Just this morning I heard the same story again for the 151,000^th time and I am being conservative. The question was raised regarding managers that were struggling in their roles that “we will provide them with more training!” So the first round of training apparently didn’t work for you and now you want to invest more money in additional training? Where is the return on investment for doing this? Perhaps, just perhaps the training that you are providing isn’t hitting the mark. Even worse and more than likely the main reason is you are doing the wrong things.

You can’t train people to be managers or leaders you need to develop them. Not everyone has the same level of confidence in order to become a natural born leader. But this doesn't mean with a sufficient amount of team training they won't reach that level. Anyone is capable of becoming a leader, but will only perform at their best when they are ready to put themselves forward.

If you feel compelled to spend some good money on training you go right ahead and do what you think is right. If you do not continue the learning process through coaching and mentoring then you have more than likely thrown good dollars out the window. You may have some inexpensive methods for training people such as some on line courses or have them watch webinars or something like that. If you don’t reinforce the learning through coaching and mentoring then you haven’t really accomplished anything.

According to researchers to achieve true expertise at a complex task requires approximately 10,000 hours of practice. This is not something that you are going to be able to obtain through training – this is something that you will acquire through real life experiences and the guidance of a coach and mentor. The initial training may well give you a foundation – but foundations will eventually crumble when exposed to a number of different variables – just like leadership.

If you create a mentoring culture which would include coaching as part of the culture you are creating a learning and development environment. This will enhance your culture and people will continue to grow on a personal and professional basis. If you stick with the training concept that you have in place today – your culture will be stifled. I really like how Mike Myatt has laid out the rationale for developing leaders rather than training them. I have provided you with a link to his article. You need to read this if you are struggling with your management/leadership team – actually everyone needs to read this including people that want to become managers/leaders in an organization.

Lack of leadership talent is a business challenge that is facing most organizations today. A study that was done has shown that nearly 60% of organizations today are faced with leadership talent shortages. This is why companies such as Catalyst 14 exist though, as having the right qualities to become a leader is very important. This can make such a difference to the overall management of your business. This has had a huge effect on their bottom line not to mention the high turnover rate that comes with poor management/leadership. There is a huge investment of money that goes into leadership training and yet we still have a leadership talent shortage. Obviously what we are doing is not working well.

We have said for a long time now that any leadership development program to be truly effective needs to provide a continuous learning environment as part of the journey. The foundation to that continuous learning environment is a mentoring culture that has a coaching element embedded in it. If you do nothing else but provide training – then you are setting your managers and leaders up for failure. Too many of you are doing that today.

It is time for us to take a look at our leadership development program. It is time to begin the journey to implement a mentoring culture that fosters a continuous learning environment. It is time to embrace “the power of mentoring”! “Can you afford not to?”

References:

1. “Outliers” – Malcolm Gladwell - http://www.amazon.ca/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922

2. http://alainsaffel.com/10000-hours/

3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/12/19/the-1-reason-leadership-development-fails/

4. http://hrblog.typepad.com/perfect_labor_storm/2010/07/60-of-companies-face-leadership-talent-shortage.html#axzz30U8BPPHh