Part 4: How to ensure your programs produce lasting changes in leadership behavior and business impact

Over the past few weeks, I’ve offered concrete steps any program can take to enable lasting changes in leadership behavior (and at the end of the day, isn’t that what leadership programs are for?!).?

Today we’re going to discuss the step where many leadership programs prematurely begin—helping leaders change their behavior and build new capabilities. This “jump to change” is one of the primary reasons we’re not seeing sticky changes in leadership behavior because doing so shortcuts 3 pre-conditions for behavior change.??

Pre-Condition #1: Your leaders have to prioritize their own development.? One way to do that is to have them bring real-world challenges they, their managers, and the business cares about to your programs, i.e., problems and opportunities that are just beyond the reach of their current leadership capabilities to solve. Doing so also reframes your programs from an optional learning exercise to a vital business tool. (Learn more about this by reading Step 1: Real-World Problems .)

Pre-Condition # 2: Your leaders have to understand how they actually behave in real life.? As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” So if we don’t give leaders a clinically accurate and clear picture of how they actually behave in real life, it’s impossible for them (and us!) to figure out what needs to change. And, the problem is that the conventional methods most organizations use—personality assessments, 360s, self-reporting, and direct observation just to name a few—either don’t tell you much about how leaders actually behave or are impractical to implement. This is where the Personal Case Study method invented by Harvard’s Chris Argyris can be really helpful.? (Learn more about this by reading Step 2: Real-World Behavioral Data .)

Pre-Condition # 3: Your leaders have to realize where their gaps and opportunities are, along with the costs of those gaps and the upsides of stepping up to their opportunities. As leadership development professionals, we need to create these realizations early in our programs because, as the research indicates, most leaders are not sufficiently self-aware to benefit from being developed. (Learn more about this by reading Step 3: Realization .)

Once you have these 3 Pre-Conditions in place, you’re ready to dive into the next step in helping leaders change their behavior…?

Step 4: Reprogramming?

Reprogramming is a systematic process of helping leaders UNLEARN old patterns and learn NEW ways of thinking and behaving that are more:?

• Effective in the real world
• Consistent with their nobler natures?
• Aligned with the business’s expectations

This step is critical because if I were to synthesize 50+ years of research in the fields of psychology, adult development, and transformative learning, they all agree that “Old habits die hard.”??

Why?? Because your leadership programs are probably asking leaders to disrupt subconscious programming that’s been with them for decades.??

For example, if you have a leader who’s too controlling or too conflict avoidant those things aren’t just going to go away just because they realize it.? They have to be given workable alternatives to how they normally behave that they will accept and that will actually enable them to get better results than their normal behavior.? And then they have to practice these new ways of thinking and behaving under the guidance of people who are skilled at these behaviors and who know how to develop others in them.?

Here are three proven strategies that can help your leaders reprogram how they think and behave:

1. Realistic Simulations: Start with realistic simulations that aren’t as complex as your leaders’ real-world challenges. And then, provide feedback, coaching, and guidance during these simulations so leaders have a direct, personal experience of what effective leadership feels like. This allows them to experience the psychological success leaders need to believe it’s something they can do!
2. Ramp Up the Complexity with Real-Plays: Building on the capability and confidence foundation built during the realistic simulations, increase the complexity by recreating the actual situations your leaders are going to face back at work. Then run Real Plays (not Role Plays) where leaders interact with simulated versions of the people they’re going to lead, influence, collaborate with, coach, sell, etc.—injecting a distinct form of in-the-moment help we call “Catch & Convert Coaching” into the mix.? The moment leaders revert to old behaviors, stop the action and point this out to disrupt entrenched patterns. But be sure to provide quick guidance on what to do instead and then restart the Real Plays until they produce more effective behavior.
3. Rinse & Repeat: And then do this repeatedly—Real Plays + Catch & Convert Coaching—to build your leaders’ confidence and competence? This way, you’ll have direct evidence your leaders are actually capable of producing new behaviors back at work (so you won’t have to sweat “learning transfer”) because they’ve been pressure-tested against the rigors of real life during your programs.

That’s it for today’s “Step 4: Reprogramming.”? I hope you found this valuable, and I’ll be back with the final step next week!