What leaders & their employees *really* think about leadership training that no one talks about…
Often when leaders & their teams participate in leadership or team development, they come in nervous, distrusting, and slightly irritated.
“This is a waste of time.”
“Why are we doing this?”
“I don’t even want to be here.”
“Why is my boss making me go to this? Do they think I’m not doing a good job?”
These are the all-too-common thoughts that come up for people.
Like one company we worked with…
It was a division of a large manufacturing company that had 35 leaders which represented 6 business teams across the US.
When we met they were:
- Struggling to work together, which was affecting each business unit
- Ineffectively implementing changes, innovating & getting employees to go along with the changes
- Experiencing breakdowns in communication, teamwork & collaboration
- Often playing the blame game & lacking true ownership and accountability
- Operating without streamlining processes or best practices, which created confusion for their departments, as well as their internal customers
Many of the leaders came in distrusting, thinking some of what I shared above.
And it makes sense.
They’ve got huge ‘to-do’ lists, emails waiting to be answered & fires waiting to be put out.
The last thing they want to be doing is sitting through another training session.
It isn’t until the leaders start to overcome previously unseen barriers & experience the transformation that they realize how critical and effective leadership & team development can be.
My favorite moment is when the same people who came in with their arms crossed and skeptical walk out of our session & say, “Wow! I learned more about my team in one session than I have in the last 10 years.”
Or, “I wish I’d had this 20 years ago. I’d be a better leader. We’d be a better team.”
In our work with this group, we helped all 35 leaders discover their natural wiring, how it shows up in their work, how it can interfere with getting things done effectively & how to leverage their natural strengths to achieve more – with less stress.
Using The Coach Approach to Leadership™ principles we helped them:
-Grow in their self & others-awareness
-Successfully launch & achieve all 12 key cross-functional business goals
-Develop a compelling team vision & define/align the values they wanted to operate by
-Improve trust, collaboration & departmental communication at managerial & employee levels
Sometimes the very thing we’re resistant to is the key to removing barriers we didn’t even know existed…and removing those barriers will help us achieve our goals faster than we ever imagined possible.