Leaders as Teachers *

                                     Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

                                               John F. Kennedy

The Rationale

Successful organizations strive to create a culture of a teaching and learning organization. The essence of this concept is to ensure all people at all levels are part of the learning experience. The concept will be more effective when leaders at all level are also involved in the practice. Thus, utilizing the potential of these leaders to inspire, mentor, coach, and train talented leaders, or even teams and team leaders, to enable them to reach their full potential.

Leaders – as –Teachers Strategic Organizational Benefits

There are six business benefits of using the leaders – as- teachers approach:

1. Helps drive business results. The first reason to implement a leaders- as- teachers approach is that it drives business results by ensuring strategic business alignment between senior business leaders and the programs and services provided by the learning and development function. 
2. Stimulates the learning and development of leaders and associates. The second reason to implement a leaders-as-teachers approach is that it serves as a catalyst for the learning and development of the leaders and associates who participates in the leader-led programs. This dynamic occurs in three ways: role modeling; creating a safe environment for feedback, and building networks.  
3. Improves the leadership skills of those who teach. This approach has valuable benefits not only for the learners but also for the leaders who teach. These benefits include :

• Leaders – as- teachers polish the way they articulate their ideas, strategies, and values.
• Leaders – as- teachers sharpen their leadership “saw ”. All effective leaders have points of view on topics vital to their success and the success of the organization they lead.
• Leaders – as – teachers model desired behaviors. Many leaders –as –teachers report that they are better able to model their desired leadership behaviors in their full-time role as a result of their preparation to teach and, then, actually teaching. When leaders prepare to teach, they learn the content of the program more deeply than they had previously known.

• Leaders –as – teachers move out of their comfort zone. Teaching, for many leaders, is a very significant job challenge. It requires many leaders to step out of their comfort zone and to work across what they do best and most frequently. Sometimes, leaders – as – teachers have to teach or facilitate in content areas that are new, different, or even uncomfortable and strange for them. Experiences like this stimulate learning and development.
• Leaders – as – teachers see new viewpoints. Leaders – teachers often hear ideas and perspectives from other leaders- teachers and also learners. By temporarily entering different aspects of the organizational environment, in this case through classrooms, different relationships are formed and different viewpoints are experienced.
• Leaders – as –teachers encourage self-improvement. Leaders regularly report that they feel a strong responsibility to model in their roles what they teach in a classroom. Whether it is a sense of responsibility, personal learning pride, or even guilt, leaders-teachers and the teams they lead benefit by tightening any gap between what they say and teach and what they do in their “real ” roles.
• Leaders – as teachers expand social networks. It is particularly important that leaders – teachers have built in opportunities to expand their internal informational and social networks by teaching others.
• Leaders – as –teachers are set up for future roles. When leaders coteach with executives who have very considerable experience and responsibilities, they have natural opportunities to be more invisible to interact with and be viewed as valuable potential talent for the executive’s organizations.

4. Strengthens the organizational culture and communications. The Leasers – as – teachers approach provides leaders with the opportunity to strengthen their organization’s culture and communications. This dynamic occurs in five ways :

• Leaders – teachers model the desired organizational values. They can teach, talk about, model and even write about desired organizational values, practices, aspirations, norms, and communications.
• Leaders – teachers enhance the community of practice. They also can serve as an ethical, moral, and values-based compass for acceptable and unacceptable behavior in the organization.
• Leaders – teachers encourage continuous learning. Through the actual process of serving as leaders –as –teachers, leaders model the value of professional development and continuous learning. They also model that leaders are expected to teach, coach, and develop themselves and others on an ongoing basis. Leaders – teachers send clear signals about the value of strengthening individuals and organizational capability.
• Leaders – teachers drive organizational commitment. When program participants experience modules – such as “ good to great” principles, execution, decision making and problem solving , and development of self and others – important messages and ideas are communicated.
• Leaders – teachers encourage cross-functional ties. When leaders teach diverse groups of employees and other leaders, they have unique settings to stimulate cross geographic, cross business and cross- functional, and cross-identity group thinking and understanding.

5. Promotes positive business and organizational change. Another valuable reason to implement a leaders – as - teachers approach is that it enables leaders-teachers to serve as catalysts for business and organizational change through their direct access to a wide range of learners. When leaders teach and coach, they are availing themselves of some of the most powerful levers for implementing change. 

6.  Reduces costs by leveraging top talents. The final reason to implement a leaders – as – teachers approach is that it drives numerous cost efficiencies by leveraging top talent. In many cases, involving leaders-teachers as subject matter experts eliminates or minimizes the need for expensive external consultants when internal capability is actually available for selected topics or course.

Winning organizations are teaching organizations

                                           Noel Tichy

*Excerpts from Leaders as Teachers, by Edward Betof