Performance reviews miss out vital leadership characteristics

UK (SANEPR.com) June 26, 2009 -- Judith Germain, Managing Director of leadership consultancy Dynamic Transitions claims that many managers have been managing people for years under a reward structure that encourages poor leadership and a reliance on task completion over leadership ability. Therefore in tough times when strong leadership ability is required, many are falling below the mark and are unwilling to now embrace the training needed to improve.

“Having effective and productive leaders are imperative for an organisation’s success and ability to be agile in competitive and changing environments. This is often the reason why many HR departments insist that leadership training is the way forward to rectify the deficiencies in the organisation’s capability. When the HR department advises the management team that they need leadership training this is often met with derision and a reluctance to attend, or worse still if they do attend, assessment following the training shows that in the mid to long term there is little to none improvement in leadership competence,” explains Germain.

Germain suggests that senior management buy in to the training intervention is essential in ensuring that it stands more than a fair chance of being accepted and embedded into the organisation but in the managers’ defence, Germain says that many organisations make the job harder than it should be by implementing the wrong training strategies in the first place.

A major flaw in many leadership training programmes is that they are bought as ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions which have not been aligned to the needs of the business. Such solutions tend to concentrate on leadership techniques without considering how it relates to good business practice. For example, is the ability to understand Situational Leadership or Action Centred Leadership the training course or is the training course how you can apply Situational Leadership etc to your business day? It is a subtle although all essential distinction and one that will make an important difference in whether there will be any behavioural change or desired performance improvement,” says Germain.

Germain also claims that the over reliance on particular learning styles at the expense of others by the trainer and the trainer’s perceived credibility can also have a detrimental affect on the success of leadership training, as can the ability to embrace Social Intelligence into the programme.

“I see Social Intelligence as the ability of taking Emotional Intelligence and applying it to social situations. It concerns itself with how you interact with others and how you assess the situations/environments around you, to achieve a win/win solution or best agreed alternative solution. Social Intelligence is also about how you respond to the different situations and environments that you find yourself in. This is the essence of leadership and one that is often missed by leadership trainers,” says Germain.

Judith Germain is managing director Dynamic Transitions a leadership company specialising in working with Troublesome Talent ® and improving leadership performance within organisations. Judith provides strategic mentoring for senior executives and business leaders and delivers innovative leadership programmes, leadership consultancy, training, coaching and mentoring to corporate clients. For more information visit www.developing-leadership.com or email jude@dynamic-transitions.co.uk

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