Leader Development Through Work Experience

Leader Development Through Work Experience Very few leaders are born: most need experience and the earlier one starts, the better. But, if leaders need exposure, they must seek or be presented with a wide variety of work experiences and truly learn from these.

This prĂŠcis discusses how effective leaders learn, distinguishes social and personal contexts of learning, and illustrates theory with a quick example.

Olivier Serrat 05/04/2019

1 How Do Effective Leaders Learn?

Both leaders and leadership have been studied for thousands of years. For much the same reasons that some hope to be enlightened about human affairs by studying celestial objects, viz., to be informed and reassured about the future, to be absolved of current and future decisions, and to feel connected to something larger, people believed that leaders were born, hence the Great Man Theory of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who imagined that leaders were gifted with divine inspiration and associated traits, much as demi-gods. But, the pendulum has now swung so far in the opposite direction that some argue leadership and its cornucopia of characteristics is a myth, and that context should take center stage. Interestingly, leadership hardly featured in Drucker's work: much as Mintzberg, he preferred to advance the practice of management. But, if it is indeed the case that "[T]he only definition of a leader is someone who has followers" (Drucker, 1992, p. 103), then it follows that anyone can learn to lead or learn to lead better, in light of prevailing or projected circumstances, and that leadership is thus both a process of learning and a voyage of discovery.

So, how might effective leaders learn? Seijts (2013), for one, interviewed more than 30 leaders across industries, sectors, and countries and made out ten clear pathways for learning to lead that, citing in full, are: • Performing, or excelling in a role; • Risking, or taking chances to lead and to learn; • Stretching, or going beyond one's own personal comfort zone; • Learning, or taking the time to reflect on past events to discern the lessons they offer; • Self-awareness, or deliberately seeking to know one's personal strengths and weaknesses; • Trusting, or relying on one's abilities and those of others to build a reputation for being trustworthy; • Adapting, or the ability to act appropriately in different situations; • Mentoring, or learning from other leaders and role models how to develop as a leader; • Observing, or watching others and oneself to better understand events and situations; • Integrating, or having the capacity to see and understand the "big picture". (para. 3) Encouragingly, the 30 leaders that Seijts (2013) interviewed concurred that "[L]eadership can be learned by anyone with basic smarts backed by an unwavering commitment to ongoing development and collaboration" (para. 12). "Leadership skills are innate to all of us," Seijts (2013) reported Western University's president and vice-chancellor, Amit Chakma, as saying, "but how much we develop those skills is in a large part determined by the opportunities we have to take on leadership roles, and how readily we embrace those opportunities" (para. 12).

However, Seijts (2013) stopped short of specifying the context, meaning, the factors or variables, that condition what learning opportunities there might be for leaders.

The Context of Learning From a review of academic and practitioner literature, Mintzberg (2009) isolated in five groups 12 factors that impact the varieties of managing, and which in this précis are also seen to condition leadership and the work of leaders. Citing in full, the 12 factors that Mintzberg (2009) listed are: • External context: national culture, sector (business, government, etc.), and industry; • Organizational context: form of the organization (entrepreneurial, professional, etc.) and its age, size, and stage of development; • Job context: the level in the hierarchy and the function (or work) supervised;

2 • •

Situational context: temporary pressures and managerial fashion; Personal context: background of the incumbent, tenure (in the job, the organization, the industry), and personal style. (p. 98)

Mintzberg (2009) recognized that the nature of the organization has the greatest impact on a manager's behavior; but, he cautioned also that any specific factor does not matter much on a given day and that they must all be dealt with collectively.

At a glance, it is easy to see that the external, organizational, job, and situational variables have to do with the social context that enables or hampers an individual's occupational function. On the other hand, the personal context has to do with his or her internal environment, derived from beliefs, cultural background, gender, state of mind, values, etc. Therefore, amplifying from Seijts (2013), what learning opportunities there might be for leaders can be found in both the social and the personal contexts, principally by means of their interactions, across the 12 factors that are found there. The abilities that might be built pertain to administrative and managerial skills, interpersonal skills, leader skills, problem-solving skills, and technical skills, the venues for which could be corporate classroom education informed by principles of andragogy, selfdirected initiatives, and—especially—job (i.e. operational) assignments, aka experiential learning. McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994) determined that job transitions, taskrelated characteristics, and obstacles, in particular, best activate on-the-job learning. All the while, learning from others, be it through vicarious learning or through learning from corporate or individual narratives, ought to heighten leader development.

Learning from Experience For sure, learning from experience will matter if leaders are made, rather than born. And so, taking into consideration Mintzberg's (2009) five contexts—that this précis fused into social and personal contexts—and Seijts' (2013) ten clear pathways, it stands to reason that the primary source of learning to lead will be work experience.

The breadth and depth of the social context in Mintzberg (2009) intuits a myriad of possible situations in which leaders might find themselves. However, not every experience conduces learning and this précis shared earlier McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow's (1994) commonsensical opinion that job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles would magnify situational learning opportunities. All the while, assessment, challenge, and support— not to forget the initial ability to learn—stand to make related experiences more developmental, particularly if leaders can experience the consequences of their decisions.

The personal context of leaders likewise intuits particularized responses to different situations.

But, again, whatever the instance, certain attributes may need to be developed if learning is to take place. In challenging situations, key determinants of experiential learning would be selfreflection, motivation, action, and assessment in hindsight. To note, assessment is vital because experience cannot be one-time but simultaneously past, present, and future.

Helpfully, McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988) isolated 15 types of experiences that can teach valuable leadership lessons: bosses and superiors, career setbacks, coursework and training, crises, cultural crossings, difficult people, ethical dilemma, feedback and coaching, horizontal moves, increases in job scope, mistakes, new initiatives, personal experiences, stakeholder engagements, and fix-it/turnaround assignments.

3 Over several years, which makes for very long experiential learning and demonstrates that such learning need not be one-time, I faced all 15 types of experiences that McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison (1988) isolated in the course of one job transition. Specifically, over the period 2002– 2006, I formulated and led the Tonle Sap Initiative: it was a partnership of organizations and people set on addressing the poverty and environment challenges of the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia because "[t]he lake’s fisheries directly support more than 1 million people and provide the single largest source of protein for Cambodia’s young and increasing population " (Serrat, Gallego-Lizon, & Moffatt, 2005, p. ii). This précis is not the place to give details but the considerable increase in job scope, to name one source of experiential learning, led to attribution of substantial financial and human resources and—especially—growing complexity of tasks, all of which involved expansion of visibility and responsibility; elsewhere, the overriding need for stakeholder engagement called for high-level interactions on three continents, reconciliation of viewpoints, and development of solutions beyond my initial formal authority; elsewhere still, at least in the early years, there was understandable chafing from distinct preferences. Much learning, all in all, that I reflected upon (i.e., what went well? what might be done better?) and continuingly reported on in formal reviews, newsletters, presentations, technical reports, and web pages, with thorough explanations about obstacles, steps taken, and measures of success (Serrat & Moffatt, 2006).

References Drucker, P. (1992). Managing for the future. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

McCall, M., Lombardo, M., & Morrison, A. (1988). Lessons of experience: How successful executives develop on the job. New York, NY: Lexington Books.

Seijts, G. (2013). Good leaders never stop learning. Ivey Business Journal, July–August.

Retrieved from https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/good-leaders-never-stoplearning/ Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.).

New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday.

Serrat, O., & Moffatt, D. (2006). From strategy to practice: The Tonle Sap initiative. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Serrat, O., Gallego-Lizon, T., & Moffatt, D. (2004) The Tonle Sap basin strategy. Manila: Asian Development Bank.