“Do you want to develop a leader or do you want a course?”
“Can you give us a course on Leadership Development ?”
“What kind of people need the training? “– “Various, different experiences and locations”.
“How many people will there be?” – “We will tell you an hour before the training.”
We have been asked to provide courses and trainers. It’s useful to know about the background of the trainees and, indeed, how many there are. You see the responses. These recent conversations were guaranteed to make the course generic, the trainer’s life difficult and the trainees’ experience potentially irrelevant.
Who Needs Leadership?
Organizations whether private or government bodies or countries need to have leadership. To do this they need leaders who are not just positional power leaders (placed there by their buddies in government). They have past leaders, current leaders, and to ensure the long term, they need future leaders. “If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.” Keeping a steady hand is useful but is it as useful as preparing the organisation for its future in an ever-changing global world? So you need to develop leaders who can cope with the future.
Leaders are at different stages of development
Developing leaders is not just a case of attending a standard 5-day content training course and then you are an expert. Leaders will be at different stages of development in their life and have had different backgrounds and experiences. The leadership journey is never ending and you can never know it all. Leaders need to know different things, at different times, for different situations and types of evolution. Education needs to be forward looking, inspiring and visionary.
Leading starts with leading yourself
Some of Leadership learning is about acquiring skills but a lot of leadership learning is about developing your self understanding and your personality.. To be a leader you need to have followers and the first person you need to lead is yourself, hence the importance of “Know thyself” and your psychological makeup.
The stereotype of a leader
A leader does not need to be an old white privileged dominant male though many of those are brought up to think they ought to be and follow the command and control style. Leadership style should depend on who you are , where you are and who you are trying to lead. Organisations have their cultures which often clash with country cultures. And remember that 75% of people do not follow their country stereotype in the way they think or behave.
The marginalised leader
Some of those who are being lead may belong to marginalised groups, such as LGBT+, Neuro, generational, women, the poor, the working class, colour, living in a different country from where they were born, different religions. Some may be intersectional. And of course the leader may themselves belong to many marginalised groups.
It depends on the roles of those you are leading
Leading a country is different from leading a football team (maybe). Leading when you have authority (i.e. do what I say) is different from where you don’t. Try leading volunteers! Try being a consultant in an advisory role! Try being a nurse leading your patient on they way to recovery. Try running a committee where you (and indeed they) don’t have the authority to decide anything. Try dealing with a child. They all require leadership skills, the power of ‘follow me’ and persuasion skills, and getting someone to follow ‘your vision’.
Leading is different from Management
Comparison can be made with Projects and Programmes. A manager’s task is about delivering a set of objectives, to perhaps a set budget in a set time in order to achieve the key performance indicators (KPI’s). They manage people to achieve this. They may also be interested in ensuring that they will have people who can deliver in the future, or they might not care. A leader is measured by the benefit they deliver and not what they did . Leaders determine the way and encourage and inspire others to follow. New leaders often start with a lot of management focus and a little leadership knowledge, but gradually become leaders.
Western Wisdom
Western Leadership teaching is often not appropriate for the location of the trainees. And whether they are in their country of birth or elsewhere. Leading diverse cultures is not easy when one where the staff never have had to take responsibility and others where the staff challenge authority .
There are many cases where Delegates have ‘learnt’ leadership from Western trainers and have said “this is great but culturally we cannot apply any of it in our home country.” The Westerners may think their method is better but is that just arrogance. In may ways it’s like saying women never invented anything.
Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.
Leadership Development
We work with you to build a plan to deliver your Leadership development. This can involve courses and workshops and one-to-one coaching. It can be a continuous process. The facilitators who mainly do this are :
They, like many other associates have experience of Leadership in many countries.
Conventional Leadership Training
SCT offers conventional leadership training in courses such as the ones below
- Leadership and Team Management: Creating and developing teams and leading them *
- Diversity, Interculturality and Cultural Intelligence for Remote Leaders Be successful with many diverse groups at the same time. Understand the many strands of diversity and what it takes to take advantage of it
- Manager to Leader: Change your personality to that of a leader .
- Manager as Coach: Learn how to coach and develop the attitudes that enable you to coach well
- Building your Personal Brand: Develop your personal brand based on your Behavioural Profile, strengths and wishes,
- Achieving personal success with international teams. Building and running international teams to demonstrate leadership competence
- Transformation using Psycho-social Vertical Adult Development and Spiral Dynamics – for experienced leaders
See them all here
We also have many short courses to develop specific skills
Written by David Rigby © 2024 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd