Exclusive Interview with Matthew Daniel, Principal Consultant, Guild Education

“Treat Leadership Development Like R&D Cost Center”

 

“We’re constantly trying to find ways to lower our costs into talent development, when we actually need to treat talent development like a Research and Development cost center. If we want higher overall ROI, we need to assign learners their own coaches and mentors, we need to structure accountability throughout the program, and we need to create space to discuss how we are creating the kind of managers we would want to work for,” says Matthew Daniel, Principal Consultant, Employer Solutions team, Guild Education.

In his 16 years in corporate learning and talent development, Matthew has worked as an advocate for learners and for the field of talent development. In an exclusive interaction with HR.com, Matthew talks about why is it important for leaders to unlearn, challenges that companies face when developing leaders and how to build a 'best-in-class' leadership development program, among others.

Excerpts from an interview:   

Q: Why is it crucial for leaders to learn, relearn, unlearn and develop continuously?

Matthew: The world is VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. I’ve come to embrace “unlearning” as a discipline through an intentional practice that some call “belief updating.” Everything we know today is provisional. Embracing that in a lifestyle of constantly learning, creating space to update my own beliefs, and baking that into the way I lead others makes me a better listener, a better teacher, and a better friend. 

Q: What are the challenges that companies face when developing leaders? How to address the challenges?

Matthew: The greatest challenge companies are facing now is a shortage of time. When scaling leadership programs at Capital One, we had to diligently send a message to the managers of leaders that they had to create time on the calendar for their employees to develop themselves. 

Developing into a leader requires serious work reflecting on your values, your behavior, and your interactions with others. It’s nearly impossible to do that introspection when the phone is buzzing, you’re schooling your kids at home, and your other work tasks are piling up.

Q: Companies spend enormous amounts of money on training and education, but they aren’t getting a good return on their investment. People soon revert to old ways of doing things. What needs to change? How?

Matthew: Getting a solid ROI on leadership, ironically, requires sinking a bit more costs into the program in wraparound supports, alternative learning modalities, and time. There’s a fantastic piece in The New York Times about the “high cost” of buying “low quality.” 

We’re constantly trying to find ways to lower our costs into talent development, when we actually need to treat talent development like a Research and Development cost center. If we want higher overall ROI, we need to assign learners their own coaches and mentors, we need to structure accountability throughout the program, and we need to create space to discuss how we are creating the kind of managers we would want to work for.

Q: How can companies develop a 'best-in-class' leadership development program? What should be the key elements?

Matthew: The two key elements to leadership development programs are sustained practice and accountability. We know we learn best when we “do,” yet many learning programs are based on consuming content. I believe the “flipped classroom” approach, that is to learn outside of cohort time, allows students to practice skills they’ll need when facing real-world scenarios every day. 

Developing empathy, listening, and radical candor skills requires continuous practice until it becomes second nature. After we let our learners practice, we have to hold them accountable to live out these leadership values we are creating. This comes in the form of direct and hard conversations about what is working and what is not.

Q: How should companies re-imagine training for the future?

Matthew: Training talent in the future is an ecosystem. It is not dependent on one system, one modality, one leader, one program, or one vendor. Learning and development (L&D) leaders are orchestral conductors, assembling the best talent, systems, and processes, and cueing each section to either pull back or get louder based on the current needs. 

Companies need to invest more talent development in their frontline employees to build out a talent pipeline because the pressure for talent acquisition will continue to grow. Companies should also keep investing in their technology and data infrastructures to identify signals about business needs and learner demands. 

Most importantly, as we improve scaling through technology, we must improve our use of our own L&D talent to serve as coaches, upskilling concierges, and internal talent mobility enablers for the organization.

Q: How do you develop a good succession plan?

Matthew: Succession plans live on both the micro and the macro levels. The key to success as an organization is to see leadership development as a capital investment approach rather than an annual harvesting activity. When your succession plan depends on just one or two key players, the likelihood that it will fail is high. 

Creating a culture that is turning out innovative servant leaders lets you fill the funnel with high-caliber talent that you can pull from as you will inevitably need them. Personally, my succession plan includes providing context and helping my team understand the way I am thinking, not just the decisions I am making. It also requires me to hand off decisions to others and to give them the space to test, fail, and get better with coaching.

Q: What are the key leadership behavioral shifts that you see happening? How prepared are companies to cater to this change? What should they do to prepare themselves?

Matthew: The key change in leadership behavior throughout the 2020s will be learning how to be empathetic humans in the workplace. Covid-19 accelerated this change as employees were allowed to see their leaders in their own homes, around their families, and dealing with normal life challenges. It also ramped up access to leaders through more frequent town halls and Q&A sessions. 

Even after this pandemic passes, work will continue and companies will have to find new ways to support mental health challenges. In addition to the post-pandemic fallout, employees will struggle with things like climate change, a volatile political environment, and social inequities in the workplace. 

This empathetic leadership will require a pairing with radical candor. For any individual, this would be a long, hard journey, and as an organization, this is monumentally more difficult. Organizations will need to train on it, practice, and hold themselves accountable as they experiment their way to success.