Executive leadership training: avoiding the pitfalls of the latest trends
Executive leadership training programs are littered with shiny objects such as the latest leadership style trends and psychology theories. Even advanced leadership training falls into this trap.
If your current executive leadership development program is ineffective because it chases these shiny objects, it’s time to get back to basics: leadership skills development.
How leadership styles put you in a box
One of the recent leadership training trends is leadership styles. Styles with names such as democratic leadership style, servant leadership style or transactional leadership style.
The challenge with all these leadership styles is they are theories instead of skills.
Theories that can put you in a box:
- Leadership styles can limit your range of motion as a leader and tie your hands to the constraints of the style’s parameters. They do not allow you to utilize all the leadership tools at your disposal
- Styles can work well for small homogeneous groups like tech teams, but do not work across an entire organization
- Styles assume that your employees are commodities with predictable responses
- Leadership styles can make an absolute mess of your cross-functional, organization-wide leadership
Leadership styles may have some utility for small teams.
So at best they can be thought of as a subset of leadership, or as another leadership tool. But not as your overall leadership strategy.
You can get a better overview on leadership training and development here:
Servant leadership style – why give away your power?
For example, a recent leadership style that has gained prominence is servant leadership style.
The danger of servant leadership style – especially if you’re not seasoned or you’re a new manager who is not yet grounded – is how this style puts you in danger of being a martyr, sacrificing your title power.
There’s a not so subtle nuance between serving your constituents vs. being a servant.
Improperly understood, a servant mindset can scapegoat your leadership. It can put you in the position where you cede your own power to empower others. Where you make everyone else’s problems your own. There is grave danger in this.
Compare this to delegating, where you multiply your power by granting it to others. You are giving power to others, but only in order to help them accomplish a task or ongoing tasks.
But you don’t want to sacrifice your power by relinquishing it to others as a servant. There’s a big difference that seasoned leaders will see right away.
Besides the potential trap of leadership styles, there are psychology theories that are also popular distractions. Recently a lot of books and articles have been written on the topic of the “Imposter syndrome.”
About the Author and Course Creator
Larry LaFata is a talent development specialist and the founder of modernleadershipcenter.com and defineyourcareer.com.
He has a unique ability to synthesize research and innovation into organized, usable concepts. This provides clients with streamlined leadership skills training and employee development solutions they can implement quickly.
After 30 years experience working with Fortune 500 companies, Larry turned to his passion: leadership development and talent development. The core of his course creation approach is customized self-assessment and skills development templates. No psychometric tests or psychology assessments are ever used.
Larry has authored: Define Your Career, Leadership Development Program, Employee Development Plan with skill templates and How to use Rewards to Motivate Your Team.
Larry’s mission is to better humanity through innovative talent development strategies. His continuing efforts in talent development keeps him in the forefront of thought leadership in the industry.
The corrosive effects of the imposter syndrome
The impostor syndrome started with a study of women in academia, but it’s now being applied as a cautionary tale to just about everyone in management and executive leadership.
The imposter syndrome is a condition where leaders feel unworthy, even though they’re successful.
- They feel undeserving of their position or title
- They feel like they’re a fraud even though they’re successful
- They doubt themselves because although successful as leader, they may be weak in other areas
- They feel a dread that failure is imminent
This kind of thinking is corrosive to any leader, especially weak leaders.
Why should you train or learn about a trendy leadership theory that makes you second guess yourself? One that makes you feel insecure and weak?
Why not program yourself to a positive mindset instead with leadership skills habits which will make you feel strong and confident?
Especially since at its core, the imposter syndrome is a fraud.
It typically arises from an inability of an otherwise qualified leader to handle the emotional intelligence social skills required of workplace politics.
As an employee development and leadership development course developer, what jumps out at me here, is that the imposter syndrome is actually a skills issue not a psychology issue.
The main takeaway is don’t let yourself be led into bottomless psychology rabbit holes like these. You need to focus on skills that bring confidence, not psychology analysis that brings insecurity.
Skills development: the best way to avoid the traps of executive leadership training
The only way to overcome all these traps, theories and shiny objects of modern executive leadership training is to get back to basics: leadership skills development.
As an executive leader, if you are to manage multiple silos of constituencies, organization wide, it requires leadership skills not leadership styles.
Instead of advanced leadership training for psychology concepts or through psychometric tests, stick with proven leadership skills training.
Because permanent leadership traits are simply skills developed as habits.
For example, soft skills training is a great way to develop emotional intelligence habits. These are traits that you will use every day to increase your gravitas and make better decisions.
Why executive leadership requires leadership skills training
The executive leader is the prime vanguard of an organization’s vision, culture, brand and other abstract intangibles that build shareholder value.
Some of the trendy leadership training rabbit holes such as leadership styles aim to capitalize on your need to build intangible value.
They offer novel theories and approaches that promise to be a magic bullet solution to common leadership vacuums, such as team leadership and employee morale.
Skills development is a better way, because it is a fundamental building block, not a gimmick.
You may ask “What do leadership skills have to do with vision, culture, brand and building shareholder value?”
Leadership skills develop your interpersonal communication skills and emotional intelligence maturity that better concentrates your leadership power.
That power is how you grow the culture, build the brand, increase shareholder value through your workforce. It is how you can architect the vision that your entire organization accepts as their mission.
Leadership training is skills training
Leadership skills are the foundation of leadership training just as athletic skills and drills are the foundation of any sport.
Skills training is essential to every sport, from football to basketball to golf.
- For example Tiger Woods credited his swing skills training for his huge success in 2000 when he won 9 majors
- Bill Belichick and Vince Lombardi won numerous Super Bowls by out-training the competition in skills and drills. (As well as having strong leadership skills themselves.)
- The US Navy SEALS have some of the toughest skills training regimens in the world, to enable them to rapidly deploy quickly and effectively as needed
This is why all my talent development courses include skills development templates.
Skills development is at the epicenter of best practices for leadership training and development.
How leadership skills as habits develop permanent leadership traits
When developing leaders I found that you can develop almost any of the leadership traits you’ll need using skills development.
The key is to develop a skill as a habit. That is how you develop permanent leadership traits.
Skills as habits are how you develop the best qualities of a leader.
Habits are automatic, effortless, instinctual.
- You can learn to take charge.
- You can learn to have presence at meetings, to be the center of gravity and to be a strong leader without being bossy.
- You can increase your communication and vision skills.
- You can develop emotional intelligence to better manage your own emotions and thus better manage the motion of others. (Insight: A leader doesn’t actually ‘manage people’ – they manage people’s emotions.)
That is the number one evolution of your skills development: to develop them as permanent habits.
Why spend the energy on developing a skill if you are not going to engrain it as a permanent habit? You only need to take the extra step of making those skills permanent.
How do we accomplish this? The difference between a skill and a habit is daily affirmation. That is how you engrain a skill permanently in your mind so it can be readily accessed automatically, without thinking.
It is why I include affirmations in all my talent development courses. They are the most powerful force known to develop permanent behavioral habits.
Habits make the leader
The difference between weak leaders and great leaders are habits of thought. How you think determines your success.
For example when you go to a job interview, the hiring manager is looking at your track record to determine your habits.
They understand habits are what determine your chances for success.
Habits of action, habits of thought and habits of emotional self-control are what has determined your life outcome to this point.
How emotional intelligence habits power executive leadership skills
Emotional intelligence and leadership align and overlap to a very large degree.
They both involve leadership skills, communication skills, interpersonal skill and influencing skills.
While there are numerous leadership training topics to choose from, emotional intelligence in executive leadership is emerging as one of the most important.
You’ll find that emotional intelligence skills will power and support your leadership skills to a very large degree:
- It enhances your natural charisma
- Augments your take charge skills
- Increases your presence and gravity
- By managing your own emotions, you better manage the emotions of others
- Boost your influence power.
Emotional intelligence habits and skills are a must for maximizing your executive leadership development.
Remember, as a leader you are not actually managing people, you are managing emotions. That is the essence of what is called emotional intelligence.
Luckily, you can use soft skills training as a short cut to develop your emotional intelligence habits and soft leadership skills.
That’s why I include soft skills development in all my employee development courses and leadership development programs. They are a key part of developing influential individuals.
I put together this emotional Intelligence Venn diagram to help you visualize the overlap and differences of intention between soft skills and emotional intelligence.
Soft skills and emotional intelligence
In the Venn diagram above, you’ll notice that soft skills focus on emotional self management.
Emotional intelligence brings this a step further by utilizing your emotional self management to better manage the emotions of others.
This overlap is why and how soft skills are a bridge to bring you from self management to emotional intelligence.
We could of added leadership as a third Venn category and the overlap would not change. All are intrinsically connected.
Using soft skills to build emotional intelligence can strengthen numerous emotional avenues for your leadership, including:
- Self awareness
- Social awareness
- Compassion
- Interpersonal sensitivity
- Self regulation
- Relational intelligence
- Emotional resilience
The impact of all these emotional skills working together make you a very magnetic leader, an emotional safe harbor and the center of gravity.
You can conclude that kills development, especially soft skills development, should be what you as a leader are focused on. Not the latest leadership style trend or psychology theory.
Summary: avoiding the pitfalls of the latest trends in executive leadership training
Be selective to avoid executive leadership training that chases shiny objects and the latest leadership psychology trends.
There are so many ways to get sidetracked by training in novel leadership styles or psychology theories and syndromes that take you down rabbit holes.
The best practices for executive leadership training is a focus on the development of leadership skills and soft skills training to build emotional intelligence.
My new leadership development program offers step-by-step templates that make leadership skills development easy.
You can develop effective leadership skills and emotional intelligence in only 3 minutes a day. Find out more below:
What makes a great leader?
The right leadership training, of course!
Command effective leadership skill in only 3 minutes a day with this
new Leadership Development Program
A concise leadership development course with
step-by-step training templates in Excel and PDF
Effective for all levels of leadership: executives, managers and business owners and anyone who wants to develop strong leadership skills
- Develop leadership skills as permanent habits
- Strengthen your emotional intelligence through leadership soft skills training
- Expand your center of gravity and build a confident presence
- Learn how to structure your leadership role for maximum effectiveness
- No fluff. Concise training in the 4 core fundamentals of leadership
- Establish “Leadership team quality control” by raising all leaders to the same skills standard benchmark
Why pay $2,000, $5000 or $10,000 for generic leadership courses that train you on topics you will never use?
Now you can avoid wasting time and money, and get effective hands-on skills training instead.
This innovative leadership development program is only $197 for a limited time.
