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The Follow-up Factor in Leadership
Leadership is not just for leaders anymore. Top companies are beginning to understand that sustaining peak performance requires a firm-wide commitment to developing leaders that is tightly aligned to organizational objectives — a commitment much easier to understand than to achieve. Organizations must find ways to cascade leadership from senior management to men and women at all levels and to create 100 million new leaders throughout our society.

Ask and Receive
In a way, this study reinforces a key learning from the Hawthorne studies. These classic observations of factory workers at suburban Chicago’s Western Electric Hawthorne Works, which Harvard professor Elton Mayo made nearly 80 years ago, showed that productivity tended to increase when workers perceived leadership interest and involvement in their work, as evidenced by purposeful change in the workplace environment. This study shows that when co-workers are involved in leadership development, the leaders they are helping tend to become more effective. Leaders who ask for input and then follow up to see if progress is being made are seen as people who care. Co-workers might well infer that leaders who don’t respond to feedback must not care very much.

Historically, a great deal of leadership development has focused on the importance of an event. This event could be a training program, a motivational speech, or an offsite executive meeting. The experience of the eight companies we studied indicates that real leadership development involves a process that occurs over time, not an inspiration or transformation that occurs in a meeting. Physical exercise provides a useful analogy. Imagine having out-of-shape people sit in a room and listen to a speech on the importance of exercising, then watch some tapes on how to exercise, and perhaps practice exercising. Would you ever wonder why these people were still unfit a year later? The source of physical fitness does not understand the theory of working out; it is engaging in exercise. As Arnold Schwarzenegger has said, “Nobody ever got muscles by watching me work out!” So, too, with leadership development. As Professor Drucker, Dr. Hersey, and Dr. Blanchard have pointed out, leadership involves a reliance on other co-workers to achieve objectives. Who better than these same co-workers to help the leader increase effectiveness?

Indeed, the executive coach is, in many ways, like a personal trainer. The trainer’s role is to “remind” the person being trained to do what he or she knows should be done. Good personal trainers spend far more time on execution than on theory. The same seems to be true for leadership development. Most leaders already know what to do. They have read the same books and listened to the same gurus giving the same speeches. Hence, the core conclusion from this research: For most leaders, the great challenge is not understanding the practice of leadership: It is practicing their understanding of leadership.

Beyond the basic finding — that follow-up matters — several other conclusions arise from this research. For example, the eight-program study indicates that the follow-up factor correlates with improved leadership effectiveness among both U.S. and non-U.S. executives.

As companies globalize, many executives have begun to wrestle with issues of cultural differences among their executives and employees. Recent research involving high-potential leaders from around the world has shown that cross-cultural understanding is seen as a key to effectiveness for the global leader.

The study addressed this issue as it affects leadership development programs. Nearly 10,000 of the respondents in the eight companies whose programs we reviewed — almost 12 percent of the mini-survey sample — were located outside the United States. We found that the degree of follow-up was as critical to changing perceived leadership effectiveness internationally as it was domestically. This was true for both training and coaching initiatives.

At Johnson & Johnson, there were almost no differences in scores among participants in Europe, Latin America, and North America. The group seen as improving the most was in Asia. In analyzing the findings, J&J determined that the higher scores in Asia were more a function of dedicated local management than of cultural differences, again supporting the correlation between a caring, contact-rich leadership and its perceived effectiveness.

That follow-up works globally contravenes assumptions that different cultures will have differing levels of receptiveness to intimate conversations about workplace behaviors. But the universality of the follow-up principle doesn’t imply universality in its application. Leaders learn from the people in their own environment, particularly in a cross-cultural context. Indeed, research by the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., has shown that “encouraging feedback” and “learning from those around us” are both central to success for leaders in cross-cultural environments. Companies with successful leadership development programs encourage executives to adapt the universal principle of follow-up and the frequency of such conversations to fit the unique requirements of the culture in which they working. Despite other cultural differences, there seems to be no country in the world where co-workers think, “I love it when you ask me for my feedback and then ignore me.”

Inside and Outside
Interaction between the developing leader and his or her colleagues is not the sole connection that counts. Also vital is the contact between the leader and the coach. The third major finding concerns that relationship: Both internal and external coaches can make a positive difference. One reason coaching can be so effective is that it may inspire leaders to follow up with their people. Agilent Technologies, for one, found a strong positive correlation between the number of times the coach followed up with the client and the number of times the client followed up with co-workers. The coach, however, does not have to be part of the company. This conclusion was readily apparent when we compared the two companies most distinct in the composition of their coaching corps. Agilent used only external coaches. GE Capital, by contrast, used only internal coaches from human resources. Yet both approaches produced very positive long-term increases in perceived leadership effectiveness. Given the apparent ease of accessibility to internal coaches, firms might naturally use this finding to justify “going inside.” But there are at least three important variables to consider in determining whether to use an internal HR coach: time, credibility, and confidentiality. In many organizations, internal coaches are not given the time they need for ongoing interaction with the people they are coaching. In some cases, they may not seem as credible as trained development experts. In other cases, especially those that involve human resources personnel filling multiple roles, there may appear to be a conflict of interest between a professional’s responsibilities as coach and as evaluator. If these perceptions exist, then external coaches may well be preferable to internal coaches.

But internal coaches can overcome these obstacles. At GE Capital, the internal coaches were HR professionals who were given time to work with their “coachees.” Coaching was treated as an important part of their responsibility to the company and was not seen as an add-on “if they got around to it.” Moreover, the coachees were given a choice of internal coaches and picked coaches they saw as most credible. Finally, each internal coach worked with a leader in a different part of the business. They assured their coachees that this process was for high-potential development, not evaluation. As a result of this thorough screening process, client satisfaction with internal coaches was high and results achieved by internal coaches (as judged by co-workers) were very positive. Inside or outside, we discovered that the mechanics of the coach–leader relationship were not a major limiting factor. The fourth finding was that feedback or coaching by telephone works about as well as feedback or coaching in person.

Intuitively, one might believe that feedback or coaching is a very “personal” activity that is better done face-to-face than by phone. However, the companies we reviewed do not support this supposition. One company, Johnson & Johnson, conducted almost all feedback by telephone, yet produced “increased effectiveness” scores almost identical to those of the aerospace/defense organization, which conducted all feedback in person.

Moreover, all the companies that used only external coaches similarly found little difference between telephone coaching and live coaching. These companies made sure that each coach had at least two one-on-one meetings with individual executive clients. Some coaches did this in person, whereas others interacted mostly by phone. There was no clear indication that either method of coaching was more effective than the other.

Although sophisticated systems — involving some combination of e-mail, intranets, extranets, and mobile connectivity — are available, follow-up needn’t be expensive. Internal coaches can make follow-up telephone calls. New computerized systems can send “reminder notes” and give ongoing suggestions. However it’s done, follow-up is the sine qua non of effective leadership development. Too many companies spend millions of dollars for the “program of the year” but almost nothing on follow-up and reinforcement.

Companies should also take care to measure the effectiveness of their leadership development initiatives, and not just the employees’ satisfaction with them. The results of this study indicate that when participants know that surveys or other methods of measuring program effectiveness are slated to occur three to 15 months from the date of the program, a higher level of commitment is created among them. This follow-up measurement creates a focus on long-term change and personal accountability.

Although measuring outcomes would seem to be second nature for most companies, the success of leadership development programs has conventionally been assessed through the satisfaction of the participants. This metric is of limited relevance. Among the companies in this study that offered leadership development training, virtually all participants came away highly satisfied. At the aerospace/defense contractor and Johnson & Johnson, the average satisfaction rating among more than 3,500 participants was 4.7 out of a possible 5.0. Executives loved the training, but that didn’t mean they used the training or improved because of it.

Learning to Learn
Of even greater import is this: Continual contact with colleagues regarding development issues is so effective it can succeed even without a large, formal program. Agilent, for example, produced excellent results, even though its leaders received coaching that was completely disconnected from any training. In fact, leaders who do not have coaches can be coached broadly by their co-workers. The key to changing behavior is “learning to learn” from those around us, and then modifying our behavior on the basis of their suggestions. The aerospace/defense contractor and the telecommunications company used very streamlined and efficient training processes and “reminder notes” to help leaders achieve a positive long-term change in effectiveness, without using coaches at all. If the organization can teach the leader to reach out to co-workers, to listen and learn, and to focus on continuous development, both the leader and the organization will benefit. After all, by following up with colleagues, a leader demonstrates a commitment to self-improvement — and a determination to get better. This process does not have to take a lot of time or money. There’s something far more valuable: contact.

Reference:
The above article has been abstracted /condensed from articles downloaded from www.strategy-business.com. All rights of the authors and publishers of the respective articles are reserved.

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