Why We Have to Start Leadership Development at Day One

“The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations.” 

This statement was uttered by a financial planner who was counseling customers to understand what the fundamentals of their stock purchase were – what attracted them to the company… were they in it for the long term or short term…. at what price point would they believe it was wise to sell the stock….

Here’s how we relate the quote: “The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations” to leadership…

In today’s business environment, we are under the gun all the time. Things are in constant flux … and we can never count on tomorrow being the same as today. Therefore a lot of decisions are made on the fly. Which may not be based on your company’s values or principles – and which may actually hurt your business or your reputation.

Look at what happened at Wells Fargo. Somewhere along the line, someone in a leadership position decided it was OK to commit fraud in order to make sales quotas. To hell with ethics. To hell with serving the customer responsibly.

What if – long before that high-stress situation in which they made that decision – they already had a fundamental belief or value, that ethical behavior was of utmost importance?

How or when would they have had to develop that belief system?

Early on in their career – when they were not in a high-stress situation and when they were not in a position of authority. If they had that fundamental belief system early on – it would simply carry with them – through their career.

Here are two analogies to further make our point:

The “first job” analogy.  Many of us continue to practice behaviors or hold fundamental beliefs that we learned through our first jobs. Think about that for a minute.

What was your first job and do you find yourself operating today – in a way that you learned decades ago from a manager or a leader who said “this is how we do things.” We might dress a certain way, address customers a certain way, define “quality,” a certain way… all based on learning those principles in our first jobs.

So – why don’t we teach leadership skills and behaviors to your employees at the START of their careers? Why do we wait decades and then have to undo basic principles or value systems that they hold? Teach them what your company values and what is acceptable leadership behavior – from the get-go; even before they become leaders.

And even if they don’t become leaders – you still have a BUNCH of people who are operating under the same principles and with the same understanding of your business values and how they should conduct themselves accordingly.

Which brings us to our 2nd analogy: Baby manners.

Right around the same time that your baby learns to talk – you start teaching manners. Do they know what manners are? No. Are you going to wait until they UNDERSTAND what manners are before you teach them? No. Do you have to EXPLAIN why what you are telling them is appropriate behavior? No.

You say: Say goodbye to Grandma! And you say it over and over until, as the child gets older, they are able to independently say “hello” and “goodbye” to people they encounter.

Which is good manners.

You say: Don’t hit the dog! Don’t hit your sibling! And you say it for 7, 8, 10 years! until eventually, as your child gets older, they recognize that that is not an appropriate behavior; and most of us grow up to be people who don’t smack the crap out of one another.

You teach your children to speak politely, to share with others, to be cognizant of other’s feelings and many, many more fundamental principles of being a responsible human. And you start teaching those principles even before they know what they mean or why they should or should not behave that way.

You start to teach those things even before they are verbal.

So why are we not teaching leadership skills to everyone who walks in our doors? Why are we reserving that knowledge for a ‘select few’ … and why are we waiting so late to start?

This is the foundation of Leadership From Day One.

If you teach EVERYONE to be a better communicator, to work cooperatively with others, to understand that they contribute to the greater good of the organization – and at some level are fundamentally responsible for it – to behave in an ethical manner…. The list goes on and on of things that we consider “leadership skills,” which really aren’t.

They are the basic, fundamental manners of being a worker in a business and YOU – as their leader – business owner, director of operations, GM, department head… are responsible for teaching them that.

Think of how differently your company would be operating – and how confident you would be in your employees and your organizational capabilities – if you knew that everyone operated in the same way and embraced the same principles and values.

Help them to make the right decisions, early in their career.

We can help you do that.

Can One Employee Take Your Company Down?

Your company is doing great work. It is creating jobs where they didn't exist before... you are contributing to the betterment of society... have you considered whether or not one employee could bring that all to a screeching halt?

Since February of 2017, with the recording of Travis Kalanick's (former CEO of Uber) poor behavior as he berated an Uber driver, displayed all across America, there have been frequent episodes of bad behavior demonstrated by numerous corporate leaders. In just the last month we've seen:

• Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork was forced to step down after the filing of the company's pre-IPO paperwork shone a light on suspect financial dealings which ultimately benefitted Mr. Neumann to the tune of millions of dollars. The IPO was withdrawn, the company has laid off over 4000 employees, and its estimated value dropped 40 billion in the blink of an eye. See more here.

• The Houston Astros baseball team fired their assistant General Manager for verbally attacking 3 female reporters after a pennant win in October. In addition to a social media onslaught faulting the organization and how it handled the incident (initially accusing one reporter of fabricating the incident and then taking 3 days to admit to it and holding the AGM accountable), the team will be fined by Major League Baseball, and the way that the incident was handled is now inviting scrutiny of the company's culture, which will result in further public relations embarrassment and could see the departure of many others in leadership positions in the organization. This incident, and the stress it caused the whole organization, may have just cost the team the 2019 World Series. See more here.

• The CEO of McDonald's resigned this past week, saying this: "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on." The values of the company? The values, that as CEO, he was most-responsible for upholding? See more here.

Now, you might argue that these are people in positions of power and it is often the case that with power comes the belief that you are above "following the rules." But a leader is also responsible for the "unwritten rule" that he or she sets the acceptable behaviors and culture of an organization through their example.

When Does It Start?

We cannot assume that only those in the "higher echelon" are behaving badly (and costing their companies money as well as reputation). Think of the myriad of "little" ethical violations that occur in companies daily: taking home office supplies, failing to report a breakdown in product or process because "it's not my job," refusing to cooperate with another department or colleague, giving a customer favorable terms over other customers, the list could go on and on. At what point does a "little" ethical violation bloom into something that is egregious and damaging to your company financially or reputationally?

These types of incidents are precisely the reason why The Training Doctor created its Leadership From Day One development approach. By developing leadership behaviors such as ethics, decision making, and self-management early in one's career, incidents like these should not occur down the line. If all of your employees are immersed in a culture that supports the good of all (the company, its employees and customers), you'll make a bigger impact on the world and sleep better at night.

Are you at risk?

As a business owner, do you presume that your employees are behaving ethically? Do you know your organization's culpability from actions committed by your employees? Especially your senior/leader employees who have more of a "platform" to do harm to the company?

It is never, never too soon to start developing leadership characteristics in your workforce. Don't wait until you've already promoted someone to a leadership role to start to foster the skills they need to lead themselves as well as others; it is harder to rewire behavior than it is to develop it from the start. When you start leadership development early in your employee's careers, it becomes an ingrained and reflexive behavior as they move up through the ranks.

Go to our contact us page if you'd like help establishing a leadership development program that starts with everybody. Today.