Coaching a performance problem, communicating performance standards and other tactical initiatives are the most common components of leadership development programs, according to a study by Novations Group, a global consulting organization based in Boston. The results make interesting reading for businesses as well as Execs.

1. A survey of 2,500 Human Resources and Training
Executives…
Or, getting HR to hit mark on talent management
BOSTON, May 6, 2006 — Coaching a performance problem, communicating
performance standards and other tactical initiatives are the most common components
of leadership development programs, according to a study by Novations Group, a
global consulting organization based in Boston.
What is the analysis of the survey data? And, most importantly, what is so unusual about the
result?
First, the survey question and the results from 2,500 HR respondents.
Which of the following management situations or initiatives are addressed by
your organization’s leadership development program (please select all that
apply)?
Coaching a performance problem 71.9%
Communicating performance standards 69.1%
Coaching a development opportunity 68.7%
Conducting a performance appraisal 66.8%
Handling conflict situations 65.9%
Communicating vision and strategy 59.4%
Selecting the right employee 58.1%
Diversity & Inclusion 55.3%
Gaining commitment to goals 49.3%
Managing priorities 48.8%
Change management 45.2%
Acting on feedback 44.7%
Teaching a skill & delegating responsibility 39.6%
Influencing internal resources 34.6%
Managing a virtual team 27.6%
And why is this a curious result?
This is interesting empirical data. The survey asked about leadership development programs
– not management development programs. Why is a leadership development program
focused on management activities and responsibilities?
There are a couple of candidate explanations for the survey results.
But first, from an empirical perspective – as understood by constituents – what is expected of
leaders from follows? Consider leadership in terms of non-authoritarian leadership. That is,

2. what are the attributes of people (leaders) that constituencies will willingly follow. The key
is the term “willingly follow“.
This takes us beyond the sphere of hierarchical organizations into the realm of democratic
political systems where constituency groups are not compelled to follow a leader. There is
application to both organizational and political behavior.
Th Kouzes-Posner Empirical Research on Leadership
This is from James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
We began our research on what constituents expect of leaders more than twenty-five
years ago by surveying thousands of business and government executives. We asked
the following open-ended question: “What values, personal traits, or characteristics do
you look for and admire in a leader? In response to that question, respondents
identified several hundred different values, traits, and characteristics. Subsequent
content analysis by several independent judges, followed by further empirical
analyses, reduced these items to a list of twenty characteristics (each grouped with
several synonyms for clarification and completeness).
From this list of twenty characteristics, we developed a survey questionnaire called
“Characteristics of Admired Leaders.” We’ve administered this questionnaire to over
seventy-five thousand people around the globe, and we update the findings
continuously. We distribute a one-page checklist and ask respondents to select the
seven qualities that they “most look for and admire in a leader, someone whose
direction they would willingly follow.” We tell them that the key word in this
question is willingly. What do they expect from a leader they would follow, not
because they have to, but because they want to?
The results have been striking in their regularity over the years, and they do not
significantly vary by demographical, organizational, or cultural differences
The Opportunity
What happens when you take 25 years of empirical research by by Kouzes and Posner of over
75,000 individuals on leadership – from a constituency point of view – and bump this up
against what is being taught by HR and training executives – or at least the 2,500 surveyed by
Novations? Are they aligned?
Not to put too fine a point on this but lets be clear. Are company and organizational talent
management system creating a group of people (as leaders) that employees or organizational
members will admire and willingly follow? Or, are these talent management programs
focused on something else? And if so, what and why are these leadership development
programs teaching what they teach? What is driving the curriculum being taught?
If the answer is no – that is, if HR talent management programs are teaching what is
irrelevant to what is empirically discovered to be successful leadership qualities, skills and
competencies then, well, we have quite an interesting situation that bears further
investigation.

3. The Kouzes Posner Research -
The five behavioral practices of exemplary leadership
Based on the 25 years of research, Kouzes and Posner came up with these 5 behavioral
practices of exemplary leadership.
1. Clarify values and set the example – model the way.
In order to clarify values and set the example leaders first have to have principles and beliefs.
In a certain sense, this is an exercise in self-inspection. To the extent that people do in fact
“act” (have a behavior) they do have some set of values, beliefs, and principles – whether
consciously articulated or not. The task is to make these explicit.
After these values have been discovered one must have the capability to articulate them. In
short, communication skills.
Beyond the articulation of principles and beliefs leaders need to establish and maintain
credibility. One establishes credibility by acting on those values. That is, action gives a
voice and credibility to these values, principles, and beliefs, in a way that simply articulating
these values in speech or writing can not.
No one will believe an individual as a leader until they demonstrate a commitment to your
values. That is, model the way. Actions – behavior and judgment – have to be consistent
with the values that the leader has articulated in speech of writing.
2. Inspire a shared vision of the future possibilities and enlist others in that vision
The Kouzes-Posner research shows that leaders must be able to envisage , project, and
articulate a future for the organization. Equally important constituency groups must be able
to see themselves in this future. The leaders vision of the future must be inspirational in
order to achieve buy-in and commitment from the constituency.
To be inspirational the vision must be able to show the greater opportunities that await and
how this vision is unique and differentiates your organization from all the rest. High
performance behavior within an organization can be achieved by instilling passion and pride
in achieving the vision. In order to achieve this, what leaders envisage for the future must
resonate with the constituency base.
3. Challenge the process by searching for opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve
by experimenting and taking risks
Challenging the process sometimes means challenging the way things are done – especially
when the way things are done has placed an organization in a state of stagnation or decline.
“Repeating the past” does not play well in a dynamic external environment.
The Kouzes-Posner research found that successful leaders create a climate for the recognition
of good ideas and support for those ideas. Successful leaders create a climate for
experimentation and risk taking without the stigma of failure.

4. In some cases success breeds failure. Why? In a nearly continuous stream of successes one
has less of an opportunity to learn from failure – or the organization is not taking enough
risks - or it operates in a a non-competitive environment. In many cases, people and
organizations “are made” by adversity, setbacks, and successful recovery.
Failure can breed success through careful analysis of failure, repositioning, new strategy,
better execution – or whatever the results of the analysis show if individuals and
organization have the tenacity and commitment to carry through on careful analysis of
product, service, or organizational failure.
Organizational leaders can create a climate of experimentation within a workforce where
there is fear of risk and failure by reframing. For example, reframe uncertainty as adventure;
fear into resolve; and risk into reward.
Successful leaders champion change – change not for the sake of change in the service of
innovation. No organization can stand still for long and continue to be competitive.
Customers will grow weary of products and services that can not adapt to the changing
external environment or competitive challenges.
Finding new and better ways of doing things, developing new products, services, or systems
should be a continuous and ongoing process in any organization. Challenging the process is
not only an internal endeavor. Challenging the process also involves looking outside the
realm of familiar experience at the ways other organizations operate – borrow and refine what
works – discard what does not work.
Bottom line – always and continuously challenge the current process to look for new
opportunities.
4. Enable others to act by fostering collaboration, building trust and strengthening
everyone capacity to deliver on their promises.
One could summarize this a few different ways: “empower people to act” and “mobilize
people”.
The Kouzes-Posner research found that successful leaders learn to trust people, relinquish
control, and enable others to act. There are a couple of old expressions that come to mind –
“every brain in the game” and “no one of us is smarter than all of us”.
To realize the power of groups of people leaders need to facilitate relationship and
collaboration among individuals. They need to instill a sense of cohesiveness and self-
determination along with shared creation, shared responsibility and personal accountability to
the collaborative team. Leaders need to facilitate competency development across the team
and also ensure there is a diversity of complementary skills and perspectives.
These combined allow people to not only develop and demonstrate the belief that they can
make a difference for the better but that they can in fact realize the vision though
empowerment, relationships, collaboration, and competency development.
5. Celebrate values and victories recognizing contributions of other celebrating values
and victories

5. People that make the commitment and put in long hours need recognition to sustain the
effort. Successful leaders expect the best and provide personalize recognition in return.
Public recognition of personal achievement builds a community through celebration.
Successful leaders perpetually look for people doing things right an reward it. A community
of achievement is sustained by telling stories of personal, group, and organizational
accomplishment.
Leadership Training and Talent Management
Hitting the mark
So lets look at the survey results of 2,500 HR and Talent Management Executives.
When asked the question:
Which of the following management situations or initiatives are addressed by your
organization’s leadership development program (please select all that apply)?
This is an analysis of the responses as above. Color coded in red are the items relevant to the
results of 25 years of accumulated research across 75,000 individuals as reported by James
M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Coaching a performance problem 71.9%
Communicating performance standards 69.1%
Coaching a development opportunity 68.7%
Conducting a performance appraisal 66.8%
Handling conflict situations 65.9%
Communicating vision and strategy 59.4%
Selecting the right employee 58.1%
Diversity & Inclusion 55.3%
Gaining commitment to goals 49.3%
Managing priorities 48.8%
Change management 45.2%
Acting on feedback 44.7%
Teaching a skill & delegating responsibility 39.6%
Influencing internal resources 34.6%
Managing a virtual team 27.6%
Now one can see what is curious about the responses.
The top 5 skills and competences taught in leadership development programs – as reported by
2,500 HR respondents – have noting to do with the skills and competencies that Kouzes and
Posner discovered as leadership attributes.

6. Only 59.4% of respondents say they teach “Communicating Vision and Strategy” as part of
leadership development.
“Gaining commitment to goals” – 49.3% – less than 1/2 across 2,500 respondents surveyed.
“Change Management” (challenging the process and institutionalizing this) – sadly 45.2%
“Influencing” (motivating) – 34.6%
The misalignment
So why the mismatch between what is being taught in leadership development programs and
the result of the Kouzer-Posner research?
Here are some thoughts
1. The survey question clearly states “leadership development program”. The survey
results show that leadership training programs are really teaching management skills
and competencies. Why? If leadership programs are driven by needs as observed in
actual organizations then management in those organization is not fulfilling their
roles. Why? One possibility is that individual contributors have been promoted to
management roles without being prepared with the skills and competencies needed for
that role. The result? Leaders are focusing on what should be handled at the
management level. That is, based on organizational need, leaders have to take on
more of a management role than a leadership role to fill the vacuum in the layer below
them
2. As a result of the above, leadership programs in those organizations are diminished.
How? Training for leaders is heavily weighted toward dealing with tactical
operational problems not focusing on strategy and vision – that is, the skills,
competencies, and competencies as discovered by the Kouzes and Posner research.
This did not escape the notice of Novations:
BOSTON, May 6, 2006 — Coaching a performance problem, communicating
performance standards and other tactical initiatives are the most common components
of leadership development programs, according to a study by Novations Group, a
global consulting organization based in Boston.
A good deal less frequent are key strategic skills such as communicating vision or
delegating responsibility, reported Novations, which surveyed more than 2,500 senior
HR and training executives throughout the U.S. and Canada.
In fact, the top five leadership development initiatives are entirely operational in
focus.
What is disappointing is the relatively low emphasis given to the strategic dimension.
At the very core of developing new leaders is getting people to look beyond the
tactical stuff and to engage on the bigger issues.”
And on individual contributors being promoted to management without the necessary skills to
effectively manage and act as a local leaders

7. In order for individuals to advance from individual contributor to manager they need
to be taught the full suite of skills needed to act as a local leader, not as just an expert.
And too often people are promoted to a management position and don’t let go of their
old job.”
All this plays into the idea of “clogging the leadership pipeline”. Making the mistake of
promoting individual contributors without the necessary management skills pushes the role of
management to leaders which have to execute the skills (tactical and operational) due to the
absence of management skills by the errant promotion of individual contributors.
So, if “leaders” have to be trained to take over management duties then that diminishes the
relative amount of time they can spend on focused leadership activities discovered by Kouzes
and Posner.
Conclusion – one possible remedy
One solution to this organizational situation is reclassification. That is, every employee is
placed in a job role based on the skills, competencies, time commitments, and behaviors that
they actually demonstrate by observation on the job against rigorous job analysis and
descriptions.
An organizational decision to do widespread reclassification can take its toll. But sometimes,
significant transformation of an organization can be an effective way to restore a corporation
or organization to competitevness in a dynamic competitive marketplace.
Read the actual experience of Forced Ranking here.
Novations is a global talent management consultancy. So, based on their research of the
2,500 HR talent management executives it looks like they have some good leads to follow up
on and a good story to tell if they leverage the Kouzes-Posner and similar research.
http://frrl.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/can-2500-human-resources-and-training-executives-be-
wrong-or-getting-hr-to-hit-the-mark-on-leadership-and-talent-management/
References and Related Postings
How to NOT derail your corporate or organizational career
Managing Your Career – When IQ and Expertise are not enough:Or, why you need
Emotional Intelligence to get ahead
From Loading Dock to CEO in 6 painful steps. Or, Navigating the Leadership Pipeline
Developing your Leadership Pipeline – Harvard Business Review December 2008
The Secret to GE’s Success: A Former insider Reveals the Leadership lessons of the World’s
Most Competitive Company (Hardcover) by William R. Rothschild

8. The Leadership Pipeline: how to build a Leadership-Powered Company by Drotter, Noel,
Charan
The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Forced Ranking – Behind the Scenes