Why Most Leadership Training Fails (And What Actually Works)

What if your biggest leadership block isn’t your skills - but your mindset?
In this short teaser, Ryan Gottfredson explains the #1 reason most leadership programs fall short - and what you can do instead to grow vertically, not just horizontally.

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Here are some links to the upcoming guest, Ryan Gottfredson:
https://ryangottfredson.com/books/becoming-better/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryangottfredson/
https://www.youtube.com/ryangottfredsonphd

Here is another free resource from 
Life & Leadership Connected: “The Identity to Impact Starter Guide”
https://lifeleadershipconnected.systeme.io/32644969

Transcript

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And so I did my PhD at Indiana University and ultimately I did my dissertation on leadership. And I imagine we'll kind of come back to that here in just a second. But that's what set me in the trajectory. Now I've been at Cal State Fullerton for the last 11 years doing research on leadership, teaching on leadership, and then I take that out into the world in terms of the books that I write and then the consulting that I do for organizations. Most leadership development efforts aren't very effective. There's some statistics out there that say 75 % of organizations say their leadership development programs aren't working. So that was really startling to see. Also, I think one of the things that I also recognize is that most leadership research primarily focuses on answering one question. And that question is, what do leaders need to do to be effective? And that's led to some really good answers. And we've got some really good ideas about what leaders need to do. But this didn't sit well with me because I think that leadership is being more than just what somebody does. I think it's more about who they are. And so I kind of made this connection at least mentally. I wonder if one of the reasons why leadership development programs aren't working is because they're focused too much on the doing of leadership and not enough on the being of leadership. And so when I took the job at Cal State Fullerton and started up my own research stream, that became my focus. How do we tap into the being side of leadership? And that's what I've been studying for the last 11 years, which led to the books that I've written and the work that I do. For most people automatically interprets that constructive criticism as an attack as a threat. And therefore, because we our body is wired to see it in that way, then it activates a response, which is generally to get defensive, right? And so that's... what we're getting at here is our body's internal wiring. And some people are more wired for self protection and other people are more wired for value creation. And it's possible to retrain our brain and these neuro connections so that we become more wired for value creation. And so in the future, when we receive constructive criticism, we could rewire our bodies such that when we receive that criticism, we don't see it as a bad thing and get defensive, but we see it as an opportunity. and we create space for it. Not that we have to agree with it, but when we create space for it, it creates that opportunity to learn and grow. uh And so in my research on mindsets, coming back to your question, is our mindsets are these neuro connections that shape whether we see the world in more self-protective ways or in more value creating ways?