At KONU, we believe that, to be effective, we must rethink and re-do “leadership development” so that it prepares us to lean into and lead progress through the challenges of today. To get there, leadership development must shift to be more…
2. Experiential
3. Risky
This blog is the final of a 3-part series about each of these fundamental shifts.
Part III: Leadership Development is risky - And the risk is worth it
I’ve shared so far that transformative leadership development needs to be developmental AND experiential.
Core components of developmental and experiential leadership development are:
They work with real, challenging problems of individuals and groups;
The challenges that are not only cognitive, but also emotionally demanding and gripping; and
they provide a “coaching” environment that leaves the problems with the participants instead of taking them off their hands.
So why are such approaches still not commonplace in leadership development programs? Why do so many leadership development programs play it safe? Why do so many participants take part in programs wanting to “prove” rather than “play”, and leave feeling they haven’t learned or developed?
A fundamental reason is that developmental and experiential work is risky!
The word "experience" has the same linguistic root as the word "danger". We have known since childhood that experiential learning can be dangerous: when learning to ride a bicycle, there is a risk of losing your balance and injuring yourself. The paradox is that only if you accept the risk of losing your balance can you discover balance.
What risks do we run if we – learners and facilitators – allow ourselves to lose our balance in leadership development work – and how can those risks be managed?
Risk to the Learner - and How to Manage Them
“Because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure.”
The Biggest Danger: Shame
When my son, at three years old, had just learned how to ride a bike, he was incredibly proud. So proud, in fact, that he raced off on his bike one day, hit a patch of loose sand, skid, fell off his bike, and skinned his hands. He cried bitterly – less from the physical pain, it seemed to me as I comforted him, as from the shame of realizing he might not be quite as competent a cyclist yet as he had imagined himself to be.
Adults find it particularly difficult to be confronted with the limits of their own competence. That’s particularly true when we’re in a realm in which we feel we ought to be competent.
I wouldn’t feel bad being an absolute beginner at learning how to play a guitar – but shouldn’t I be competent at leading an organization if they’ve made me the boss?
Experiential learning approaches in leadership development programs confront people with their own incompetence - sometimes even publicly. Imagine a workshop starts off by asking a group of managers to share a challenge that keeps them up at night, something that they just haven’t figured out. The participant may shut down (“I don’t have any problem that keeps me up at night”), blame others (“it’s only a problem because that guy isn’t doing his job”), or withdraw from the group or program (“I’m not learning anything here – I’ll just sit and answer emails instead”). These fight-flight-freeze reactions are the masked adult equivalent of the bitter cry after the bike crash – they come from the shame, fear, and embarrassment of being exposed to the group as incompetent.
Why is “learning” – learning to fail, learning from failure, learning to learn – so difficult, particularly for adults? Robert Kegan's developmental stage model offers some clues: Particularly for those of us in the “socialized mind” stage, being perceived as competent or clever is important. When our own leadership behavior (and its limitations) is mirrored publicly, we may feel shame or embarrassment. Opening up in this way is particularly difficult for managers and executives because it harbors the risk of a (real or perceived) loss of authority. However, it is precisely in this challenge of exploring and overcoming shame that the manager encounters a development opportunity.
Risks to Facilitators - and How to Manage Them
For us as facilitators, too, experiential and developmental leadership development work comes with risks. We, too, as facilitators feel shame about not being perfectly competent and know the all-too-human drive to please and impress all too well. And we know: Clients aren’t happy when their participants aren’t, so we feel the pressure to make participants happy! To address this conundrum, we, as facilitators, must cultivate a space that both challenges AND supports learners, keeping the “distress” of learning at a tolerable level and supporting sensemaking around the learning process.
Here are some of the strategies we employ as facilitators:
Program Participants
Clarifying expectations and naming that exercises might generate uncomfortable feelings
Inviting participants to learn at their own pace and “be in charge of themselves”
Modeling vulnerability and public learning as the facilitator in order to invite the same from participants
Authorizer in the Client System
Receiving authorizers’ permission and support for this type of intervention (No surprises here, please!)
Working with senior leadership, e.g. the CEO or Managing Director, to model and publicly invite and acknowledge vulnerability and public learning so that program participants see that such behavior is being encouraged at all levels of the organization
Inviting them into the sessions to observe and learn alongside the program participants and you as facilitator
Why the Risk is Worth it
Experience-oriented approaches have an enormous effect. The uncomfortable, exciting, and potentially transformative nature of experiential and developmental approaches makes them a riveting experience for participants.
Research is increasingly demonstrating the effect of such approaches on the development of adults and their leadership skills. Tim O'Brien (Harvard University)’s research findings show that experiential methods (such as here-and-now exercises and peer case consultations) in Professor Ronald Heifetz's Adaptive Leadership courses at the Harvard Kennedy School are associated with measurable leaps in Kegan’s development stages (O'Brien 2016). D. Scott DeRue and Ned Wellman from Michigan University found that managers who had experienced significant development challenges at work (e.g. taking on new tasks, assuming greater responsibility, initiating change, working across silos, managing diverse teams) and were given the opportunity to systematically reflect on their experiences in feedback processes also developed further (De Rue & Wellmann 2009).
The probability of developmental steps is therefore increased if targeted spaces for experiential learning are created.
In our experience running leadership development programs for the past 15 years across the world, experiential approaches help develop participants "to the next level.” We find them to be particularly effective for managers transitioning from Kegan's development stage 3 (socialized mind) to stage 4 (self-authoring mind) – a developmental transition that many early or mid-career managers and executives are facing.
After a leadership development series for managers, including workshops and case consultations, participants spoke to several themes of how their thinking and behaviors have changed:
Shifts in self-awareness and how to navigate their role and surroundings
More initiative
A more open and less reactive approach to criticism
Increased empathy
A greater ability to deal with conflict
Source: KONU Workshop Evaluations
Willing to Lose Your Balance AND Gain New Perspectives? Let’s Talk!
If you’ve made it to the end of this blog post series, I already know a thing or two about you. I know that leadership development as a discipline is either something which you are also deeply invested in (awesome!), or it is something that has piqued your interest and you would like to learn more about (also awesome!). As I have laid out in this 3-part series, undergoing such a journey with KONU means engaging with leadership development as:
A continuous growth process (developmental)
A journey focused on doing as opposed to learning about theoretically doing (experiential)
A practice that is risky…and worth it. For you, for your team, for your organization.
I look forward to meeting you on the developmental PLAYground and creating meaningful and sustainable change together.