Training is not enough

Written by Rhett Farber

To create a company of leaders, training is not enough. Also critical are effective pay systems, daily guidance and an encouraging work environment.

Top of the rock In China's international business environment, no longer is it just senior managers who require leadership skills. Mid-level managers, ﬁrst-line supervisors and even project managers, program managers and product managers need skills to motivate and coach others and to make strategic and tactical plans. Creating an internal leadership pipeline starting from ﬁrst-line supervisors and following through to top executives is the only viable long-term solution to meeting this rapidly increasing demand.

However, leadership training alone is not the answer. While useful, training courses provide only short-lived, non-sustainable benefits.. They must be supported by the corporate environment, compensation system and management practices. In particular, pay-for-performance systems should be designed to encourage managers to continuously develop and counsel their staff.

Beyond training

The most important skill for leading a globally competitive company is guiding and coaching, rather than directing staff. Empowering employees is essential to ensure that they make rapid and informed decisions on urgent day-to-day issues. Clear instructions and direction alone are often not enough to get the job done. Managers must also give informal feedback and guidance on a regular basis when needed or deserved. Periodic review sessions are also a valuable means to reinforce and clarify ad hoc discussions.

Correspondingly, pay practices should provide monetary incentive for managers to work on developing their teams. Performance pay, based on ﬁnancial results alone, can be counter-productive and inhibit change in management behavior. For example: if sales targets and other quantitative measures are given much more weight in measuring performance than developing the team, a sales manager will naturally focus on securing the sales himself if targets are not being met - thus neglecting the objective of developing the sales team.

However, if the targets are balanced and include goals related to the manager's role as a leader rather than as a salesman (e.g. the manager's targets are related to average percentage achievement of subordinates' goals), he is more likely to concentrate on making sure the team achieves the numbers.

How do you develop leaders?

Successful training and development must take a holistic and long-term approach, rather than focusing on short-term ﬁxes for speciﬁc shortcomings. To ensure that this happens, leadership development strategies should incorporate six fundamental principles:

Individual commitment: Individual employees must be responsible for their own development. The organization needs to cultivate the desire within employees to manage their own growth by encouraging learning and rewarding employees for self-development.
Management consistency: Management style, supervisor-staff relationships and performance management systems - through all levels of management - must support the change in leadership style.

For example, if the company wants to encourage more decision-making among middle managers, top managers need to buy into this concept. Top managers must guide rather than direct middle managers, encourage them to make informed decisions and hold back criticism for minor mistakes in judgment. Companies must review their policies and practices to ensure there is alignment between their aspirations for change and the way things get done on a daily basis.
Engagement: Development must fully engage employees. It must encompass the head (learning), the heart (empathy), and the body (action).
Practical and tangible: Learning and development must be an active process of building upon previous experience. Development should involve practical problem-solving through case studies and working through real-life issues, and should require direct interaction with others through experiential team-building and group exercises.
Alignment with corporate culture: The social and organizational environment and culture must be aligned to match the learning and development provided to the individual.
Reward: Learning and development should include a stimulus for change. An individual will change only if he is given greater awareness, new abilities or more career opportunities.

The need for leadership development in China is urgent. With effctive leadership training and development combined with real organization change, companies can meet the challenge and stand well prepared for the future.

First appeared in Shanghai Amcham's Managers' Notebook, March 2007