OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLES FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (3): IT IS NECESSARY TO WORK HARD

Leadership development under the talent model we propose includes designing and performing the actions which allow us to pass from the initial state to a situation where we can exercise talent (mastery). A process of active learning which produces increase in a specific expertise domain is needed to reach a high level of achievement in the exercise of leadership. But leader thinking is a complex phenomenon, and leadership cannot be developed through a single, short-term intervention. It requires a progressive and sequential series of interventions.

Becoming competent in a field requires a suitable intervention program and a considerable dose of work, effort and motivation for achievement and excellence (Touron, 2001). In his change model, McClelland (1985) suggests going through at least six stages when an attempt is made to change a set of behaviors. From a behavioral perspective, specialists speak about going through at least five stops (Luthans & Kreitner, 1985).

The adoption of a training approach in which effort and continuity are combined can guarantee the level of dedication that will permit to reach mastery at a certain skill or a considerable improvement in highly demanding tasks (Tannenbaum, 1993). The knowledge about the field of expert performance provided by Professor A. Ericsson and his team, gives us the patterns to define how this type of training is going to be implemented. Studies in a variety of domains have provided us with lessons learnt from expert research (Colvin, 2008):

1. Expertise requires extensive practice. High levels of expertise demand years of practice. Productive talent in any area, and this includes leadership, becomes evident in achievements that take years or months to be reached. Someone has even quantified the amount of effort required. It is approximately 10,000 hours. We need an intensive activity within a specific area where highly positive results and exceptional performances can be obtained, a full 8-to-10-hour working day for about 10 years (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Romer, 1993).

2. Expertise is domain-specific. Fields of expertise are very narrow, because expertise relies on a large body of specific knowledge accumulated over time in memory. That knowledge stored in the memory is the basis for expertise.

3. Expertise requires deliberate practice. The key activity for the acquisition of expert performance is deliberate practice, which implies a tiring, intensive routine of training activities designed for the sole purpose of improving the current action levels (Ericsson & Smith, 1991). The core assumption of deliberate practice is that expert performance is acquired gradually and that the effective improvement of performance requires the opportunity to find suitable training tasks that the performer can master sequentially-typically. The design of training tasks along with the monitoring of the attained performance is done by a teacher or a coach (Ericsson, 2006). The effects of mere experience (routine practice) differ to a great extent from those of deliberate practice. This is specifically tailored to improve their performance and requires a concentration that can be maintained only for a limited period of time.

4. Experts see with different eyes, and then choose the most appropriate strategies to solve problems or improve performance. Building expertise is training the brain to see problems through the eyes of an expert.

5. Experts can get stuck, can be inflexible, and they can have trouble adapting to new problems.

6. Expertise grows from two intelligences. Crystallized and fluid abilities must and can be developed, initially through direct instruction and thanks to cooperative learning by means of learning projects that emphasize abstraction (Neitfeld, Finney, Schraw & McCrudden, 2007).

7. Challenging problems require diverse expertise. Most of the problems faced by large organizations are complex enough to require diverse expertise. Innovation will increasingly depend on what psychologists call ‘distribution cognition’ (for example work teams). It is necessary to consider not only training but also other vehicles for the leveraging of diverse skills. The evolution of web 2.0 with social software such as wikis opens new channels for distributed expertise in organizations.

Leadership development must become a systematic process, not an event. Perhaps the most meaningful principle is that successful leadership development depends more on consistent implementation than on the use of innovative practices (Day & Halpin, 2001). Leadership development is an investment in the future and it is important to recognize that it may take years before dividends are realized. But only few managers are willing to maintain the effort. As is pointed out by Zenger & Folkman (2002), leaders initially go through a period of great learning, but once they have learnt the basic aspects, they no longer try to improve. They are satisfied with doing their job properly enough instead of wishing to become better leaders.

Cognitive and personal competencies modulate the speed of change within this tiring learning process. Among them, self-regulation processes largely contribute to producing permanence in behaviors leading to managers’ goals. Self-evaluation and monitoring; goal setting and strategic planning; strategy implementation and monitoring, and strategic outcome monitoring constitute the ‘steps’ of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1996). Self-control and the ability to face the obstacles appearing on the way equally form part of the behaviors which facilitate the improvement process. In this sense, specific practices about how to take self-talks into account (Makin & Cox, 2004); overcoming procrastination (Zeigarnik, 2007), using training in self-instructions or double thinking (Oettingen & Mayers, 2002) can also be helpful to reinforce self-regulated behavior and focalize training toward the outcomes sought.