The HR Manager told me that we couldn’t call the leadership development project “coaching” because the CEO doesn’t believe in coaching for leaders.
The CEO has stated that leaders should be developed enough to not need coaching; that they wouldn’t have made it thus far if they were deficient.
That CEO and his Chief Operating Officer (who had filled the CEO role temporarily but had failed to be chosen as CEO) are notoriously at war with each other and the organisation suffers from the ongoing battle.
No-one is willing to speak out about their immature lunacy.
Operational decision making is centralised and line managers have no empowerment to choose and improve their teams.
The CEO is risk averse to the extreme and strong pockets of unacceptable behaviour and performance are growing within the organisation, due to his unwillingness to take decisive action with recalcitrant employees.
When we sought permission to interview a cross section of the leadership and line management to design the leadership development program, we were refused access to the senior leadership on the basis that the problems were at middle and line levels, not at the senior level.
We realised that anything we did would be wasted without the support and involvement of senior leadership, who were clearly not developed enough to participate.
We declined the offer to help and advised the talent to seek an alternative career path.
Sadly, similar situations exist across commerce and government, no sector appears immune to this “leadership dry rot disease”. Ultimately the government leaders and commercial boards are revealing their own weakness by either tolerating or not knowing about this state of under developed leadership.
Interestingly, that particular CEO and COO had both attended high profile tertiary programs on leadership.
Intellectual development of the leader is important, but not as important as their practical leadership development – which is behavioural. Tertiary institutions do not offer accountability for the behavioural development and performance of their elite students, only their intellectual development.
Assuming that these senior leaders already possess the behavioural characteristics of an effective leader is mistaken. The evidence is to the contrary.
Our solution is focussed on measurable improvement in the organisation’s employee engagement, performance, innovation, productivity, customer experience, other stakeholders’ experience and sustainable growth and profitability. These are our criteria for measuring leadership effectiveness.
It requires the senior leaders to participate first; leave their egos behind and have the courage to be vulnerable yet effective.
They must learn, amongst other topics:
- how to behave in order to gain trust and respect;
- how to deal effectively with unacceptable behaviour and performance whilst enhancing trust and respect;
- how to make better decisions;
- how to implement and execute effectively;
- how to acquire authentic leadership or executive presence;
- how to conduct those very difficult conversations;
- how to effectively engage with their people;
- how to effectively measure their own performance based on a structured plan that addresses the issues that matter most to that organisation;
- We coach them to succeed in the execution of their plan; and
- We measure the return on investment.
Nothing is off the shelf, everything is contextualised and reality based. We dive deep into the organisation.
If they are not willing to do that, we leave them alone.
We are acutely aware of the law of gravity – it all rolls down from the top.
What do you think?
