Part 1: How to ensure your programs deliver lasting changes in leadership behavior

Last week, I explained why caving into your stakeholders’ push to reduce the amount of time on your leadership programs can be a BIG TRAP:??

1. Time is often just a symptom of the real issue, which is that people don’t believe they’re getting enough value from your programs.??
2. Reducing the amount of time on your programs sends an implicit message that your programs aren’t valuable enough to justify the time invested in them.?

So, instead of reducing time, I recommended increasing the perceived and actual value of your programs by ensuring they deliver:

• Lasting changes in leadership behavior?
• Solutions to important business problems?
• And all in ways you can measure and showcase to your stakeholders?

In this week’s article, I’ll share the first step of my Real-Work Process. It’s a proven, widely-applicable methodology you can leverage to get these results regardless of the behaviors you’re developing or the consultants with whom you’re partnering. In the coming weeks, I’ll share the other steps so stay tuned!

STEP 1: WORK ON RWPs (REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS)

RWPs are unsolved problems or unseized opportunities that program participants, their managers, and the business care about. It’s critical to work on these during your leadership programs because doing so:?

• Inspires Leaders to Prioritize Their Own Development: Getting leaders to prioritize their own development is VERY challenging… and nothing motivates a leader to grow, learn, and change like an RWP they care about AND that’s just beyond the reach of their current leadership capabilities to solve.
• Ensures Business Impact: Instead of hoping your leaders apply what they learn to their problems after your programs, have them bring their real problems to your programs. Effective application of new behaviors to RWPs during your programs guarantees business impact.?
• Increase Your Programs’ Perceived Value: Working on the RWPs participants and the business care about increases the perceived value of your programs because it reframes them from an optional learning exercise to a vital solution.

“Our Problems Exist to Solve Us”?

In leadership as in life, the difficult problems we face contain hidden lessons that have the power to transform us AND our ability to transform the world around us. These problems must be mined for the benefit of the leaders going through your programs, your organization, and the lives of the people they touch. Your programs can and should help your leaders mine their experiences for transformative lessons.? As Dr. Bob Kegan, my former professor at Harvard said, “Our problems exist to solve us.”

I hope you found this valuable, and I’ll be back with Step 2 next week!?