Developing Leadership Talent: Getting The Most From Learning By Experience

Given that learning from experience is, in the end, up to the person having it, and that an organisation cannot force anyone to develop, a premium is placed on finding the leverage points that increase the probability that talented people will develop into more effective leaders.

Five leverage points to support learning from experience

1. Identify developmental experiences
   
   The easiest place to start is to gather people who know the organisation well and have them identify developmental projects, start-ups, turnarounds, bosses, etc. It is also straightforward in many cases to figure out how, in individual situations, jobs can be developmentally enriched without requiring the incumbent to change jobs.
   
   While this buffet of potent experiences is demonstrably loaded with potential learning, not all of the lessons available are equally valuable to the organisation. For this reason, it is important to prioritise developmental needs in light of the organisation's strategy or business model and values.
   
   This leads to questions about where those experiences can be found, and, if they don't exist, what alternatives can be found or fabricated to prepare leaders for that future. It also raises at least two other crucial issues:
   
   
   1. How do we know who has the potential to learn from the experiences and become, over time, the leaders we need; and
   2. How do we insure that those people, once identified, actually get the experiences that we think they need?
2. Identify potential
   
   Assuming that all effective leaders or executives or managers are alike, whether in personality or style, or that all share the same set of attributes, is an appealing simplicity - but denies everyday experience.
   
   A more useful approach, and one with more promise for improving leadership development, assumes that different people have different sets of attributes that they bring to situations, and that there are different ways to handle the same situation effectively.
   
   Over time, one would expect that the "potential" of individuals could be assessed, however crudely, by evidence of the ability to learn from the experiences they have already had, and progress in the ability to meet the increasingly difficult demands of leadership jobs.
   
   Organisations could then gain leverage over development by managing the identification of leadership potential such that those with the most potential at a given point in time have access to the experiences they need.
3. The right experience at the right time
   
   Assuming a reasonable pool of high potential talent, and a rich selection of strategically relevant developmental opportunities, it would seem we've found pig heaven. All that's left is matching those with developmental needs with the appropriate experiences.
   
   But organisations need results and giving rookies - even talented ones - experiences for which they are not fully qualified does not optimise short-term results.
   
   To the extent, then, that using experience for development depends on who gets what experience, there are significant forces working against developmental moves. It is much easier to send someone to a program than to offer up a talented person for an assignment in a different part of the organisation, or to risk sacrificing results by taking on a developmental candidate.
   
   Organisations can gain leverage over development by taking actions to better match developmental needs to developmental experiences. This can be achieved by a variety of means, including:
   
   
   1. Making sure that hiring managers understand the development process and expectations around it
   2. Building a culture for using experience for development
   3. Modeling appropriate behaviour through the actions of senior managers with their people as well as themselves
   4. Increasing accountability by measuring and sanctioning developmental activities
   5. Creating processes to enhance movement across experiences, such as candidate slates
   6. Succession planning with a developmental twist
4. Increase the odds that learning will occur
   
   Everyday life has taught us that people may learn nothing, learn the wrong thing, or forget what was learned, and that they do such things on a regular basis. If we are intent on throwing people into fires - even the right people, into the right fires, at the right time - then it behooves us to do what we can to insure that they learn what we threw them in there to learn!
   
   At first that seems a simple task, especially since so many tools have been developed specifically to help managers learn. The arsenal is packed with 360-degree feedback instruments, internal and external coaches, educational programs of every shape and size, books loaded with development advice, motivational speakers, elaborate performance management systems with at least annual feedback, HR staffs with a mission, action learning models, and more.
   
   There is no doubt that each of these can be extremely powerful. But with all of these resources available, it's nothing short of miraculous that so many managers manage to maintain mediocrity!
   
   Research shows however, other than the incumbent, the immediate boss has the most impact - for good or bad - on development. Not only does the boss control access to potentially valuable experiences, they set the objectives, evaluate performance (and often potential), control many resources, and essentially determine the nature of the work.
   
   In the final analysis, though, it all boils down to the person who is developing. All too often, however, organisations use that fact to abrogate their responsibility for creating the opportunities for growth and for providing the soil that supports it. At a minimum, a person who wants to develop needs the information, tools, and opportunities to do so.
5. Focus on transitions and have a career-long perspective
   
   Time and resources are always limited, and development of talent, as important as it is, is not the first priority of most organisations. In developing talent, as with any other strategic choice, resources must be concentrated in the places with the greatest potential impact. The leverage points described above represent such places, but the recommendations are largely systemic, while the phenomenon is highly individual.
   
   Leverage point five is all about following careers and being present at key transitions - connecting what we know about effectively using experience for development, with the individuals who need it, when they need it. Organisations likely differ in how many and what kinds of transitions constitute the path to leadership mastery, but identifying them is possible.
   
   Organisations certainly differ in the size of the workforce, making a focus on individuals challenging as the number of employees (and proportionately the number with leadership potential) grows larger, but it is less of an information technology problem than one of attention and knowing what needs to be recorded.

Even if some leaders are "born" there clearly aren't enough such gifted people to go around. It is time to move past the naïve notion that mastery of leadership can be achieved in the classroom or through piecemeal application of human resource programs and tools and embrace the opportunity of experience.