WISER LEADERSHIP & SELF-MASTERY

Why leaders lose faith in leadership development

Leadership development is falling the trap of short term wins

I had a slight disagreement with an HR Director once. The brief and highly dramatised version is this:

Me: I’m coaching him on how to reignite friendships and bring joy back to his life.

HRD: Goddam it you’re a maverick, I thought this was meant to be a leadership development programme

Me: Sure but he’s only two weeks from retirement and the clock is ticking. If he doesn’t get some purpose in his life he’s going to diiiiiie!

HRD: It’s crazy but it might just work

[End scene]

My point, and yes I do have one, is that we disagreed because the idea of developing someone in a way that almost certainly wouldn’t benefit the company seemed a little odd. But preparing someone for retirement seemed like the ethical thing to do. If you’re working a 70hr week and just stop, you will die. I didn’t do this just because it was the right thing to do, I also did it because I can’t think of anything more mind-numbingly painful than trying to develop someone on a programme who is just going through the motions. Awful. For both of us. But if we question traditional leadership development principles we might be able to avoid the curse of people attending programmes because they think they are supposed to.