The dirty secret about leadership development

Every once in a while, we get a reminder that who we are, and how we show up, makes a positive difference in the lives of the people around us. As a leadership and organization development consultant, I am fortunate to work in a business custom-designed to make a difference for others. Our value to an organization comes from the differences we make to its people, and the impact they have on the organization’s performance when they show up more authentically, more courageously, and more humanely. It is why I work with passion, as do so many of my colleagues.

This story is about one of those reminders. And in the story, I reveal a dirty secret about our work that many consultants like me try to keep hidden. 

I recently facilitated a week-long, residential leadership development workshop for a large industrial client. Like many similar workshops, this one included a healthy dose of self-reflection and personal awareness activities. On day 3 of the workshop, a participant asked to speak in private. He was one of the more introverted participants in the cohort, and I was intrigued.

He told me that an activity from Day 2 was the single most powerful learning experience of his life. He was referring to a tool we teach that helps people to prepare for and have difficult conversations. In the lesson, informed by great work from Gervase Bushe, Ron Short and others, we help participants break their experience of a challenging situation into four component parts: Facts, Thoughts, Emotions and Wants. This helps us clearly communicate while removing any sense of attack, blame or hidden judgment that normally accompanies such conversations.

In the activity, small groups break off to apply the model to their lives. We invite them to think of a situation where there is a conversation they want to have, that would move a relationship forward, that is grounded in a positive intention for all parties, and where they are holding back (usually from a fear of making the relationship worse by having the conversation). It’s important to note that none of these 5 people had met until the day before. They were grabbing the concept of building trust through vulnerability and sprinting with it. With a tremendous amount of personal courage, this participant (let’s call him “Sanjay”) explained to the breakout group that he believes his mother is battling an alcohol addiction. He is scared for her, and has been struggling to figure out how to speak with her about it. The model that we taught in the program gave him a way to talk to her.

The tool asks us to separate our experience into four elements: the facts or observations (those things that are undeniably factual, what a video-camera would capture); our assumptions, beliefs or thoughts (all the meaning that we apply to the facts); our emotions (glad, sad, mad, bad or scared are a good start); and our wants (what we want to do, what we want others to know, or what we want to request from others). The brilliance of this approach is that it encourages us to access the full spectrum of our experience. We are forced to acknowledge that our judgments, assumptions or stories are NOT facts; this doesn’t reduce their validity, but it forces us to own that they are only part of our experience, and that others may have a different set of thoughts in their experience.

Back to Sanjay: with courage and vulnerability, he shared his story. He observed his mother drink two bottles of wine over dinner the last time she visited his family. He has observed her drink this much alcohol the three previous times she visited his family in the last year. He thinks that this is an excessive amount of alcohol, and he thinks that she has a drinking problem and needs help. He believes she is an alcoholic. He thinks that if he doesn't say anything, the problem will worsen. He is afraid for her health and for her life. He wants her to be around to watch his young children grow up. He wants her to seek help. He wants to support her in doing so. He wants her to know he loves her.

When Sanjay shared his story, one of his colleagues in the breakout group broke down in tears. This man shared that his own mother had a similar health issue several years ago, and that he didn't speak up because he didn’t know how to raise his concerns. His mother passed away from her illness before he chose to say anything. He wiped his tears away and implored Sanjay to speak up and talk to his mother.

So how does this relate to leadership development? When we ask leaders to increase their leadership effectiveness, invariably we have to start with their personal effectiveness. Leadership is personal: it is about relationships and inspiring those around you to choose action based on your vision. It is virtually impossible to improve one’s leadership capacity without improving oneself.

The dirty secret? Leadership development is personal development. Great leaders are rich with self-awareness, are comfortable getting uncomfortable, and have done the difficult personal work to understand themselves in order to create richer relationships with their teams.

As my good friend and mentor Gregg Thompson once told me, “We call this leadership development, although it’s actually personal development. But we can’t call it personal development because no one would show up!” We help people to grow, to elevate their consciousness about themselves and their lives, and in doing so we give them the tools and mindset to elevate their leadership and the potential of the people around them. That is the dirty secret of leadership development and its what makes this work so damn rewarding.

If you are looking to increase your leadership effectiveness, make sure that you are willing to do a deep dive into your own personal effectiveness. They are one and the same.