I am so excited to be speaking about a leadership development topic at ATD 2019 on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 10:00 a.m at the Washington, DC Convention Center. I’m honored to share the stage with many other great speakers such as Seth Godin and Oprah!
I hope you’ll join me for Are Your Leadership Development Programs Actually Working?
Why did I choose to discuss this topic at this international event? It started with a simple conclusion that when organizations invest in leadership development programs they deserve to know the results. What I didn’t know, and could never have imagined, was that the solution would take us on a path that has challenged the status quo in leadership development and pushed us to new heights as leadership development coaches.
Our journey
It was about five years ago that we recognized key issues that limited almost every leadership development program we had witnessed—programs we saw dozens of other trainers running and programs that we were running.
- Tracking and reporting outcomes were difficult to measure. Most trainers utilize the typical workshop evaluations (commonly referred to as “smiley sheets” because they do nothing but make a trainer smile) at the end of a workshop or a coaching session. But measuring and understanding actual behavior change created as a result of a training or coaching engagement was almost non-existent.
- Discipline and accountability were hard to maintain. We’ve all seen the paper-based action plans in coaching and leadership development programs. They are well intended. But, they are put on a shelf and almost never reviewed and revisited. Unfortunately, most action plans are also rarely calibrated with a coachee’s manager to ensure the learning process is aligned with business needs.
- Leaders were constrained by old style workbooks. Not that workbooks were bad—but as a toolset, they were never available where and when a leader needed them most. Workbooks weren’t fulfilling the “just in time” need that leaders have in their fast-changing work environment.
We knew that addressing these roadblocks would be key to optimizing our leadership development programs at 5.12 Solutions.
Our conclusions
What came next—how to better measure and optimize leadership development programs—is what I’ll be presenting at ATD 2019. Plus, I had the great fortune to author a book last year with my good friend Marshall Goldsmith—Stakeholder Centered Coaching: Maximizing Your Impact as a Coach. I’ll be pulling some of the core concepts from that book so that people walk away with practical tools on how to:
- Evaluate leadership training programs to measure sustainable behavior change
- Implement the critical factors that must be in place in leadership development programs to drive behavior change
- Evaluate gaps in your leadership development programs that might be obstacles to better measurement
I look forward to sharing more of our journey and helping you elevate the effectiveness of leaders in your organization.