Leadership training and adherence training

Nishan Wimalachandra Business Consultant, Trainer and Lecturer

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” - John C. Maxwell

“A follower is the one who takes the way, follows the way and finds the way of the leader”

- Nishan Wimalachandra

Leadership is not just an adaptation of management theory from a large text book, it is seeing beyond logic and rationality. We quite often hear that leaders are logical thinkers, but if you look around, those who have secured leadership positions are those who have a bird’s eye point of view instead of a worm’s eye point of view. Leaders are visionaries who see the big picture as against those who are small minded.

How do we identify leaders?

How do we identify real leaders in our society while there is a large number who claim to possess such ability when they actually don’t? Leaders display childlike characteristics while others are childish in their behaviour. Leaders are willing to learn while others have the attitude of ‘know it all’. Leaders are those who could give a vision in this modern “visually impaired society” which craves for guidance. Leaders are pre-occupied with what could be commenced which could change things around while the others think about what could be stopped to change things around.

Nishan Wimalachandra

Leaders are obsessed with a vision while others are pre-occupied with everything else. Leadership goes beyond a dynamic management style and captivates the full human potential thereby creating a cult like following for those around them. Leaders are action-minded while others are disabled minded, leaders follow through when others follow up.

Leadership is an attitude rather than a process; it is devotion, ensuring that right gear is put at the right place at the right time.

Leadership is about inspiring others from where they are now to where they so fear to tread upon, thereby transferring them to the newer ground with the utmost confidence.

Surprises never amaze the real leaders as they have seen it all, it is quite a tragedy that leaders are a rare species who could be seen as extraterrestrials to ordinary, as they mostly remember their future, while others don’t even remember their present. They never panic or get disoriented under tremendous pressure and perform better at such conditions.

There could be different types of leaders in our organizations and what they could accomplish ensures who they actually are.

Real leaders link commitment and responsibility to performance while others refer commitment to blame.

Real leaders do not accuse others when they fail but themselves, and never take credit when they accomplish something, as they regard it to collective accomplishment with others. They have this special ability in identifying the talents and abilities of others and are capable of developing high performance specialists. Genuine leaders never sacrifice their followers but become the sacrifice, as they don’t believe in scapegoats. Leaders possess that intuition which most others don’t which distinguishes them from the rest of the society, and never take ‘No’ for an answer as they are driven by the need to accomplish. They are highly motivated and are at all times objective.

Leaders are visionaries with a retarded mind frame which ignores what could come against them in their pursuit for success, so whatever takes place they are ready. Leaders don’t believe in plan ‘B’s as their plan ‘A’ is always practical and lead to success.

In the modern society leadership quality is a difficult trait to develop in others, and could take hours and hours of training while born leaders are just a handful. Could leadership be developed in the ordinary lives of men and women are still not established, as most genuine leaders always don’t possess titles, formal authority, awards and public recognition.

How do we develop leaders then?

Regardless of the statements made by leadership trainers, it’s not possible to make a leader out of an ordinary personality within a four hour training program, according to the ancient literature, it may take lifetimes to develop leaders. It’s relatively difficult to train an ordinary person to act as a leader in a quick fix program as this is not just a behavioural aspect of personalities, but involves an inside out transformation.

Without leaders people perish and making errors in trying to develop leaders could result in a deformed personality who is neither a leader nor follower, so that the new development is worse than the first.

Willingness is the key

Just consider this example, if you are trying to take a blood sample from a person who is scared to death about the experience, will make a fuss and try their level best to avoid or withdraw from the experience of pain. But we have seen that a larger number of people who have no choice but to do the blood test on regular basis on their own to make sure they are healthy. It’s simple as that; if you are not willing to go through the pain of becoming a leader, then you might as well stay where you are. So trying to make someone a leader when they are unwilling could cause a lot of issues for an organization and to the individual, regardless of the nature of business and the personality of the individual respectively.

Choose the right candidate

Leadership training cannot be done to 400 people at once as a larger percentage of the people can never be leaders in their lifetimes. So leadership training is only effective for smaller groups out of which very few would ever reach the top. Most managers who have secured these positions don’t even know what leadership is and due to this the whole organization is heading towards a dysfunctional system where one division is doing extremely better while the other is not performing to compensate to the latter.

The best form of selecting people for leadership is by a proper background check as to their inclinations, how have they coped with their co-workers and under extreme conditions, etc. so if you are sending people for leadership training just because they have not displayed such traits of a leader, you might as well never send them for such training, because when a person is unwilling it could accomplish nothing. Finding out the willingness of the person could give a broad idea as to whether they would appreciate such training being offered or otherwise.

Leadership is seeing beyond logic and rationality

I have heard people say that the training which they were sent was useless but enjoyed the food, drinks and play they had in the facility and that even if they want to be leaders among workplace having such abilities, their managers would never allow them to practise such devises for the fear of losing control. So the whole point of the training is lost and a family trip would have served a better purpose than training itself.

So whenever a person is selected for leadership training a manager must be willing to live with the consequences of having such a person in his/her team. But one must keep in mind that not all people have the willingness to be groomed as a leader and unwillingness of the person may well be an indication that the offer could be given to someone else, probably to the newly recruited peon who may show such qualities.

Most people may disagree with these statements as they identify them to be only true as if leadership quality is just a commodity you could purchase, and if that is the case everyone of us will have it and there won’t be any followers left.

Weigh the results through the results

If a person who is well selected for leadership training comes back after the course, their results must be weighed immediately to find whether there is any hope for the person to be a leader. Usually anything which we learn we tend to forget if we do not use it as soon as we learn it. This is explained by the fact that most people who are ever sent for team building training comes back more individualized than they were before, and become even more useless as there is no tolerance for teamwork at work place.

So when the would be leader returns from training they should be directly sent for assignments which require leadership abilities to be employed. If you take the military training in most countries, soldiers are sent to the real battle as soon as the training is complete.

If they are kept to march for two years in the camp and then sent to the battle, all what they have learnt will be blunt thus sharpening a blunt skill would take time and the rust may not break off that easily. So the only option is to send them to deal with real situations as soon as the training is completed.

Leaders need followers

Most of us will never be leaders as most of us don’t have such qualities, and if others are not willing to follow those in power the whole point of the leadership position is lost. The top level managers are responsible to create such an environment so that there are more followers than leaders, this is not just a result of a bureaucratic structure, but something which pierce deeper than the corporate culture of the organisation.

Senior managers must create the system in a way that people respect others for who they are rather than their designation. We have often seen peons who display leadership qualities than a manager who is highly qualified and vested with a great deal of authority. So if leadership positions which are to be established need a conducive environment; the only option is to create a positive mindset in the hearts and minds of the followers.

The most problematic issue is that once the person comes with a transformed mindset of being a leader, there aren’t people who would follow them or the organization does not have a mechanism that gives pace to the person to exercise his abilities.

So leadership training is not just sufficient, but also training on how to follow orders of the leaders must be established too.

In this irony, organizations must equip those aspiring leaders for leadership training and others on following the instructions of the leaders. Similar to communication being a two way process between the sender and the recipient, leadership training is just addressing one side of the coin without training the others on following the leaders.

It’s time that CEOs and senior managers understood the importance of both these aspects which are essential to a fully integrated organization. Leadership training is not the final answer, it’s just addressing part of the problem which is useless without the other.

Therefore leadership development must be compensated with the training on compliance and adherence to those under the leaders to ensure an effective functioning of an organization where organization ultimately accomplishes its vision thereby fulfilling the requirements of its stakeholders.