“Your competition can copy every advantage you’ve got - except one. That’s why the world’s best companies are realizing that no matter what business they’re in, their real business is building leaders.”  (from October’s Fortune magazine - the Leadership issue). 

What does Leadership Training look like at your company? 

At the time of this post, a Google search on “leadership training” resulted in 1,820,000 hits.  Do you use an off-the-shelf self-guided training series? A classroom-based approach with curriculum designed and delivered by inhouse trainers? A hybrid of on/off line training?  Senior leaders teaching new managers?  Formal or informal?

You Are Who You Hang Around With

Would you attend a seminar that advertises to teach you how to make $1,000,000 a year if it was taught by someone making any less than that amount?  Take a ”how to publish a book” class from someone who has never been published?  Hire a personal trainer that spends more time in the buffet room than the weight room?  Probably not.  If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it.  Why not learn directly from those that have experienced what we want to get better at?

Why Leaders Need to Train Leaders

Throughout history people have learned from those with specific experience and viewed as experts in their field.  Before books, wisdom was passed from generation to generation by those that had the experience and learning. This allows role models to exist for both inspiration and aspiration.

Results 

Contact time:  what is the amount of time your best leaders are spending training and developing other leaders? (hint: I bet not nearly as much as they should be…).

Examples:  The CEOs at McDonald’s, GE, Medtronic, and many others spend upwards of 50% of their time on human capital issues.  Fifty percent!  Imagine the cascade effect on their leadership teams…

What About Professional Trainers? 

Does this mean any course taught by a professional trainer, whose career is spent mastering adult learning methods, expert-level facilitation skills, engaging delivery styles, writing strategy-aligning curriculum - are outdated?  Ineffective?  No!!  For human capital topics like Leadership, a combination of foundational elements presented by training professionals, then brought to life by internal role models, is the winning combination.

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Leadership is the only real competitive advantage you can sustain over the long term.

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Want more on the topic of Leadership?  Try these great sources:

Fortune magazine article, “How Top Companies Breed Stars”

Jim Stroup’s Managing Leadership blog

 

Joe Raasch :: Oct.05.2007 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 4 Comments »