Most leadership training programs are designed for easy operational delivery within a corporation, not for habit formation. They’re event-based training, meaning that the training takes place daily.
In a traditional one-day or two-day long workshop, you’ll increase your knowledge. You’ll learn several key insights and be excited to implement the 5-10 new learnings into your leadership toolkit immediately. Inevitably, you won’t be able to put all of those new learnings into action.
After two or three weeks, you may remember the concept but not a way to implement the thought, and you’ll be lucky if you keep even two of the ten key points from the session.
Leadership training is aimed toward giving leaders new skills — at helping them change their behaviors to travel from being a top individual contributor to a pacesetter of individuals. As a pacesetter, your success depends on the success of the people you’re leading. It’s quite a shift in perspective.
Simply learning what to try and do throughout one to 2 days doesn’t cause acting differently in the future.
How habit formation works in our brains.
Habit formation doesn’t just happen. Our brains aren’t wired to adopt a replacement habit that quickly. Regardless of how good and fascinating the presentation is, habit formation takes time. It occurs when a replacement action, just like the leadership skill of listening with intention and a focus, is practiced over and over.
Each time you practice listening in this new way, neurons in your brain are firing and making a brand new neural pathway. The more you practice, the stronger the neural pathway becomes and also the easier it’s for you to pay attention.
The neural pathway for listening may be created or rediscovered in one session, except for the pathway to be strengthened, you would like to practice deliberately. Role-playing with peers may be a safe thanks to starting, but it doesn’t replace the important thing. To practice effectively, you’ll have to try listening in an exceedingly real-life scenario. Only, once applied within the planet, you’ll get the feedback you would like to validate, adapt and adjust your mental model of what it’s and looks like to pay attention with intention and a focus.
Often, real-world practice doesn’t go as planned. Something goes wrong. It’s like trying to ride a motorbike for the primary time — you’re visiting fall. you would like to reflect on what went wrong, what may well be improved, and what you’ll carry over to your next attempt at being attentive to learn a replacement habit.
If you’re committed to challenging the establishment, to achieving results and not excitement, to giving your leaders the tools and skills to transition from individual contributors to powerful leaders, here’s a process that works.
Phase 1: Learn
This is where the training on a replacement skill is delivered to a bunch of leaders. Leaders learn the talents, yet why they’re valuable and the way they will, theoretically, be applied to the workplace. this can be where most workshops spend 90% of their time. I suggest only spending 15% of any workshop on the teaching or knowledge-building phase. It’s simply not as crucial because of the application.
Phase 2: Apply
It’s during this phase that leaders practice applying the new habits. It happens during in-training applications and thru real-world applications.
In-training application occurs the instant the leaders learn a replacement skill. It’s key to place them into practice by applying the skill instantly. Ideally, you’ll spend 80-90% of the time applying the new skill and reflecting on how it is often improved. By doing this, you’re activating the neural pathway and strengthening it.
Part two of the appliance occurs within the planet, through the completion of a homework assignment. Applying the new skill outside of the security of the workshop brings a full new element to learning. It’s not structured. It can take a pacesetter out of their temperature, which is strictly where growth occurs.
Phase 3: Reflect
Reflection includes holding short coaching debrief with the leader to reflect on what worked well and what can be done better.
The reflection phase serves two purposes. One, it holds the leader answerable for completing their homework. Two, it allows for the leaders to assess and evaluate how they did and the way they will apply the new skills better in future interactions. They likely won’t perfect the delivery of a habit on their first attempt, so this phase is very important to reemphasize how habit adoption may be a learning process. although the leader isn’t practicing the new skill during this phase, the reflection process continues to be triggering the newly created neural pathway. By the tip of this phase, a pacesetter will have visualized, practiced, or reflected on a singular habit many times, turning it from a skill to a habit adopted.
Habit change requires commitment from the organization.
The Learn-Apply-Reflect model is intended to urge your leaders to practice skills and put them into action. The quicker and more frequently a pacesetter can take learning, apply it to a real-life situation and dissect their performance of it, the quicker a replacement skill becomes a habit.
Organizational change occurs when the behaviours of individual leaders change. It starts right here, by working along with your leaders on adopting the habits that may make your organization succeed.
