By Hubert saint-Onge
In a previous blog, I highlighted the potential for growth available to leaders who strive to enhance their effectiveness. The framework below serves as a guide, showing the pathways that can shape a leader's journey toward the realization of this evolutionary potential.
Moving through the phases from Control to Partnership implies significant changes to one’s leadership practice. This post describes how a more systematic approach to learning can accelerate leadership growth through these phases.
Learning: a self-development approach
Leaders committed to enhancing their leadership impact must take control of their growth. Embracing a self-learning discipline as a daily practice can be a powerful tool, empowering leaders to shape their growth. A study by the Centre For Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC revealed that leaders gain 6% of their learning from courses, 12% from others, and 82% from their work. However, this research didn't delve into how leaders can learn as an inherent part of their work. This is where adopting a self-learning discipline comes into play, allowing leaders to intentionally learn from their work experiences.
At the residential Leadership Centre of a large financial organization, a team I once led deepened this work by surveying those who supervised leaders. We asked them to assess leaders reporting to them based on traits characterizing learning agility. The results were not just significant; they were enlightening. We found a surprisingly high correlation between learning and performance, confirming that learning agility is the hallmark of outstanding leaders.
We also found that approximately 10% of the individuals evaluated by their managers were self-developers, 60% were passive/reactive learners, and 30% were blocked learners and could not engage in learning. Self-developers constantly asked themselves and others questions about what worked and did not. Passive/reactive learners only adjusted minimally when it became clear that their actions were ineffective. Blocked learners were impervious to learning. In other words, a significant proportion of the people randomly assessed were either uninterested or not equipped to learn actively as part of their leadership practice. These results were so surprising that we carried out a similar assessment with another cohort of 50, only to confirm the initial results.
A Framework for Learning
Leaders must take stock of their leadership practice and keep sharpening the tools of their trade to enhance their effectiveness. Learning from experience involves a mindful approach. Learning does not simply flow from having experiences: you must be purposeful to learn from experience. Learning must be intentional. It cannot be incidental or retrospective; it has to be forward-looking or prospective. To be effective, you must consider yourself an active learner and make it an integral part of your work. There is an essential difference between doing things and learning.
This is where a framework can provide useful guidance.
The leadership learning framework
As the framework above shows, determining who you want to ‘be’ is the first step in assuming your growth as a leader. Active learning leaders need a clear vision of evolving their leadership practice. To learn effectively, the leader has to aim to achieve specific outcomes on this evolutionary arc with those who experience their leadership. This is why “Be” is the starting point in this process. Referring back to the leadership growth framework at the beginning of the article, let’s say for example that you are resolved to shift from your current “persuasion” approach to “mobilization” in the leadership growth schematic. This shift implies moving forward your leadership from getting “concurrence” to eliciting “commitment” with a significant change from “imposing” to “engaging” leadership outcomes. In other words, you are moving from “telling” to working with people looking jointly for solutions.
To achieve the learning required to make this change, you must first decide who you want to ‘be’ as a leader. With a clear vision of what this entails in performing your role, you can determine the changes you need to make. This provides a pathway that enables you to engage in active learning. A clear vision of what you want to “Be” as a leader will give you the energy and dedication required to achieve the learning that will allow you to make this shift. To only have a vague idea of what you want to change in your leadership practice will not bring any results. You have to be specific about what you intend to learn: it must be grounded in practice; chasing a vague ideal cannot be the foundation for a sustainable effort.
Leadership must be enacted from the inside out. No one can excel at reacting to what is happening around them without a clear point of view on where they are going with their leadership practice. Plowing through the slings and arrows of the workplace without clear aspirations will not allow them to provide uplifting leadership. Those who have clarity on who they aspire to be as leaders can create a new future for themselves and those around them.
With well-defined aspirations, leaders can engage actively in learning, relying on their internal resources to navigate the learning wheel.
Commitment provides the energy to make it happen. Without commitment, our objectives remain unrealized intentions. You have to own this.
Future events are seen not merely as things to be done which are important in their own right but also as opportunities to learn.
As you sharpen your leadership capability and impact, you create a new future for yourself and those around you.
Learning to enhance your leadership is either about enhancing or reframing.
Many believe that leadership development can only take place by relying on external support provided through courses or programs. Yet, I firmly believe that leaders can best learn with the exercise of will on their own with the support of a learning framework or a coach. What Aristotle called “autarkeia” or “self-sufficiency,” which he defined as making your own choices based on your independent beliefs and convictions. Reliance on one’s internal resources will give active learning leaders a sense of coherence, meaning, and fulfillment.
The learning wheel: Doing – Assessing – Thinking – Planning
When planning to take action, you embed the four points around the wheel in the learning framework above. To apply it with discipline, you have to think of yourself as a learner and make it part of your self-concept.
Doing:
Pull together a developmental plan to correct less-than-optimal habits.
When engaging in the task at the Doing stage, keep an eye out for self-observation as a “shadow” action. Try to develop “learner self-talk”—monitor what goes on in your head as you tackle new situations.
Set “micro” learning objectives to address ineffective habits for a specific session or meeting. It could be, for instance, practicing “open-mindedness” when facing some opposition to your ideas instead of arguing your case without seeing the point of view of others.
Experiment with new ways of approaching a situation. Break familiar routines, try a new way of working things through in a more difficult meeting, and avoid operating on automatic pilot. Note if it makes a difference.
Push yourself out of your “comfort zone”—be aware of when you are keeping to your “comfort zone” and short-changing possible learning opportunities.
Assessing:
You must keep a personal vision and a clear picture of current reality before you. Identify the gaps between the current level at which you practice and where you want to be in the next growth phase.
It is helpful to be able to read people's verbal and non-verbal reactions when interacting with them.
Actively seek feedback from the people with whom you interact.
Reflect on specific aspects of your leadertship practice that need to change.
When you start seeing patterms, identify and name them: “once again, this is my ‘telling’ pattern: I must remember to ask people where they are at and be a better listener.”
Thinking:
Mindsets we have buit over time may no longer correspond to our leadership intentions: they become barriers to our growth. When you become aware of a mindset that does not correspond to where you want to bring your leadership practice, you have to reframe it to adopt behaviours that are better aligned to your intent.
Review what happened in your interactions and form hypotheses on why it did not go as well as expected. Then, regularly reaffirm in your mind the new leadership principles you have defined for yourself until they become second nature.
Planning:
As you are about to engage with team members, you may want to model how you want to come across. Remember that old habits have the force of gravity on their side. Your convictions must be reaffirmed and enacted.
Review how much headway you have made towards the leadership growth objectives you have set for yourself. Keep renewing these learning objectives and sharpening them as your practice evolves.
Pull out your leadership development every once in a while and update it as required.
Think of concrete ways to change your leadership practice and do mental rehearsals of how you will apply them when in the course of activities coming up.
Set “micro” learning objectives for an upcoming session or meeting. Break familiar routines: keep yourself from operating on automatic pilot
Conclusion
In the previous blog I referred to at the beginning of my article on leadership growth, I outlined a framework for the different phases of leadership growth, describing what characterized each phase and how to enhance the impact of our leadership. We all owe it to ourselves to optimize the impact of our leadership and elevate our contribution.
As I was writing about the phases of leadership growth, it became clear that readers would benefit from learning how to accelerate their leadership growth through these phases. Most of us have been conditioned to ‘outsource’ our leadership development to programs and workshops. Yet, we hold the power to uplift and accelerate our leadership growth by taking ownership of our learning.
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