Impactful leadership development - How leadership development programs can give lasting effect?

I am going to tell you a story which I read somewhere and made a deep impression on me as a leadership developer. This is a story of attitude and behavioral change in children, which can teach something to those of us working with adult learning, especially leadership development. As a leadership developer, I am very conscious of the time and effort leaders put into the leadership development programs which they are sent to. The hope is that in such programs, they will adopt new attitudes, learn and practice new behaviors which they can continue practicing when they come back to the office. Then, through?deliberate practice,?gradually, these new behaviors turn into daily behaviors, like good habits, they come under their skin, become a part of them. We are talking about the sequence of "knowing ? doing ? being". In the article?Grassroots Leadership: U.S. Military Academy (fastcompany.com), there is a great quote: "The capacity for “knowing” and “doing” is relatively easy to build up in a student. It’s a function of education and training, which is what most universities are good at. But knowledge and skills are perishable — both because they’re not applied all the time and because they can become outdated. It’s the “be” piece — your self-concept, your values, your ethical makeup, who you are — that lasts.??We all desire that all the efforts we invest in leadership development will pay off as changed attitudes and behaviors towards better leadership in our organizations. Now comes the story with the incredibly effective and heart-warming method for "?knowing ? doing ? being?", a teacher used in a preschool:?

They upset the boy, the other kids. They said, "Your father is a garbage man, and you stink." The sense of conscience is not fully developed in preschool children. They can be so cruel at times. They broke the boy's heart. I talked to the dad. He was very upset that his child was hurt. This huge and strong man may have shed tears from his eyes for the first time in front of someone. “I said it's not enough to be sad, I have a plan. Will you be involved?" He readily accepted.

One day I made the children play the "dirty country" game, a made-up game. Whatever we found, we threw it on the classroom floor. By the way, we sprayed "bad smell spray" on the classroom to simulate the smell of decaying food, without the children seeing it. Soon, the classroom was filled with an unbearable stench. I asked why it smells so bad. They said, “Teacher, it comes from the garbage.” I said “wait, look at the door, someone will come, save us from this filth, horrible smell.” There comes our garbage man, 1.90 height, our majestic garbage man. He starts cleaning right away. I open the windows immediately. The bad smell spray loses its effect when the fresh air penetrates. Our assistant teacher is spraying jasmine-scented air freshener with a few whistles. Children do not see us anyway; they are busy watching the garbage man. But the fragrance of flowers fills them.

Then we sit in a half-moon arrangement in front of the garbage man. He speaks as we rehearsed. “I am a garbage man,” he says. “I collect your neighborhood trash in the morning or at midnight while you sleep. I also have friends. They also collect. If the garbage were not collected, the streets would smell like your classroom today. Garbage collecting is tough, guys. It is very difficult work.” He tells this in short, concise, sharp sentences. The more he tells, the more he grows.

I can't explain how they listen, without taking their eyes off. Especially his son. He is proud of his father and admires him in every word. Believe me, that look gives life.

Then we take a photo with our hero. We bid farewell to our garbage man with applause and love. A father, a son. Two hearts healed. This is our job. Touching the heart. Ladies and gentlemen! I can't stand a child being ashamed of his hard-earned father's profession. If I hold on, I can't be a teacher.

The next morning, a few parents ask. “Our boy has been saying since the evening that when he grows up, he will be a garbage man. What are you teaching these children, for God's sake?"

I respond with a smile, “We teach how to be human.”

This story has many important lessons. What strikes me is how the teacher devised a method that gave such an attitude and behavioral change in these children who probably had heard many times that they shouldn't bully their peers.

It is not enough to tell children or adults "don't do this and that". The motivation for change should come from inside.?

When we work with leadership development, we want to achieve sustainable leadership behavior change, that is, leaders shouldn't experience relapse after they learned a new behavior the moment they are under pressure, or the circumstances change. A good example may be doing a?leadership?training in?trust-based management in a traditional organization. We always find people who have tendencies for micromanagement and overly controlling leadership behavior. After the successful training (high scores on the evaluation of the session), it all seems fine with this new trust-based leadership learning as long as employees are at the workplace, in plein sight.?The moment the COVID-19 pandemic forces people to working from home, the trust starts to evaporate for those with micromanagement tendencies. The urge to control returns and is ever stronger and one starts to look for ways of knowing if people are really working. We know from the media that during the pandemic, some corporations in some countries started to put in place digital surveillance tools to control if people are really working, reminding me of the?panopticon?of Michel Foucault ...The new trusting behavior didn't last long then for some. Many corporations are trying desperately to get people back to the office nowadays and most are settling to 2-3 days at office. Sorry micromanagers, deal with your trust issues. An even simpler example is that one learns anger management techniques due to a history of anger management issues and as long as the circumstances are calm, it seems to be working. The moment when there is a crisis and stress mounts, the individual starts to shout...

Why does this happen? Why can't we retain good practices we learn in the great courses we attend? My opinion as a systems thinker, is that this is all about learning why in addition to what and how.?First order learning,?first order change?which is about?WHAT?existing behavior should be improved and?HOW?to improve it; or learning a new skill based on an existing theory or paradigm. It achieves learning on a shallow or superficial level. The?second order learning, second order change?is about?WHY?we should change not only overt behavior,?but first of all the covert/inner motivations, value systems, paradigms. Without this second order change, the first order overt changes may not last. The teacher achieved a lasting attitude and behavioral change with the children because they experienced the filthy smell and they experienced why it is important that garbage is collected. They also heard about the garbage collection process (what and how), but without the experience of the filthy smell and being saved from that, they would probably forget about the "boring lecture" about garbage collection the day after. Through the WHY, the man whom they had poor opinion about, became their hero and they wanted to?BE?like him when they grow up.?Vow!

This reminds me of a beautiful example I read somewhere about?environmentalist attitude and behavior, recycling. You teach people what to sort and how to sort their garbage into separate bins and give them the recycling bins. Then you remove the bins over the night. Do they just put everything into a thrash bag, or do they improvise and build temporary recycling bins and continue sorting? So, how can we sustain the good behavior of recycling? Did we teach them only?WHAT?to sort and?HOW?to sort the garbage (first order change; they KNOW and DO), or did we teach them the?WHY, the rationale behind the sorting and recycling (second order change; they?BECOME environmentally conscious), so they will turn creative and improvise recycling bins to continue recycling behavior when the bins were removed??

The other day, I was asked to design a 90-minute workshop on?Growth Mindset. I could do a 90 minute lecture on growth vs fixed mindset with some I-G-P reflection exercises so participants could learn about WHAT AND HOW and theoretically we could talk about WHY it is important to develop a growth mindset. That wouldn't be very lasting as to the impact. I decided to use 15 min on what Carol Dweck's theory is (You can check this video?(297) Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck - YouTube), but I started with telling a story that goes straight to the heart of this beautiful concept growth mindset, that you believe you can grow your intelligence (remember many different sort of intelligence) through effort and your intelligence is not a fixed trait. We talk about?neuroplasticity?and most limitations are in our own heads.

Here is the story that changed my mindset and my life: I am in a seminar, sitting in a U-shaped set-up and Cato Zahl Pedersen (a Norwegian skier and multiple Paralympic gold medal winner. He has won a total of fourteen medals at the Paralympic Games, in both Winter and Summer Paralympics. He has no arms, having lost both in a childhood accident.) is invited and he walks around, looks at people and stops in front of me and asks, "Can you play violin?" I say "No I can't"; he asks again and again while I am giving all sorts of explanations why I can't. Then, I understand... as he looks me straight in the eyes, a very hard look, "Can you play violin?" he asks for the last time. I feel a horrible flush of embarrassment and I say "Yes, I can, there is nothing to hinder me; I can always learn!" I think it was Cato, I always remembered whenever challenges came to me or may be rather, I sought them. With my non-fluid French, my 4th language, I started to teach organizational communication at the University of C?te d'Azur as Adjunct Professor back in 2012 at the same time as I started working in CrossKnowledge in Sophia Antipolis, outside of Nice, supporting their eLearning suite customers (LMS and content creation) in France and worldwide. In France, you need to have a permanent position in a company, to be allowed to teach as Adjunct Professor up to 96 hours per semester. My oral French was understandable although I was constantly embarrassed by my funny accent. Yet, when I was invited to do a PhD that autumn, I never hesitated. Cato took my "Yes, I can!" attitude to a whole new altitude.

Having told this story and even asking a participant if she could play the violin and getting an answer like "I guess, I can learn" we could embark upon a powerful role-play exercise I had designed writing 3 three realistic scenarios based on my audience's daily experiences. They used the time to train in groups playing the roles of the fixed mindset characters and growth mindset characters and some were observers in the groups. They tried to be "on the dance floor" and "balcony" both when they were role playing and in their group debriefings. Those in the growth mindset were talking about how frustrated they became in the meeting with fixed mindset bosses and colleagues. Those in the fixed mindset role without being one in real life talking about how terrible they felt when they were playing the fixed mindset, making themselves difficult in these simulated meeting scenarios, At the same time they were acknowledging how easy it was to be in the fixed mindset, because all you had to do was to say "no", "we did this before", "this will never work", because it was comfortable to stay in the comfort zone, don't take risks, don't expose yourself, etc. The observers had seen it all, they were in the "balcony" during the whole roleplay and noted how the group dynamics were changing as the discussions heated up, how the oral and body language was changing. During the group briefing we shared these experiences and I heard later from my hosts that I "sat people’s minds in action". In fact, awareness is the first step in change and here we are talking about WHY it is important to develop a growth mindset. When the WHY is understood it is so much easier to search for the WHAT and HOW too. In fact, the " knowing ? doing ? being " sequence is not linear. Thorough awareness we start to BEcome and get curious as to what and how, so we start to learn, to KNOW, we practice to DO regularly.

This is the beauty and challenge of our profession to reflect about methods that will give sustainable leadership attitude and behavioral change. What can we learn from the clever teacher above? What can we learn from the ones who designed the experiment with the recycling bins? What can I contribute with to your practice with my story on Growth mindset workshop and my personal experience with Cato? Are you doing experiential learning interventions in your organizations to achieve long-term attitude and behavioral changes? Please share your thoughts and experiences.