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In a recent blog on management education, Henry Mintzberg's stated that "no manager, let alone leader, has ever been created in a classroom".
This insightful comment, from one of the most respected professors of management today, is fully supported by all the research in the UK over many years. Effective leadership is only ever learnt in the workplace, on the job, experientially and by reflecting on practice (as yet more research has conclusively shown). As Mintzberg says in his blog, it should be about "learning and doing...learning connected to ongoing experience" in the workplace.
What is the point of classroom-based leadership development courses?
Why does most leadership development within management education continue to be formal, structured learning and why do organisations continue to send managers away "to the classroom" to learn leadership? There is certainly no shortage of supply of this type of learning opportunity but as the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership (CEML) noted in 2002, the supply is "mixed in quality, often inflexible, lacking in practical application and light on leadership development" and the "plethora of options" is confusing. Moreover, such learning is not "sufficiently customised to meet the specific needs of the organisation or of the individual".
Presumably that's why there is so much dissatisfaction from managers at all levels over the poor quality of leadership in their organisations. For like the annual sighting of the swallow in summer, each year the cry goes up about the poor quality of leadership in organisations. Open any newspaper or read any blog today to find examples in both public and private sectors of leadership ineffectiveness.
Governments and academics continue to produce worthy reports about the need for effective leadership. Eg, in 2006, the Leitch review into the UK’s long-term skills' needs, highlighted the "role of leadership and management skills as a driver of productivity, and the need to invest in improving these skills in order to increase business performance". In 2009, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), after lengthy research and analysis, wrote of the need to enhance "the capacity of more UK firms to be high growth, high skill, high value-added businesses through the stimulation of new industries, greater innovation and better leadership and management".
At the same time in 2009, research by the UKCES and others showed that UK employers had "weaker leadership and management than too many OECD competitors". And in its most recent report, 'Skills for Jobs' (2010), the UKCES identified "leadership" as one of several management skills designated "Red – high priority needs for immediate action" in most key sectors - whilst at the same time anticipating a requirement for over 2.2 million "corporate managers" in the next 10 years. This figure is in our belief an under-estimation; it could be as high as 10 million if you include team/project leaders and supervisors (according to our understanding of the data from the report).
What is "management education to do" - as Mintzberg asks?
His two proposed solutions are admirable: first to "urge managers to make use of their learning" and second to embed "learning into the workplace directly". He says these simple ideas of "connecting classroom learning to the workplace and bringing the learning itself to the workplace" have been successful. But it is "unconventional management education" and thus, we imagine, rare.
We believe the way to avert, as Mintzberg puts it, more "managerial mess" from the continuation of outmoded and inefficient classroom-based leadership education, is to take his ideas further: indeed building on his earlier statement:
"Never send a changed person back to an unchanged organisation."
Here's how:
First, we believe that every organisation should be re-structured so that the manager returning from the classroom with his/her new leadership knowledge/education is put in a position where all the team are aware of the need to assist the new leader learn leadership. This enables the learner-leader to practise in safety and supported.
Second, the organisation should train EVERYONE in the business about leadership because in today's flat organisations, nearly everyone at some point will engage in an act of leadership, irrespective of designated leadership title or role. Such leadership learning can be initiated through some minimal formal learning to give the learner-leader the initial confidence and sufficient knowledge to practise leadership and begin the experiential process.
The key is to have in the workplace, available 24/7, courses to help everyone learn How to Lead – from the basics, to motivational leadership, change and strategic leadership. Leadership learning can then be developed and enhanced through new forms of informal learning - such as described by Mintzberg or using social/professional networks inside and outside the organisation - and supported by relevant coaching/mentoring.
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