Leadership Training Is Severely Lacking (And Here's What To Do Instead)

I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but there are a handful of moments across my career where I look back and think, "wow, that was something else." If I could go back in time, maybe I'd change those moments. But I learned a lot going through them. So today I want to tell you about two of them.

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Moment One: The Hissy Fit in the Foyer

Picture this. It's my second or third year of teaching. I had taken on the role of cheerleading sponsor and cheer coach at my school. I don't even remember the exact situation anymore, but I do remember standing in the foyer of our school in almost an argument with my principal, and throwing a little bit of a hissy fit. I mean, we're talking I jumped up and down and threw my fist down because I was so irritated.

Yikes.

Now let me also say, second year of teaching, maybe third. I hadn't been in it that long. I was probably 24, maybe. I had a lot to learn. If I was 24, that tells you my prefrontal cortex probably hadn't fully developed. Either way, it was ridiculous. I remember going home and telling my husband about that moment and saying, "I have to follow up and apologize." And I was dreading it.

Moment Two: The Job Description Got Rewritten in Front of Me

Let's fast forward a few years. I had been promoted into a role they called academic coordinator, which functioned more like an assistant principal. I was young. I think I was 27 at the time I got promoted. So only three or four years after this girl threw a hissy fit in a school foyer, she was hired into that role.

Halfway through the year, my boss called me into her office. She had a sheet of paper in front of her, my job description and duties. And she went through it line by line and started crossing things out. That's how bad it was.

Now, there were things I was doing that I probably could have done very differently. I kept thinking, I want to make an impact, so I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to make an impact. But that meant I wasn't approaching leadership in the right way.

The High Achiever Pattern

Here's what I know about myself as a high achiever. I was always eager to take on leadership roles. Always the first to volunteer. Always ready to say yes, even if I believed I wasn't quite ready, or thought someone else was a better fit. I figured it out and tried to be the best. In my mind, being the best meant getting the next position and making a "bigger impact." I'm using air quotes if you can't see me.

That was an excuse. It was my justification for getting the next position. I was leveling up. I was climbing the ladder.

As it turns out, you cannot make an impact if you do not have leadership skills. And leadership training is severely lacking. That's the claim I'm making in this episode. I clearly lacked leadership skills when I was a cheer sponsor, throwing a hissy fit in front of my principal. I clearly lacked leadership skills when my boss had to call me in and change my job description mid year.

Which Picture Represents Your Leadership Training?

When I'm doing a conference session or facilitating a training on this topic, I show three images and ask people which one best represents their leadership training.

• Picture one: A carpenter with an apprentice. They're learning together. The carpenter is explicitly teaching and modeling.
• Picture two: A pile of books and papers everywhere.
• Picture three: A young girl, three or four years old, wearing a shirt that says "happy." She's bawling.

Picture one means you had a mentor. You were explicitly taught and trained, someone leading you intentionally along the way. Picture two means you poured into books and podcasts and dove into the work on your own, with no explicit training. Picture three means you're walking into meetings and conversations without training, feeling completely out of your element. That's often where imposter syndrome shows its face.

More times than not, people land in the last two categories.

Why We Wait, and Why the Training Falls Short Anyway

Part of the problem is we wait for training that sometimes never comes. And even when it does come, it's just that. Training.

I want to share a quote I pulled from a leadership research organization about this exact issue:

"Even the best programs have relatively limited time skill that does not match with the underlying nature of development in general and leadership development. More specifically, developing leaders and leadership can take years or even decades and typically involves a large commitment to ongoing deliberate practice. A program is usually a few hours, a few days, or perhaps a few weeks. There might be exceptions to this general rule, but those would be the few exceptions that prove the rule."

[Casey: source link for this quote to go here]

What I've gathered from this research is that there's a significant difference between leadership training and leadership development. That's what we're going to dig into.

5 Reasons Leadership Training Severely Lacks

1. It's limited and isolated. Think the one-day training, maybe the two-day training. A single, isolated event.
2. It lacks specificity and differentiation. One session, meant to apply to everyone in the room the same way.
3. It focuses on the role, not the leader. When I was offered the academic coordinator position, I was trained in the logistics and content of the job. I was not developed as a leader. High achievers get pegged as leadership potential because we master the position we're in. Mastering a position does not inherently make you a masterful leader. We have to develop skills to work with other complex adults.
4. It lacks follow-through and accountability. Back to that one-and-done session. There's no follow-through unless you, as the individual, decide to seek out feedback and accountability on your own.
5. It's initiated by the organization, not the individual.

When we think about leadership development, we need to take the reins ourselves. It wasn't until I absolutely failed that I decided to take my own development into my own hands. Since then, I've learned what mentors I need for support, what coaching I need, and what feedback I need to keep seeking out, year after year. Leadership development does not stop. That's what makes it so different from leadership training.

The 3 Areas of Clarity I Coach Toward

When I coach high achieving women on leadership development, we work toward clarity in three specific areas:

• Clarity of identity. Who are you?
• Clarity of presence. How do you show up and interact with the world around you?
• Clarity of purpose. What do you want, and why do you want it?

The Challenge

Do not wait on training and development from your organization. It may never come. Do not wait until you have that leadership position to engage in leadership development. You are a leader right now, exactly where you are. Do not wait until you think you need it, and do not wait until you have failed.

Where I'd Start First: Clarity of Identity

If I had to start with just one thing, it would be clarity of identity. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Pay attention to your thoughts and know their origin. What are you thinking, where is it coming from, and why?
• Know your values and your beliefs, so you can stand firm in your integrity.
• Be able to account for your strengths and your struggles. This might mean looking into a few personality assessments and deciding where you're strong, where you need to watch out, and who, a mentor, a coach, a friend, can help you build on those strengths.

Leadership training, on its own, lacks severely. It's time to shift from leadership training to leadership development.

What part of this episode was most useful for you? What's your very first next step?