Why Most Talent & Leadership Development Solutions Fail Prior to Launching
If you’ve been living for any length of time, there is no doubt you’ve experienced rejection. Whether it was that innocent crush as a teenager or something more significant like the biggest business pitch of your professional career.
High’s and low’s are a normal part of life, but the business landscape is more like the game of baseball, where you will fail more often than you’ll win…
Sustained success largely rides on resiliency, ingenuity and optimism to keep going in the face of change and adversity. However, if you want to get to the next level, personally or professionally, it's imperative to analyze the failures and use them to learn and fail forward.
If you must go through it, you might as well grow through it!
Consistent negative responses are especially common for those in the talent and leadership development space, whether it be as an external coach or consultant, or as an internal HR resource. Interpersonal skills (i.e. self-awareness, personal effectiveness, emotional intelligence, communication, leadership, influence, adaptability, and problem solving) are critical to business performance.
Yet, there are three major reasons most talent and leadership development solutions fail, even before the outcomes and potential successes have been communicated to key stakeholders. Be aware of these, so they don’t become your Achilles’ heel.
Reason #1 - Vagueness on What You Do
Imagine you are in the movie “Office Space” as they’re embarking on the organizational transformation…the two leadership goofballs, perhaps business consultants, are sitting on the other side of the table and they start the interview with “So what would you say you do here?”
It is important to keep in mind that most business owners and senior organizational leaders have analytical bent; at the very least they have been trained to be highly logical. The P&L plainly outlines the profit and loss, which is extremely objective.
It's not uncommon for them to struggle to understand the importance of relational intelligence and people processes. It would be alike to someone who is colorblind to try to describe a color they can’t see.
They are, however, very keen and focused on optimal performance.
The key here is to start and maintain a posture of curiosity, by asking good questions and ensuring you accurately understand where the loss of individual, team, and organizational performance might be, as a result of what may be seen as traditional “soft skills”. Then using this as transition point from what can be seen as squishy, kumbaya stuff to tangible ways you intended on enhancing performance.
Reason #2 - Confusion on the Execution
We’ve run into many talent development coaches and consultants over the years who surprisingly do not have a standard coaching or consulting methodology, nor an implementation process. If they do have a standard approach, they struggle to outline it in a linear way with simplicity and clarity.
This is absolutely frightening because this is the people-space and you are dealing with their lives and their legacy.
A standard approach isn't intended to stifle creativity or the development of innovative solution. Instead, it's supposed to set right and left limits, leading to an understanding of what to expect from you and your services from a process perspective.
Think:
Services with solutions
Scheduling
Required time for both the client and you
Communication rhythms
Duration of engagement
The days of full day training and retreats are no longer. You’ll be served here by adding training technology, so you and your team can focus on the higher-level and more impactful conversations.
Reason #3 - Failure to Quantify the ROI
Remember from above, most business owners and senior organizational leaders have a bent towards being analytical. Combine this with organizations designed to achieve objectives and businesses that are intended to make a profit.
Time is money, especially in the marketplace.
And I know you’re reading this because you care to see people holistically thrive.
The tension is thriving people and successful organizations. They are not mutually exclusive.
Our people are what makes our business what it is and why we exist in the first place. Whatever you produce, there is a human on the other side. Meaning most business problems are people problems!
Can you quantify how the dysfunction is negatively impacting achieving objectives or profit? If so, you’ve found your value-add.
And likely…the cost of doing business with you.