People often treat leadership development programmes like building a house. The problem is, they build a house without foundations – the foundations of behavioural change.
We could wax lyrical on why traditional leadership development doesn’t work. For example, we start too late; we teach people the wrong way; we teach them the wrong things.
But there is one main, key reason why it doesn’t work. When most people go about developing talent programmes or leadership development programmes, they look towards the skills or the outcomes they want. It’s as if they’re building a house; ‘we’ll get the strategic thinking brick, and then the leader as coach brick, and we need more resilient people, who can manage change better, and we need them to build more effective teams and have better communication skills’. They go about building this beautiful shaped house, brick by brick, step back and admire the amazing programme they’ve created.
Next, they send people onto this beautiful programme, and they might develop some skills along the way. But guess what? The programme doesn’t turn people into better leaders because there are no foundations to the house.
Because here’s the thing: leadership development – in fact, any development – requires a change in behaviour. And a change in behaviour is different to learning a skill.
A change in behaviour requires people to take 100% ownership for who they are and how they show up. There’s the power of thought – how to use thinking for them, not against them. How they learn and whether or not they’re prepared to look at the parts of themselves that they have been avoiding looking at for many years. This means becoming a courageous learner and understanding what leader they were meant to be – because leadership comes in all shapes and sizes. This level of self-knowlegde requires going deep and really discovering whether they are a creative leader, strategic thinker, a people leader.
So if you’re building your house, you have to put these behavioural change foundations in place. And that’s exactly what Ivy House does.
Every programme we create is built on the foundations of behavioural change – whether it’s for your execs, your talent or your grads. It’s on these foundations we develop the specific skills your people need for their specific roles, and you know what? That skill development comes far quicker, far easier. It is this approach that ensures they have both the mindset and skill for personal change, which is the only way you will achieve robust, sustainable, organisational change.
Find out more about how we build the foundation of behavioural change.
