Leadership: what's the R.O.I. of your development spend?

Published: 2011-06-13   There is 1 comment ... please add yours below

I was recently talking with two senior HR executives. One from the regional HQ of a global US manufacturer; the other from the head office of an international transport business based in Australia. Both complained of relatively low on-the-job impact from their investment in leadership workshops and profiling. A worrying traction deficit. Ring a bell?

My informants feel pretty happy with their technical training, whether for engineers or finance staff. The content there is about how to do things. Attendees take this away and test it out; seeing pretty quickly what it means in practice – honing their new skills via on-the-job practice. This beds down the development investment, and delivers a clear return.

With leadership, much of the training is less specific – more about sensitising than how-to. Engineering and financial procedures are replicable from one situation to another. You plug in local data and hey-presto determine the bending moment or NPV. Leadership though is different. Business challenges and people vary from one situation to another. Thus requiring problem-solving approach not just a repeatable formula.

Both HR executives are seeking a stronger bridge from classroom to workplace. A clearer gain from their expenditure on MBTI and LSI profiling. My answer is leadership action planning. Rounding out leadership development by getting each participant to plan the specific actions he/she will take to address their most pressing leadership challenges.

It’s not rocket science, it only requires three simple steps:

• Defining the key concerns or questions holding your people back;
• Working out the types of actions needed to address these concerns;
• Then writing specific action commitments – your leadership action plan.

In light of the higher ROI from technical training, it’s a comfort (as a leader) that your people (particularly knowledge workers) want you to be proficient in those “hard” market and technical areas – not just in the “softer” issues of people and culture (the core of most leadership training). Both must be part of your leadership action plan!

I’m interested to know what you do personally to avoid the traction deficit that worries my HR friends. My answer is leadership action planning. But, what’s yours?

Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership^®