There is no leadership crisis

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

This is very well said:

Do you sell leadership development courses? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “we have identified that leadership development for a next generation of leaders is our top priority”. What I’d like to answer: I think most canned courses are a waste of money and don’t sell courses. Also, I’m not convinced that there is any more of a leadership crisis today that requires a huge investment. I think that vendors of these courses are marketing them so you think that is the case. And, an assessment that a vendor provides to see if your organization needs this training will ALWAYS result in you needing the training. I’d have to say I agree with Donald Clark on the notion that leadership development is a crock.

Can we just convert our classroom courses into a self-paced online course? What I’d like to answer: well of course you can. But, it’ll probably be awful. Would YOU take the training? Willingly? I’ll help you repurpose the content, but in a way that suits an online environment. This might include cutting a significant amount of stuff that is superfluous, and changing it up, just like Dick suggests.

Can you make us a refresher course? Our employees need more training. Oh, really? I bet they don’t. I’ll bet that if their manager sat down when them and laid out clear expectations and then provided feedback to let them know if they were or weren’t doing it right, the problem would go away. Many years ago I read “Why employees don’t do what they are supposed to do” by Ferdinand F. Fournies. He lists 16 reasons why they aren’t. As an HPT enthusiast, I also know that environmental factors cause most of the performance problems, and always start with setting expectations. And not listing the learning objectives at the beginning of the course. One of those rules of thumb that I just don’t subscribe to. Call me a maverick.

Post external references

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    http://sparkyourinterest.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/questions-im-no-longer-answering/
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