Effective leaders manage processes that yield optimal results. This being true, why do so many organisations not maximise the value of development in workplace application?

In the final analysis, leadership development is designed to produce better qualified, more effective leaders that improve business results; or so the theory goes.

Converting leadership development into business results, like any business process, needs to be analysed, managed, improved and made more efficient and effective. The measure of effectiveness of development initiatives is the yield – the quality and quantity of the output in relation to the input, the extent to which the resources consume (time and money) are converted into results.

Leadership development represents an investment for which the organisations expect a return. Effective leaders ensure that training and development is managed in ways that maximise the return on investment (ROI) in people and performance. Unfortunately in still too many companies, a major disconnect persists between what happens in the development event and what is applied in the workplace.

Only a small fraction of every pound invested in training and development is ever fully applied in ways that maximise the impact. The competitive advantages that ought to flow from development initiatives, talent management and performance management are largely compromised by failure to manage the overall process from learning to reinforced application back at work. Too little is done to close the learning – doing gap and facilitate a transfer of learning that delivers measurable results.

The workplace transfer gap:
For leadership development to pay dividends in terms of more effective working, greater productivity and improved business results, it must first be converted to on-the-job action and applied to relevant work.

In most leadership development, however, there exists a yawning chasm, a giant learning-doing gap, between what is learned and what is actually transferred into workplace action.

On one side of the gulf is the development initiative where the learning takes place. On the other side is workplace reality, where the learning needs to be converted into action and productivity. Too often, all the attention is directed to the development event itself with not enough attention being given to the transfer process that is essential to achieve better results. Despite action plans and personal development plans at the end of the programme, too often they remain just that – plans.

What is required to bridge the learning-doing gap is a paradigm shift; a different, more holistic view of leadership development where the finish line is not the end of the development programme, but the results it was intended to affect.

This means thinking of leadership development not as an event, and including thinking about meeting the challenge of transferring the learning not workplace action that delivers results. Traditionally insufficient attention has been paid to motivating, tracking and rewarding follow-through on learning and this has been partly due to the fact it takes planning, time and repeated practice to change habits and reach goals.

To convert learning into results and maximise the return on the leadership development investment, there is a need to practice six disciplines (adapted form The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, by C Wick, R Pollock, A Jefferson, & R Flanagan. Pfeiffer 2006.)

What are the six disciplines required to turn learning into results?