Do you need to update your leadership programs or change your approach to learning transfer?
‘Every way I turn, the problem is poor leadership’. This wasn’t my comment, but it was from a professional I admire, working within an organisation, sharing about the multitude of challenges the organisation was facing. So today I pose the question to you, whether you’re within an organisation or supplying leadership initiatives, do you need to update your leadership programs or change your approach to learning transfer?
After the conversation, I was left reflecting – how can this be? Organisations invest heavily in leadership development, yet the problems don’t seem to be getting any smaller. (I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the world operating in the realm of ‘VUCA on steroids’ or jerking, as Dr Tony O’Driscoll, would say but more about that soon.)
I’m left wondering have I done a good enough job at explaining what effective learning transfer is and what it isn’t?
When many organisations switched to virtual learning spaces during and after COVID with modular leadership programs, seduced by the easy-to-understand science behind the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, the focus became whether people could remember the learning. Pseudo-transfer solutions ensued. Have you found yourself saying any of these things recently?
We do nudging…. people must be changing behaviours… We do spaced learning…. I know people are remembering the models… We give people activities to do in the workplace so they are transferring the learning…
Grasping the difference between an activity between modules to build skills, and the learner taking the ownership of a commitment to adopt the skill as part of the way they lead, is essential.
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For leaders, it isn’t that they don’t remember or know what to do. It’s just that they don’t do what they know. With our thoughts, feelings, values, beliefs, fears, needs and identity driving our behaviours, it’s no wonder!
Effective transfer will not only exponentially boost the results from your leadership program but will subtly start to build the crucial skills of your leaders to slow down, reflect, and think creatively and deeply about the situations they face, which, let’s face it, leaders need to be doing now more than ever.
With one of our partners, a world-class leadership company, we have worked with over 4000 leaders in one single organisation across the globe. The program is being expanded to other levels in the organisation.
In answer to the question above ‘Do you need to update your leadership program or just change your approach to learning transfer?’ I honestly don’t know about your specific program ?. If a checklist of whether your program is designed to deliver learning transfer, would be useful, reach out so we can send you a copy.
Or if you want to chat it through, book a time in my diary here. I’m happy to support you.
Leadership Consultant, Executive Coach & LeadershipOnline Community Host
8 个月before "transfer" (& side-stepping assumptions about temporal boundaries), please consider the amazing lack of performance data and accountability leadership development enjoys. Leadership development globally consumes $366 billion a year and: + A tiny 3% of programs are evaluated in terms of business impacts (2005 survey of 270 European organisations by Charlton & Kuhn). + Only 10% of leadership programs are estimated to achieve concrete results. (Moldoveanu & Narayandas, HBR March 2019) For more plus design for ROI and impact, check out the "Improving Leadership Development" series listed at https://lnkd.in/g6Fe3TGA
Sharon-Drew is an original thinker and author of books on brain-change models for permanent behavior change and decision making
8 个月Emma Weber: I have some thoughts to add that I'm presenting this at the Learning Ideas Conf (i assume you'll present online?): I'm an original thinker who's been developing systemic brain change models for decades (for sales, leadership, change management, and Learning Facilitation). At the conf i'm presenting a model that first works with the brain (not the mind!) and enables Learners to actually generate wholly new circuits that will hold and retain the new knowledge. Most current training offers information before the brain has a way to understand it or keep it (i.e. training the mind) and has a 90% fail rate. I separate out the brain from the mind during the training. Would love to speak to share ideas and learn what you're doing.
Principal, Talent Development and Learning @ Crown Castle | PhD in Educational Psychology | AI Enablement | Inclusion and Accessibility | Amazon Alumni
8 个月Mitchel MacNair
(Pr)academic ?? interested in human-centred design ??, learning transfer ??, behaviour change ??, and organisational development ??.
9 个月It is also important to not undervalue efficacious practices that have been reliably shown to enhance learning and retention. Since learning transfer often relies on learning in the first place, these shouldn’t be seen as ‘Pseudo-transfer’ solutions. You are right that developing strong and retrievable memories is only one part of the puzzle and often not enough to activate transfer. This highlights how the transfer system and process has numerous interrelated and dependant components, that must be fulfilled to achieve the desired outcome and impact.
Author of Antisexist-#1 New Release | Award-Winning Author | Intl Keynote Speaker l Executive Coach l Leadership Consultant
9 个月Most leadership development programs are a waste of time, said by me, who ran leadership development departments for 25 years in Fortune 100 companies in many different industries. Leadership development is a billion dollar business and most of it is totally unnecessary and only benefits $$$ the consultants teaching the training. Leadership training is a panacea so that real issues don’t have to be dealt with. And the real issues are HR and company processes and systems that are full of bias as are the leaders (and all employees) in the company. And who wants to deal with that right? Who wants to hold people accountable for really bad behavior? Who wants to throw out HR and company processes and systems and create new? Who wants to do the hard work to fix the root cause? Easier to send leaders to BS training and pretend all is well. Or scream that the training didn’t transfer. And I don’t buy into the premise that leaders have it harder now than before and that’s the reason. Nope.