So management launched a high-potential development program to cultivate strong, scalable leadership for today and the future, but the results were… lackluster. Why? Here are five reasons to consider.
1. Lack of focus on core features
The purpose of an executive development program is to create a meaningful competitive advantage for an organization. To maximize the ROI of creating competitive advantage, organizations need to develop leaders who can excel in the roles that are most critical to the business. The competencies required of corporate leaders remain fairly consistent across industries, geographies, markets, and time periods. Yet, it is not the primary focus of most executive development programs.
Instead, programs often focus too much on trending topics, organizational competency frameworks, or the latest values. Each component of a high-impact development program should be directly linked to the core competencies of company leadership. A passionate and unwavering focus on core competencies ultimately accelerates leaders' readiness to scale, strengthens the organization's leadership pipeline, and creates a meaningful competitive advantage for the business.
2. Emphasize content over behavioral change
Favorite scene from the movie Moneyball There's a scene where Jonah Hill's character says to Brad Pitt's character, “The people who run baseball teams are thinking about buying players. The goal isn't to buy players, the goal is to buy wins. And to buy wins, you've got to buy runs.”
Similarly, people often think about development programs in terms of buying content. But the goal should not be to buy content, but a stronger pipeline of enterprise leaders. To develop enterprise leaders based on the core capabilities mentioned above, you need to buy two things: insights and behavior change. Highly effective development programs focus on helping leaders develop insights into their business, their impact on others, and themselves. Equally important, high-impact programs provide leaders with a clear, tested roadmap for translating those insights into meaningful behavior change. Content has limited value when it comes to changing mindsets and behaviors. Many programs ignore this important reality and become overly academic rather than applied.
3. Failure to use a blended approach
To maximize ROI, executive development programs should combine the best elements of group learning and one-on-one coaching. In our experience, leaders grow most when they leverage their network to support a development journey that is highly tailored to their individual needs.
The most common complaint I hear from startup leaders about their previous coaching experiences is: “My coach just asked me a bunch of questions and never gave me any answers or advice.” The approach described here emphasizes self-directed discovery and is taught and recommended by many of the largest and most well-known coaching certification providers. While this approach can be useful at certain levels of an organization, it is less well-suited for startups and established corporate leaders, many of whom look to their coach as an expert advisor.
Emerging company leaders benefit most from working with a coach who knows many of the answers and is willing to share them in an exploratory, collaborative, and non-pressurized way. At a minimum, coaches should share their expertise to: 1) synthesize assessment data to inform leaders' most important development opportunities; 2) provide deep insight into leadership styles, tendencies, influences, and more; 3) devise clear, actionable roadmaps for behavior change; and 4) facilitate successful and sustainable behavior change. All of these requirements assume that coaches are seasoned experts on what leadership at scale really entails and how to increase leaders' readiness to lead most efficiently and effectively.
Group-based learning has several important advantages in developing corporate leaders. The benefits are more fully realized when group sessions focus less on content and more on insights and behavior change. Indeed, corporate leadership requires a very nuanced skill set that is difficult to master alone. Our research shows that leaders develop more during programs when they receive developmental support from peers, thought partners, mentors, etc. Well-designed group sessions allow corporate leaders to practice important skills, such as leveraging others to solve problems and reach conclusions in complex situations. In fact, engaging in shared development opportunities in a group format can increase efficiency. Finally, groups of emerging corporate leaders can be a key vehicle in driving key organizational imperatives. To maximize the value of every dollar invested, programs should align participants and create calls to action for strategic priorities related to growth, organizational transformation, culture change, etc.
4. Lack of customizability
Program sponsors often make the mistake of purchasing an off-the-shelf solution. To maximize effectiveness, programs must be customized and embedded within the broader ecosystem in which leaders operate. Insights are more robust and new behaviors are more easily acquired when leaders address real business challenges they need to address. Coaches are more effective when they are well adapted to the business. Group sessions are more effective when leaders collaborate to overcome obstacles and capitalize on opportunities. Program ROI is significantly increased when used to drive key strategic initiatives, a goal that can only be achieved through customization.
5. Lack of measurement
To truly evaluate and maximize ROI, measurement is essential and should occur at various stages of an executive development program. However, most programs omit the measurement component or implement it with little rigor. Ideally, a robust, psychometrically sound assessment should be conducted at the start of the program to provide guidance on individual strengths and development opportunities.
When used with larger cohorts, assessment data serves as key input for succession planning and talent roundtables. Aggregated assessment data also helps uncover trends and common development opportunities across the cohort. As the program progresses, feedback from group learning sessions allows for improvements and subtle course corrections where needed. Two-way feedback helps optimize and enhance one-on-one coaching: leaders provide feedback on whether coaches are meeting their needs and expectations, and coaches provide feedback on whether leaders are engaged, development-oriented, etc.
At the end of the program, an outcome evaluation should be used to demonstrate the impact. So-called “happy sheets” are not enough here. Instead, managers should evaluate progress against development goals and whether leaders have become able to adapt to broader and more complex roles. The size of the successor pool, and whether it has grown, can also be used as an indicator of the program's impact.
