S1E11 - Development – Your Organisation Can’t Outrun Its Leaders

Most organisations treat development like an HR project. Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds disagree—strongly. In this episode of Leadership Matters, they unpack why development is first and foremost a leadership responsibility, not a learning calendar or a tick-box course.

They explore why many leaders don’t get any real development until their late 40s, why “four training days a year” is a useless metric, and how the real test of leadership is not the results you deliver, but the leaders you leave behind. Glenn and Terry differentiate organisational programs from true capability building, talk about how AI can remove the “no time to develop my people” excuse, and emphasise the blend of mindset and skillset required to sustain performance.

You’ll also hear four practical ways to turn development into an execution engine—from making it a deliverable, to real-time coaching, to modelling vulnerability, to building learning into the weekly rhythm.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast series created by LeaderShape Consulting that helps leaders take their vision and deliver results. My name is Glenn Price, and as always, I'm joined by my business partner and co-host, Terry Reynolds. And today's episode is all about development. Now that's often seen as a HR initiative. We certainly don't believe that. This is a leadership responsibility, not a HR, you take care of the people conversation.

And the reason why I say that is that a little bit of signposting, if we go back over the last couple of episodes, we've talked about the first step, the rational step of setting direction. We talked about the emotional steps of how do we engage and excite our people. Once we've got set direction and engage excite right, and that's created the context for performance, then we jump back down to being rational again. And we talked about enabling and executing the broader team with structure and resources and action and operational planning. And now is the last three drivers in the next three episodes that are emotional again. And that's if you've taken all of this effort to get this giant flywheel working, we call it, how do we sustain momentum? And that's where development first fits in. And we say in the vision to results book, if you want better results, grow better leaders, right? But as I said, development isn't a HR initiatives. This isn't just about sending people to leadership development programs. I think it's a leadership responsibility. And for me, the truth is all of the experience over the last 20 or 30 years would suggest that your organization can't out execute its leadership capability. It would seem that the ability for your leaders to be able to develop others, for example, and not become the bottleneck everybody else has to work around is key. This is a big, big topic.

Yeah, look, I agree. think, you development is pretty dear to my heart. Obviously coming out of a more of an HR learning background. Actually I was recently at a conference and I remember, you know, with our leadership partner, Zenger Folkman. And Joe Folkman was telling me that, you know, they had had a sort of a dive into the data over the last few years and how to look at the age demographic of development of leaders. And it was in the high 40s. And, you know, one of the things that he sort of commented on is to sort of suggest and say, isn't it interesting that people in their high 40s, in many, many situations, are getting their first development, their first leadership? Isn't that scary? Very, very scary. And I think that, you know, we talk about growing leaders internally versus developing leaders. And I think both of those are different because I don't… …I can't actually think of an organisation that is growing leaders. They run a leadership program, they might call it that. Developing young leaders, et cetera. But a lot of people are really… …they're inheriting experienced people and then wanting to make them leaders. They're probably hired on technical capability or other areas… …not leadership capability. Imagine a place where leadership is a university degree just like anything else. And so you're valuing the actual strengths and competencies that come with leadership, including all of the skills and mindset required that we've talked about on these episodes. But I don't think people see it in that way. You were saying to me earlier in prep for this episode that we were talking about the importance of structure again. And you said to me, look, if you get the structure right, really the the areas that you should focus on in terms of development or capability building jump out. Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, well, that's what in an ideal world, that's what you'd expect is that you've moved the deck chairs through structure. You've got the right structure to be able to execute on what it is that that new strategy or the existing strategy is. And now all of a sudden you start to look at capability of the people sitting in those chairs and really that should fall out. It is not a standard, it's a program.

We're talking about capability and I think that the capability will vary between roles and what you're expecting of those individuals. Well, tell me more then about that. So if it's capability development versus training, both have their place, I think. But tell me the difference between those two things for you. Well, me, the first thing is that if you're looking at organisational development versus building capability,

The differentiation for me is that I can take control of building my own personal capability. I don't need the organisation to do that. There is enough stuff in actual fact, unlimited nowadays stuff for me to… …if I demonstrated interest I could log on, podcasts, webinars, it's all there. I don't need the organisation to drive that. Where I see the other side is organisational development is where the organisation will take control of that and say, hey, here's a program, I'll offer this, they'll run it internally, et cetera. But I do see the whole development piece sits with the individual. I know the leader impacts that, the person, but at the end of the day, I've worked with people that just are genuinely interested in developing themselves. And I think that we are now in an age where it's unlimited.

Well, we mentioned in a previous episode, Dan Pink's book, Drive, and how do you get people motivated in high levels of intrinsic motivation? And I say this with a sidebar comment that says, look, you can't get all of the people all the time, right? But he does talk about three components. He talks about purpose, which is back to our vision and strategy piece again. He talks about autonomy.

So in the action planning, do you give people enough room to be able to create it in their own way? But the last is mastery. And so I think some of the best organizations or teams that we observe, both in the research and clients that we work with today, whether it be at a leadership level or it's a frontline level, these people are natural learners. They want to get out there and learn more, I think, in different styles. One of the things that hits me about organizational development and training is that you're trying to get cohorts of people through at the same time. And yet if we've got an inspiring vision, a strategy to get there and I've got the right resources and I've got a plan that says this is what I'm doing on a monthly or quarterly basis, then it should be pretty simple to go, well, what's the gap analysis? capability is a resource? What more, how could I tap into my full potential if we were to develop a specific skill of mine that's directly connected to the job that I'm being asked to do. And I think generically we go, all leaders need communication training, all leaders need coaching, all leaders need, and that's probably the case for foundation skills. Maybe like you're saying, organizations just don't even get that well. So a foundational leadership development program, I know you and I have delivered hundreds, if not thousands of those across the globe. So there's a place for those foundational levels. But I think above that, know, in leadership, we take a strength based approach. I would want to be identifying for each individual leader, what are their two or three strengths and how do we move those from being okay to being world class, top 10%, welcome to Miramar. And you and I both know that's a different approach than just putting them in a classroom. is. I just, you know, as you're speaking there, I'm just thinking to myself, how much is AI going to play a part in this going forward? Because what you've described there, if I had a real job and I was in a development role internally, I look at that and I go, it's at my fingertips. I can create all of these plans. I can get AI to search for me what are the best webinars, the most appropriate webinars based by competency. I'm just wondering what impact AI is going to have as we go forward. Yeah, listening to you I'm thinking two things, one thing that jumps out because we keep talking about the leader needs time to lead. So I think AI can shorten that, right? Like it does all this heavy computational lifting, which enables us to have an hour or two a week back. And it's where we use that hour. We don't fill it with crap again. We actually use it to develop the capability of the people around us. That's one. The second thing is, is curation of learning just became simpler. So I can say, hey, based on my style, this is the strength that I have use across training approach and now give me some resources, tips, tools, hints, and I'm probably going to get that faster and at my fingertips. so learning similar to a customer experience, we want it in time on time. Learning is becoming in time on time. Here's the, the tasks that I've got in front of me. These are the strengths that I have. How do I build on those to respond to that as fast as possible? And so I think AI plays a huge role there because that time poverty myth, busy leaders keep saying they don't have time to develop people. I think that excuse really costs organisations a massive amount and I think AI can play into that. I wonder, because we always have this problem, is that I question how much value the average person in an organisation places on development, any type of development.

Well, I agree. And the problem we have is that, you know, we can't get them off the job for that long or they don't show up on the day or they've to duck out for an hour during the session that we're running or whatever. I just look at it and I go, it's your frickin' development. Well, you said before when we were talking about, you can tell the real strategy by checking the budget and going, what's been allocated and resourced?

That's the real priorities. That's the real strategy. But it's the same for development, right? I mean, what's more powerful, the results that you deliver or the leaders that you leave behind? Which one typically gets rewarded? You know, it's very rare that they go, hey, we'd like to thank Gary for his 20 years. He's left 200 leaders behind him to help. It would be more highlighting somebody that's shot the lights out for the last couple of years in sales, has given a lot to technical proficiency inside of the organization, right? So you can see what's being recognized and what's being measured. And I don't think we measure really well the ability to the legacy that great leaders who develop other leaders, that's the real test for me. Yeah, you know, I remember I was in an organization that measured this. Basically they would say that every person in that organisation would get four to five development days a year. Or points, I know the ones with points. Yeah, so the measure was I've got to get through four or five days. There's nothing about the outcome, there's nothing about change of behaviour, there's nothing…completely measuring the wrong thing. We know that in some professions they've got to do those professional hours because they think that as a result of doing the professional hours you will be a stronger person. But I wonder whether measuring the professional hours versus the output of change of behaviour, what they're doing back in the workplace, I wonder whether that's measuring the wrong thing. Yeah, you you take a pilot, for example, has to keep up a number of flight hours. And some of that is live and some of that is in a simulator where they're practising in case something goes wrong.

And I don't think that leaders spend enough time in the simulator going, how do we future proof execution? What might be coming? What sort of skill sets are going to be required from me? What leadership style is required from me in the next two to three years? And how can I develop some leaders around me that have complementary strengths that enable us to put some sustainability on this? That's the sort of fourth dimension, isn't there? If you've got your strategy and these are the priorities. And then you elongate that to go, well, how long can you keep that strategy going or the momentum going? I think it's directly connected to the leader's ability not only to develop themselves, like you said, and own that development, but to be developing others around them. I think that the development part of it, though, that we can't confuse or underestimate that actually the leader role in coaching people after coming back from development is really, really important because if people are following up on it, if people are asking what's been done, if people are asking, talk to me about the program or what did you get from it or what are you going to do differently? There's a responsibility from the leader to ensure that the team is coming back and doing something. Well, best practice would be that, right? I think for most people, they've been down a resource or resources for a couple of days and they're like, thank God you're back. Let's just get on with what we did before. And I think that that sends a message. It's like moving somebody's performance review because a client called and you're subtly sending a message about who's important. Never try and move those things around. just, I'm coming back to where we started.

I don't think organizations can outperform their leadership capability. And that's the key and why this step is where it is. Often we get asked by the way to come into an organization, they'll go, hey, can you do a customer experience transformation? Can you do a sales performance transformation, et cetera, et cetera? And our first question is, well, what's your strategy? You we jump all the way up these drivers to try and understand what they're getting out, how they're going to be resourced.

Is the budget going to be in the right areas? Because simply coming in and teaching people some new tools is probably not going to get your people where they want to go. And often we find certainly in professional services and sales where we go, do you want a new sales system or you just want your guys to use the one that you've got? And it's probably the second, right? So development, we've talked a lot on this episode about capability. We've talked about strength-based, taking a strength-based approach.

But actually, we would be remiss not to say development is both mindset and skill set and the blend between those two elements. And I think back to your, know, 97 % is the performance and 3 % is the practice. We often use the analogy of 80-20 with mindset and skill set. I don't think that there's enough mindset, behavioral training, resilience training, coping mechanisms.

et cetera, et cetera, that can make sure that people are in the right state of mind, that they're in flow when they're developing other people. Back to that great line, it's a Canadian psychologist that said, put your oxygen mask on before helping somebody else. And so I often see leaders, if they are at least half decent, trying to develop somebody else, but they haven't spent any time themselves going to the gym and working out, making sure that they're as strong as possible. So here are some top tips for leaders on how you can drive development as an execution engine. 

Number one, make development a deliverable. It's not just a line that goes on the bottom of the strat plan somewhere that says HR and people. Don't measure leaders only on results. Measure them on the leaders that they grow. 

Number two, coach in the moment. Replace formal feedback sessions with live coaching, consistently giving back feedback because feedback delayed is growth denied.

Three, model vulnerability. We've talked about this in terms of vulnerability-based trust. Show your own learning curve. Share with people what your strengths are or whether you've got some fatal flaws. If you do, let's address them. We're human. Be as vulnerable as you can because I think that makes it safe for others to go, hey, I'm trying to grow as well, but you could help me in this particular area. Maybe you could mentor me. Maybe you could coach me. 

And then last of all, build learning into a rhythm so you need to bake in that, we call it win-learn-change, but bake in that reflection and skill growth into meetings, not off-sites. We don't go on a quarterly or six-monthly off-site and go, let's do the reflection on our learning. It should be happening all the time because development happens in real time. So development isn't sending someone to a course, right? It's sending them into a challenge and making sure that they've got the right skillset and mindset for them to be at their very best. And so to end this episode with a challenge,

Who are you developing right now and would they say the same about you? Really looking forward to seeing you on the next episode.