They highlight four potential reasons that we are very aware of in our learning design.
- Overlooking context
- Decoupling reflection from real work
- Underestimating mindsets
- Failing to measure results
How does RSVP Design tackle these challenges when designing leadership programs?
If you ask successful leaders how they learnt to lead, they are likely to tell you it was primarily from experience, supported by having good role models, taking time to think about their own leadership strategies and finding an authentic, personal style that they could follow. Over time, their leadership was integrated into their professional and personal identities rather than being a ‘role’ adopted as a result of a title or set of responsibilities. Leaders may tell you of a book they read that made an impact, or a guru they listened to who offered new insights, or a
theory they stumbled upon that made sense – but primarily they will speak of the experiences that created the powerful, memorable, perhaps emotional, lessons that influenced them as leader.
First and foremost, we offer powerful and engaging experiences for leadership programs.
Our design process begins when we are asked if we can provide a leadership program activity to be used within the context of a development programme. This is always a tricky request to respond to. Why? Because leadership isn’t a single activity. It isn’t a simple set of skills. It isn’t the same for any two individuals because it is complex and contextualized. This failure to link leadership development to the context in which leaders operate is a key flaw in much learning design.
We believe that leadership is linked to change and that the true focus for a leader is making decisions about how to navigate and lead people into an uncertain future. Leadership is a series of interactions that are about:
- Strategic decision-making
- Inspiring others and influencing them to commit to those decisions
- Building the capability of people to implement the agreed strategy and creating the conditions in which they can do so and
- Assessing impact and ensuring that the strategy is delivering the business or organisational goals it was designed to achieve
Within these four interactions are all of the demands that are made on leaders and each requires different skills, attitudes and behaviours. If we are to simulate the realities of leadership in a structured, experiential learning activity, we need to replicate some of this complexity. So, here are some of the guidelines we use.
- The task or project must be complex, with a range of options about how to achieve goals (which may, in themselves, need to be defined by the leader).
- The task must have inherent change within it. If the solution is clear and the challenges do not change, the task needs managing rather than leading.
- There must be a genuine need to influence others, so the task must have options that will challenge different values and that require a negotiated response.
- The leader must experience pressure to build the capability of team members, use them effectively and ensure that they have the resources that they need for success.
- There must be opportunities for the leader to review progress and process, focus on learning and re-evaluate the strategy as an on-going part of the project.
- The leader should be required to prioritise how and where to apply energy and effort, intervening only when involved in one of the four interactions described above and avoiding being drawn into management activity which should be delegated to others.
Secondly, we build reflection into the structure of the activity and value it as much as ‘doing’ – reflection and review becomes integral to the measured success of the task.
(For more, see our previous blog)
Many of our activities encourage the use of observers who provide feedback on process, lead review sessions and can step into the exercise to influence it at appropriate times. Activities are often designed over a series of rounds, with enforced pauses to encourage learning review. Leaders are asked to step out of the exercise to get an overview of what is happening and are coached to consider the interventions they may make when they step back into the task. Coaching can happen at any point in the exercise – we believe in grasping the moment and exploring what is happening while people are engaged with the emotion of the task, rather than always debriefing after the event when the responses are easier to rationalize.
Thirdly, we constantly challenge assumptions and emphasise the importance of breaking patterns and establishing new ones.
From our simple, introductory exercises, such as the Challenging Assumptions puzzle that is such a powerful introduction, to any change process, to our flagship ‘Shaping the Future’ simulation, we encourage leaders to be both curious and critical. This is linked to their ability to notice and reflect as they go and is supported by offering a broad range of questioning skills that help them to look at situations from different perspectives and ensure that they are not adopting a course of action simply because it is ‘how things get done’.
Fourthly, we aid transfer of learning and increase the chances of achieving measurable results by using the leadership program simulation to rehearse real life scenarios.
Our most successful leadership program activities such as ‘Top Priority’ and ‘Shaping the Future’ replicate real life organisational change. In working through the activities, leaders (and those they lead) are encouraged to draw parallels with their own experience, personalizing the learning and making it directly relevant to them. In some cases (e.g. Shaping the Future) they allow rehearsal for organisational re-structuring, culture change or process improvement. In others, (e.g. Top Priority) they enable learners to refine the leadership interventions needed to deal with conflicting pressures and priorities.
One of our design criteria is to create leadership activities that are so engaging and
relevant to the learners that we can tackle, head-on, the experience of leadership success and failure and allow every individual leader to learn something about him or herself as a leader in the process.
If you are interested in Top Priority or Shaping the Future, please contact us today for a more detailed discussion sales@rsvpdesign.co.uk
To learn more about RSVP Design click here.
