5 Reasons Leadership Training Is Severely Lacking

0:05 Welcome to Clear is the new Confident. I'm Casey Watts, speaker, author and the host of this show. If we haven't met yet, there was one important thing you need to do, and that is I am completely obsessed with clarity. I've seen too many brilliant women stay silent or feel stuck because they didn't have the tools and strategies to be courageous. If you are ready to stop second guessing yourself, say the things that need to be said, and stand firm in your integrity, you are in the right place. I am on a mission to spread the message that clarity precedes capacity, helping you lead those around you with great courage and confidence. Now, with all of that said, let's dive into today's episode and gain some clarity.

1:07 Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode. I am It's been a little bit since I have posted a podcast episode and that's probably because it's the month of July and July. I don't know if you feel this way, but it feels like it is the month that ever never ends. You know, like the song that never ends. This is the month that never ends. And it's hot outside and I have a bad case of the I don't want us. So if you're feeling that way alongside me, please let me know that I'm not the only one. And welcome to another episode. I have mapped out the next several months of podcast episodes and I am so excited to bring some new engaging content to you that's going to help you to lead with great confidence and courage.

2:00 Now, today's episode, we are starting with this claim that leadership training is severely lacking. I'll say it again, leadership training is severely lacking. And we're going to dive into the five main reasons that it's lacking. What we want to do instead, how we want to approach it instead, I don't know if I've ever shared with you, but there are a few, a handful, maybe more than a handful of moments across my career where I look back and I think to myself, wow, that was something else.

2:44 And if I could go back in time, yeah, maybe I would have changed those moments. But I learned a lot having gone through them and experienced them. And I want to tell you about two of these moments that I don't know that I've ever shared on this podcast. So my first moment, I want you to picture this. I don't know that I've ever shared. This is me standing. It's like my second or third year of teaching. I had taken on the role of cheerleading sponsor and cheer coach at my school. And I remember, I don't remember even what the situation was, but I do remember standing in the foyer of our school in almost like an argument with my principal and throwing a little bit of a hissy fit. I mean, we're talking.

3:40 I jumped. I jumped up and down and kind of threw my fist down because I was so irritated. Yikes. Now, let me let me also say second year of teaching, maybe it was probably my third year of teaching. I hadn't been in it that long. I was probably what, 24? Maybe I had a lot to learn. And so if I was 24, that tells you maybe my prefrontal cortex hadn't fully developed. Either way, it was ridiculous. And I remember going home and telling my husband about that moment and saying, I've I have to follow up and apologize. And I am dreading this moment. Here's the other situation that I don't know that I've ever shared on this podcast.

4:27 So let's Fast forward like 10, maybe 12 years later. Well, maybe not even that that far. I had moved into, I've been promoted to the role of what they called academic coordinator. And I'm going to say for all intents and purposes it was, I functioned more like just imagine assistant principal. OK. So that's kind of what this role was. And I was young. I was young. So yeah, I said it might have been 10 or 12 years. That's not accurate at all. I was, I think I was 27 at the time when I got promoted. So, yeah, only only three or four years later, this girl who thrown a hissy fit was hired to be in the role of what was assistant principal, academic coordinator.

5:19 OK, halfway through the year, my boss calls me into her office and she has a sheet of paper in front of her and it's my job description and duties. And she goes through my job description and starts to change my job description. She's crossing out things. That's how bad it was. Now, there were things that I was doing most likely that I could have done very differently. In the moment, I was thinking to myself, I want to make an impact, so I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to make an impact. But that means that I wasn't really approaching leadership in the right way.

6:03 OK, so I want to talk about that as a high achiever. Here's what I know about myself. I'm always eager to take on leadership roles. I'm always the first to volunteer for things. I was always ready to say yes, even if I believed I wasn't quite ready for a position or if I thought maybe there's someone else's better fit for this. And I always just figured it out and tried to be the best, right? So in and in my mind again, the best meant, oh, I'm going to get the next position and make a bigger impact. I'm using air quotes. If you can't see me make a bigger impact. No, that was an excuse.

6:43 That was my out to be able to get the next position right. I think in my mind really what it was was I'm getting the next position. I'm levelling up, I'm climbing the ladder. OK. As it turns out though, you cannot make an impact if you do not have leadership skills. But leadership training is severely lacking. And that's the claim that I'm making in this episode. Leadership training is severely lacking. I clearly lacked leadership skills when I was a cheer sponsor, a cheer coach, and standing in the foyer 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. So I want to, I want to take you to what I typically show when I'm doing a conference session or a leadership training, which by the way, I'm starting to change my my thinking about that and the term.

7:49 But I want to take you to when I'm doing this breakout session about leadership facilitation, facilitating meetings, what I typically do is show three different images. And the question is which best represents your leadership training? Which best represents your leadership training? And so let me describe those three pictures. The first picture is of a man like a Carpenter, and he's got this apprentice and they're learning from each other. The Carpenter is explicitly teaching him and modeling. Then there's the second picture. The second picture is of like a pile of books and papers everywhere. And then the third picture is a picture of a young girl, probably 4, three or four.

8:38 And she has on this shirt that says happy, but she's just bawling. She's crying. And what I ask people to think about is which of those represents their leadership training? The first being it was I, I had a mentor. It was I was explicitly taught and trained. I had someone leading me intentionally along the way. Second picture, remember, it's the books. I poured into all of the books, listened to the podcast. I dove into this work on my own. I didn't have any explicit training. And then the third, of course, the young girl with the shirt that says happy and she's crying, that represents I am having to go into meetings or having to have conversations where I've not been trained and I feel like I'm out of my element, right?

9:31 That's where that imposter syndrome often shows its face. So those are the three different images that I share. And more times than not, people are saying that they fall into the the last two categories. So they're diving into all of the work on their own and reading as much as I can, listening to podcasts, etcetera. Or it's the last picture. Like I just, I feel like I'm I'm dying. Part of the problem is that we wait for training that sometimes never comes. And even if it does come, it is just that it is training. So I want to bring up a quote that I pulled from a I want to say I'm going to have to put it in the show notes, but it comes from a leadership research organization and here's what they mentioned about leadership training. Even the best programs have relatively limited time scale 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.

10:50 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. OK, what I've gathered from this research is that there is a significant difference between leadership training and leadership development. And that's what we are going to dive into for the rest of this episode. I want to tell you 5 reasons that leadership training severely lacks and why we need to strive for leadership development instead. So here are the five reasons that leadership training lacks.

11:33 It is limited. It's on a limited time scale and or it's isolated, right? So that's what we think about it as the one day training, maybe the two day training that you go to. It's a one and done isolated event. That's reason number one reason #2 that leadership training lacks because it lacks specificity and it lacks differentiation. Reason #3 that leadership training lacks it focuses more on the role or on content support. So I imagine when I was offered the positions academic coordinator in the in the front office, I was taught or trained in the logistics of the job, in the contents of the job.

12:27 I was not developed as a leader. And it's interesting, you know, I always mention in the sessions that that I do either at conferences or when I'm working with organizations, one of the things that always comes up is we are typically pegged as high achievers who have the potential to lead because we master the position that we are in. Just because you mastered the position that you are in does not inherently make you a masterful leader. We have to develop those skills to work with other complex adults. So that's another reason it lacks, it lacks specificity and differentiate and it focuses more on the role or content support number four, it lacks follow through and accountability. Again, we're going back to that one and done session where I there's no follow through or accountability beyond that unless I decide as the individual to seek out that feedback and accountability.

13:34 And then the fifth reason that leadership training often severely LAX is because it's initiated primarily by the organization, not by the individual. OK, so if we flip these and we think how do we transition this from leadership training to leadership development, here's what would be different in leadership development. It would be long term, continuous and embedded. Long term, continuous and embedded. If we move from leadership training to leadership development, it would be differentiated to meet the needs of each individual. If we move from leadership training to development, it would focus on human centered skills that transcend roles and contexts.

14:24 So no matter what role you move into or what context you are situated in, leadership development is going to focus on the human centered skills that will transcend all of that. Leadership development requires intentional feedback and coaching. So if you if an organization is going to provide leadership development, this needs to be a piece that's embedded in that. How are we going to ensure that there is intentional feedback and coaching support across the year or across many years? What does that look like? And then finally, and this is the, this is the important one and this is how we want how I want to start to wrap up this conversation today. It is initiated primarily.

15:13 So if we're looking at leadership development, it is initiated primarily by the individual and supported by the organization. So, and when we think about leadership development, we honestly need to take the reins in our own hands. It wasn't until I absolutely failed that I decided to take my own development into my own hands. So now that I've done that work and I've kind of obviously failed multiple times, I have learned over time what who are the mentors that I need to look at for support? What is the coaching that I need? What kind of feedback am I going to get year after year? Leadership development does not stop. It is very different than leadership training. When I coach women, high achieving women now we work on leadership development and I help them to gain clarity of three specific things.

16:17 We gain clarity of identity, meaning who are you? Who are you? We gain clarity of presence. How do you show up and interact with the world around you? And then finally, we gain clarity of purpose. What do you want? Why do you want it? OK, so here's what I want to leave you with. The challenge that I'm going to share with you is to not wait. Do not wait on training and development from your organization because 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 leadership development and do not wait until you have failed. If I had to start with just one thing, it would be clarity of identity.

17:23 So the if, if we're looking at clarity of identity, we're really thinking about a few different things. So this is what you can start with. Pay attention to your thoughts and know their origin. What are the thoughts that I'm having and where are they coming from and why #2 know your values, know your beliefs so that you can stand firm in your integrity because you know your values and beliefs. And then finally, be sure you can account for your strengths and your struggles. And that might require you looking into a few different personality assessments and deciding what are my strengths?

18:05 What are the areas that I need to look out for where I'm a struggle and how can I enlist someone, a mentor, a coach, a friend to help me to watch out for those things and build on my strengths? OK, that is today's episode. Again, leadership training. If we think just about training, it lacks severely. Let's shift from leadership training to leadership development. OK guys, I will catch you in next week's episode. I would love for you to let me know what is it about today's episode that was most useful for you? What's your very first next step?

18:46 You can find my contact information in the show notes and I'll catch you in the next episode. Hey listener, I am so honored that you listen to today's episode and I hope you gained something valuable from it. I'd also be honored if you did ME3 solid favors. First, subscribe to this show. I've got a lot of great content coming up and I don't want you to miss any of it. Second, be sure you're following me on social media platforms. You can find me at. Catch up with Casey on LinkedIn or Instagram. And finally, if you were looking to book a dynamic and relatable speaker for your next event, conference or retreat, I would love to bring a message about how the craft of clarity makes a significant impact on both leadership and life. Until next time, always remember Clarity Retreats