Why Leader-Led Development Is So Critical
What is there about leader-led development that makes it so critical to an organization’s success? When you’re engaging your leaders as teachers, here’s what you’ll be able to accomplish.
- Set the right context
Leader-led development brings much-needed context and direction to work. Leaders are uniquely positioned to present concepts within their company’s specific context and show employees how learning aligns with the busi-ness strategy and goals in big and small moments every day. This context takes learning from abstract to practical, as leaders connect the dots for employees and help them see how the skills they learn will impact the business in the long term.
Providing such context and direction helps get out a con-sistent and clear message across the organization, especially important in times of great complexity. Leaders involved in development of their teams can help cascade critical knowledge, skills, and understanding throughout the organization. This cascade works best when leaders are directly responsible for developing their teams.
- Engage employees in learning
When leaders act as teachers, they’re able to provide not just direction and context but also personalized, one-to-one development. Since they work with their team members every day and know their individual skill sets and learning styles, leaders can contextualize learning with organizational content to make it relevant to each person’s responsibilities, which makes the entire experi-ence more engaging.
Involving leaders as teachers also drives increased partici-pation and involvement. When their boss is the person providing them with information and monitoring their progress, learners are more likely to attend, do the work, and be prepared for formal learning opportunities. They will also be more attentive and responsive to informal learning moments, which is important, as when learners are more engaged in learning, the learning is more likely to stick.
- Meet the needs of the rising workforce generation
One of the drivers of complexity in today’s workplace is the presence of multiple generations with distinctive interests and requirements. In particular, much is being made of millennials’ desire to learn and develop—and their appreciation of mentoring. A 2015 HBR-Entrepreneur article pointed out that for millennials, “Feedback is getting a tip. It’s coaching, and they want it multiple times a day.”
Plus, when leaders play the role of teacher, they pro-mote bidirectional learning. The process of transferring knowledge to individuals in more junior roles allows leaders to learn new skills—think communicating via social media—from younger workers and to hear what’s happening on the organization’s front lines with custom-ers or suppliers. It results in greater levels of learning at all ends of the organizational spectrum.
“Using practicing leaders (to provide instruction) ensures that learning remains grounded in the reality of the workplace and culture. Leaders directly convey their beliefs, experi-ences, and expectations to program participants, thereby facilitating the transmission of cultural knowledge.” - Jay Conger, Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice - HBS