leadership development programs, in particular those offered?by?third-party?providers,?is "the assumption?that?one?size fits all, and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of?strategy, organizational culture,?or CEO mandate." (Gurdjian?et?al.?2014).

While this?way of thinking is convenient for Learning and Development (L&D), and?leadership development providers alike,?the?reality?is?that effective leadership programs require conscious planning?in?order?to?meet?the?leadership skill requirements?of the?business (Julian and Boone, 2001).

Take?for?example?a?business looking to reassign several time-consuming tasks away from field employees,?to its internal team.?The?changes will mean that many employees?may be?facing redundancy?in the?coming?six months.

In this case, a leadership development program focusing on team building and coaching individuals for improved performance may not set up the relevant leaders with the skills required to handle difficult conversations, which will be far more relevant in the coming months.

Ideally a leadership development program should ask the question "What is the business strategy for the next 3-5 years?" and provide leaders the skills required to meet that strategy and its associated needs and priorities.

Effective?leadership?development?programs?will also benefit from considering the?evolving requirements?of the?modern leader.

Current research tells us that the leadership environment has changed. The field has become "more complex, volatile, and unpredictable..." As such, "the skills needed for leadership have also changed and more complex and adaptive thinking abilities are needed" (Gleeson, 2016).

"It is often tempting to say that your business doesn't need this level of adaptability because maybe you have a single business unit or are in a mature industry, however, in today's dynamic and ever-changing world, change is a constant and you will need leaders that can lead change and thrive in any environment." (Malagisi, 2015).

Program designers looking to satisfy the requirements of leaders in this modern volatile environment should look at point 5 in this list, which concerns itself with building learning agile leaders.

2. LACK OF APPROPRIATE MANAGEMENT INFLUENCE

This is a common symptom of ineffective leadership development programs. The root causes of this failure are numerous; managers are busy, and showing interest requires significant effort and focus on their part. Managers also don't fully understand the way in which their influence affects leadership development, and thus they don't proactively pursue this influence.

Research tells us however that, more than any other person involved in the deployment of leadership development programs, it is the influence of the direct manager that has the greatest impact on a leader's likelihood to improve in the post-workshop environment (Lang, 2013).

Failing to utilise the immense influence of the participant's direct manager is not only a poor use of available resources but is shown to directly hinder the success of leadership development programs (Anderson, 2017).

A familiar example would be that of the manager who fails to engage with participants on the content of the program back in the workplace, such as its importance, the value of applying what they've learnt, and encouraging them to reach for further learning themselves. Unfortunately, by failing to engage, the manager is signifying that the leadership development program is unimportant.

This pervasive influence over their staff is referred to as the 'leadership shadow'. Much like a real shadow, the leadership shadow is an influencing force that is continually affecting the manager's people through action and inaction alike.

Managers need to deliberately harness the effect of their leadership shadow to the benefit of the program, or risk failure.

Deborah Rowland in her article for the Harvard Business Review, Why Leadership Development Isn't Developing Leaders, described this as the "parallel universe syndrome", where leaders attend courses that "promulgate certain mindsets and ways of working, only to go back to the workplace and find that the office (and especially top leadership) is still stuck in old routines" (Rowland, 2016).

The same logic should be applied to senior management, where a lack of accountability or priority coming from these leaders will signify to participants that the program is not of importance to the organisation.

An effective use of the senior management leadership shadow would be a clear senior-level expectation of leadership development program outcomes, and later following-up on those expectations.

3. LACK OF A COHERENT JOURNEY PERSPECTIVE

Perhaps the most common fault of the modern leadership program is its pervasive emphasis on teaching leadership knowledge. Leadership development programs typically separate the learner from the environment in which they use their leadership skills, in order to teach 'new' leadership knowledge (Lang, 2013).

We call this separation an 'event-focus'. A major fault of this process is that, while we expect and hope that learners will activate their learning back on the job, and utilise the skills development opportunities that arise, they rarely seize those opportunities without a supporting process or methodology.

If your leadership development program focuses on teaching or 'transferring' the answer to "what is good leadership", then you are failing to utilise people's extensive prior knowledge. Research and experience shows us that modern leaders don't require a mass theory lesson, so much as they require practical ideas that activate their prior knowledge, spark new insights, and ignite ignite enthusiasm for application.

"I have never seen a leader fail because he or she didn't know enough about leadership. In fact, I can't remember ever meeting a leader who didn't know enough about leadership" (Bregman, 2013).

Since most leaders are lacking less in knowledge than in practical skill development, the best use of our resources is to create a 'leadership development journey' that has a built-in requirement for leaders to put their knowledge into practice. Their journey should formally include phases of ongoing, real-world application with the necessary support.

When leadership development is narrowly perceived as a series of disjointed off-the-job learning events, especially if these emphasise presentation of leadership theory, then a lack of learning transfer in the workplace is the inevitable result. This 'transfer problem' is largely symptomatic of the lack of a comprehensively designed leadership development journey.

When leaders know that they are embarking on a development journey, not a series of training events, and that they will be held accountable for applying what they've learned in an ongoing capacity, they are far more likely to take their own leadership development seriously.

4. LACK OF PRESCRIBED ON-THE-JOB LEARNING

As a continuation of the previous point, leadership development programs routinely lack a sufficient or effective post-workshop phase, typically fundamental for creating deliberate, engineered skills practice opportunities (Carman, 2002).

The lack of a formal on-the-job learning phase is perhaps a symptom of the larger issue, which is a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of effective training.

"The vast majority of leadership programs are set curricula delivered through classroom taught, rationally based, individual focused methods. Participants are taken out of their day-to-day workplaces to be inspired by expert faculty, work on case studies, receive personal feedback, and take away the latest leadership thinking (and badges for their résumés)" (Rowland, 2016).

In fact, even event-centric language holds us back from a modern way of thinking about the leadership development program. Both management and L&D often use language such as "before training" and "after training", where 'the training' refers to an off-the-job, isolated training 'course', rather than a rigorous development 'program' with an on-the-job learning phase.

This common design perspective fails to address the essential learning that needs to take place in the work environment. More successful leadership programs consider the question: What do we need to do to ensure that people will continue learning and be successful back in the workplace?

In this endeavour it's not sufficient to simply 'be supportive' during the on-the-job learning phase. A successful program must engineer a method of reaching in to the workplace to nudge and nurture its participants (Carman, 2005).

Modern technology enables designers to play a far more influential role in the leader's workplace, by providing further information, prompts, and retrieval practice, and by supporting proficiency development. This can be accomplished through a continuous learning platform that uses text messages and emails to drives the participant's workplace tasks and resources.

Coaching is a highly effective tool in the post-workshop phase, whether the coach is the direct manager, a peer, or an external person. A coach's goal is to instil more rigor in the on-the-job learning process, and with clear and effective guidelines, this goal can be achieved without the use of a professional coach.

5. LACK OF CONSIDERATION FOR LEARNING AGILITY

Learning agility, or one's ability to learn from experience, is an often-overlooked contributor to the success or failure of a leadership development program.

The well-meaning program designer may be inclined to cater for different 'learning styles'. While their intentions are well-placed, modern research shows clearly that learning styles are wholly irrelevant to a participant's likelihood of applying any learning gleaned from a training event. Instead, our research shows that a significant omission common in unsuccessful programs is an understanding of, and consideration for, its participants' learning agility.

A participant's learning agility is what allows them to take insights from an experience, draw conclusions, and apply what they have learnt in the future. Further, a person who is learning agile is more persistent through failure, where others will abandon attempts to improve, or use new skills, when faced with obstacles.

For example, when cardiac patients are told by their doctors they will die if they don't change their lifestyle, eat less, and exercise more, only one in seven make changes (Petrie, 2014). With such a strong motivating factor, and such a small number of successful patients, it is no shock that leaders routinely abandon leadership skill development when faced with conflict.

"What makes leadership hard isn't the theoretical, it's the practical. It's not about knowing what to say or do. It's about whether you're willing to experience the discomfort, risk, and uncertainty of saying or doing it. In other words, the critical challenge of leadership is, mostly, the challenge of emotional courage" (Bregman, 2013).

To overcome this obstacle, there needs to be an ability to learn from conflict, difficulty, and failure.

We recommend building in support for leaders to help them be more learning agile. This includes the development of better critical thinking, how to harness the power of reflection, and how to use these skills to avoid the traps of instinctive thinking and get a more accurate understanding of reality.

By focusing on a simple experiential learning model, applied with modern critical thinking skills, participants are far more likely to weather the difficulties of applying their learning, despite setbacks or difficulties, to the benefit of their own personal development.

6. LACK OF A RIGOROUS EVALUATION STRATEGY

Having a rigorous evaluation strategy for your leadership development program is both a curse and a blessing.

On the one hand, our research shows that many leadership development programs are evaluated as being successful by participants during, or just following the conclusion of formal learning events. Surely a good sign that leaders are getting value out of the company's investment.

On the other hand, a more transparent evaluation of many of these programs reveals that, while the program's chosen metrics for success were positive, the lasting impact of the program was insignificant.

Evaluators tend to get caught up with Level 1 of the Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation, thanks in part to their event-focused program design. Level 1 concerns itself with participant reactions, asking questions such as "How did you feel about the program?", "Do you think you'll be able to apply what you have learnt?" and "Do you think this will make a difference?". These opinion-based questions tend to inspire overly inflated positive reactions (Kirkpatrick, 2007).

Who can blame a prospective leader for claiming that being chosen for a leadership development program was an inspired choice?

One of the most deceptive of these ineffective assessments is what Ready and Conger describe in the MIT Sloan Management Review as 'Make-Believe Metrics'.

Buyer-beware of program providers that cite an increased use of the company's learning centre or the number of people who attended courses as their measures of success.

"The full utilization of a company's training center does not matter if employees perceive that they are wasting their time attending programs that do not build competitive capability or create the next generation of talent. Far better to be able to demonstrate that the company's leaders can now think more strategically, work more cooperatively in teams, and coordinate cross-company efforts more effectively" (Ready and Conger, 2003).

A more insightful metric utilises Level 3 and 4 assessments from the Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick, 2007). These levels assess behaviour change, and results shown by participants after attending formal learning events.

By testing against higher-level metrics, we ensure that, no matter the appeal of the program facilitator, or the excitement leaders felt upon concluding an off-the-job course, we can prove whether the program had a material impact or not.

The added benefit of effective, timely evaluations is the ability to respond to poor outcomes. If participants aren't applying or practicing the skills and techniques that the program covered, then we need to know immediately so that we can intervene. This can only be achieved by tracking the right metrics as early as possible.

Conclusion

While organisations highly value leadership development as a key component of their ongoing success, the current research indicates that their investment is routinely failing to drive the expected results.

Through a thorough investigation of the latest research, and in drawing on our own extensive experience, we have determined six ubiquitous shortcomings common in the modern leadership development program.

The presence of these six factors drastically impacts participant motivation and skills development, leading to poor program outcomes.

Research indicates that motivated and learning agile leaders better self-motivate to learn in a self-directed way, despite other conflicting factors. Though interesting and engaging courses may appear to energise participants, a failure to influence the motivation and learning strategies required of participants will overwhelmingly lead to abandonment of leadership skills development upon meeting challenge and conflict.

It is our conclusion that leadership development program designers cannot afford to ignore these six factors when designing a program. By harnessing the prior knowledge of your leaders and engaging them on a well-engineered learning journey, you can best support them in developing their leadership skills.

References

Anderson, B. (2017). Overcoming 5 Barriers to Internal Leadership Development. [link ]

Beer, M., Finnstrom, M., & Schrader, D. (2016). The Great Training Robbery. Harvard Business School Working Paper. [link ]

Bregman, P. (2013). Why So Many Leadership Programs Ultimately Fail. Harvard Business Review. [link 1 , link 2 ]

Carman, J. (2002). Blended Learning Design: Five Key Ingredients. KnowledgeNet. [link ]

Gleeson, B. (2016). 3 Challenges Organizations Face in Leadership Development. Inc.com. [no longer available online]

Gurdjian, P., Halbeisen, T., & Lane, K. (2014) Why Leadership Development Programs Fail. McKinsey Quarterly. [link ]

Julian, E. H. & Boone, C. (2001). Blended Learning Solutions: Improving the Way Companies Manage Intellectual Capital: An IDC White Paper. [no longer available online]

Kirkpatrick, D.L., & Kirkpatrick, J.D. (2007). Implementing the Four Levels, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Lang, A. (2013). Six Keys to Design a Learning Journey for Leaders. Development Dimensions International. [link 1 , link 2 ]

Malagisi, F. (2015). 9 Reasons Leadership Development Fails. Human Capital Institute. [link ]

Petrie, N. (2014). Vertical Leadership Development - Part 1: Developing Leaders for a Complex World. Center for Creative Leadership. [link ]

Ready, D.A., & Conger, J.A., (2003). Why Leadership Development Efforts Fail. MIT Sloan Management Review. [link 1 , link 2 ]

Rowland, D. (2016). Why Leadership Development Isn't Developing Leaders. Harvard Business Review. [link ]

Author

Throughout my L&D career I have continuously researched and experimented with ways to increase learning effectiveness. Along the way I have immersed myself in the 'science of learning' and the 'science of instruction' and have learned from successes and failures.

I know from experience that training can be very powerful if appropriate and implemented properly, which means addressing both drivers in the Training Effectiveness Equation . I have personally been involved in designing and implementing training programs that consistently produced an ROI in excess of 100%.

Over the last 20+ years I have successfully delivered many professional development programs for learning specialists. I have also created and delivered programs to help managers get better results from employee development.

I offer blended online programs for maximising learner engagement and learner performance. These programs include a combination of virtual workshops and self-paced learning. They incorporate extensive research and the methods I personally use to design and deliver training that is engaging and effective.

If you would like to arrange a chat or want more info about my work, please email me at [email protected].