Why Most Leadership Training Is Not Effective for Product Companies – Sequel
I previously wrote about why most leadership training programs are not effective for product companies, especially high tech ones. Basically, most such programs focus on the far soft end of the “soft skills”. Soft skills are important – including those on the far end – but they are not sufficient; and the evidence is that they actually don’t matter that much when it comes to effectiveness.
What tend to matter more are judgment, decisiveness, listening, and courage, among other things. The very soft skills can even be a disadvantage sometimes. For example, Elon Musk claims that a lack of empathy is his “super power” because it enables him to make painful decisions.
I personally don’t want to lack empathy. And just because some leaders seem uncaring in some ways does not mean that I want to emulate that. But leaders are case studies who we can learn from: what behaviors made or make them so effective?
In the previous article about this I listed several behaviors that we found to be consistent across many highly successful tech companies. I won’t repeat those here. Instead, I want to share what a widely acclaimed leadership program at a major university focuses on. Its focus consists of:
Personal Exploration and Storytelling.
Sustainability and Innovation.
Policy and Social Good.
Personal and Professional Longevity.
Again, these are good things. But they won’t get things done.
We have conducted surveys with many of our clients about what problems concern their managers — this is the operational level. The top five concerns across most of them are these:
Dependency Coordination
Timely Resolution of Issues
Intra Team Challenges
Resolution of Dependencies
Meetings Take Too Much Time
These issues actually blend between the strategic and the operational. They are strategic because they impact how effective people are and how fast the company can move and adjust strategies. They are operational because they are about the day-to-day realities of how well the organization works. They are therefore critically important for moving fast and making good decisions while staying flexible.
But these things are not taught in most leadership curricula.
They are in ours.
