Does Leadership Training Really Help?

On a recent flight from Boston to Minneapolis, my seatmate in 2A asked me a great question. Do you think that if we provided more leadership training earlier in people’s education or career, it would help build more managers who excel as leaders? It was a great question and I did not know the answer. The easy answer would be, “Of course. Hire me as a leadership trainer and I promise we can turn more of your managers into great leaders.” The problem is that I do not believe the easy answer is the complete truth. Although training can play an important role in leadership development, there are other foundational factors that are instrumental to a leader’s success.

I have been working hard on being a great leader for going on 40 years. Being a great leader is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be a great leader and every leadership trainer and executive coach would be unemployed. I am continuously amazed at how stupid I was just two weeks ago; every great leader is a continuous learner.

So if training is not the complete answer, where do we learn how to be a great leader and what does it take to put what we learn into action? I am not a psychologist but here is what I feel I have learned from working with great leaders or people aspiring to be a great leader.

1 – Your Parents: Whether good or bad, your parents play a role in who you are today as a leader. I was blessed with parents who always believed in me, trusted me (a mistake on their part sometimes), and supported me in becoming the entrepreneur and leader I am today.  I have been an advisor to many leaders who had parents like mine and others whose parents were the opposite of the ones I just described. Some have been able to use their life experience to become a great leader and others have been wounded for life and treat others the way they were raised.

Leadership Development Action: Study great leaders and do what they do. Emulate the positive leadership characteristics your parents modeled and learn to move beyond the ones they exhibited that set you back and will only likely undermine your leadership career. Set a leadership vision for who you want to become as a leader and develop an action plan of what you need to do to turn your vision into reality.

2 – Your Friends: Do the people who you hang out with really care about you and truly believe in you? Do they celebrate your successes and encourage you to move forward? Or, do your friends discount and undermine you every chance they get?  Keep in mind this quote from Ronald Oliver, “People like to bring up your past when your present and future looks better than theirs.”

Leadership Development Action: Choose your friends and associates wisely. Spend time with people who have a vested interest in your success. Join a task force or volunteer for a committee led by accomplished leaders so you can learn from the best.  Make caring about the people you work with and lead an integral part of your leadership character. It is almost impossible to be a great leader without caring about the people around you. People know whether you genuinely care about them or are interacting with them based on your own best interests. People do not follow people they do not trust and do not believe genuinely care about them.

3 – Your Boss: A boss can build a relationship with you where you go home each night saying, “I love my job and I love who I work for,” or they can build a relationship where you hate your job, are stressed about life, do not sleep well at night and you start thinking, “I do not get paid to put up with this crap.”

Leadership Development Action: You may not be able to change your boss, but you can take action to gain their confidence in you and improve your relationship. Support your manager’s goals; know what is expected of you and be accountable for results; over communicate; offer to help; and lead change. Be a boss everyone wants to work with. Implement leadership behaviors that build others’ trust, respect, and confidence in your ability to lead. Solicit input and ideas from your employees and implement their ideas whenever possible. Delegate responsibility. Have the confidence to say, “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake.” Follow through on every one of your commitments and recognize others for their contributions to your team’s success. If you focus on developing relationships built on trust, your followers will say, “I love who I work for and I love to come to work each day.”

4 – Your Co-Workers: We all have to work with others on the team to get the job done. What we don’t have to do is listen to others who have a negative vision of the world, our team or our job.

Leadership Development Action: Hang out with people who have a positive vision, believe in you and raise the bar with a higher expectation of the contributions you can make to improve the conditions of the team and your organization. Support the success of others and be intentional about actions that increase communication and teamwork between yourself and others on your team or in other departments.

If you build a foundation for leadership based on the aforementioned actions and couple them with leadership training and skill development, the odds of your leadership success are exponential.