In the study “How Indian Leaders Learn”[1] where I had an opportunity to participate and explore, quite a few leaders shared events that were of the nature of 'going through a challenging assignment'. In the study, leaders talked about various assignments where they learnt important lessons that helped them grow as a business leader. Typical examples of such assignments were a 'change of role' i.e. being nominated at a leadership position for the first time, a 'fix it' situation – getting into a seriously troublesome situation and bringing it back to order, an 'assignment which had many adverse conditions', 'green field' assignments i.e. assignments where you are starting from scratch. Naturally, the lessons learnt would be different based on the situation, but some themes are common. So in this article I am exploring these themes, my impressions about the themes and what could block learning in such cases.
One pertinent thing that I observed here was that these
assignments get executed over a period of time. The 'event' is not a sharp or quickly executed experience,
unlike an event such as the death of a parent. Rather, such an assignment is a 'series' of short events leading to
many interconnected learning cycles. Since many leaders recall this as a significant event, it probably means that the collective learning from that set is significant.
Another thing I noticed was that, often, these experiences brought out the confidence in the leader. The leaders said 'It was then I realized that I could truly lead a team'. What it meant to me was that discovery process in the learning is important and that discovery provides an “Aha!” moment. Even when you discover that you 'can’t do something', it is a moment of relief that helps to sort out your priorities.
I also observed that learning was not
restricted to a domain or area. It was frequently multifaceted, ranging across technical knowhow, legal requirements,
how to handle people, strategic thinking and so on.
Going beyond the original study, I
continued observing people who would try to bite the bullet and take up the
assignment. I realized that there
were environmental factors that assisted
in learning. Although not a properly researched list, following are some of my observations.
The first factor was the readiness of the
person. There may be a range of situations. An assignment may be precious and associated with rank growth. So, the person jumps in without a good understanding of the risks involved. In another
case, the leader knows all the risk, does not want to get into risky situation
and is in it only because he is forced. Yet another condition is when the
person assesses the risk, but is ready to plunge into the challenge. The
learning is naturally higher in the last case.
Another personal attribute to consider is
how a person looks at their failures. If the person has a tendency to blame others, they are naturally not going to learn. They will invent conspiracy
theories and look for data to support such a theory, making it more difficult to proceed in the learning cycle.
Another factor is support from the environment.
There are different players in the environment that have a role. One
part of the environment is the supervisor who can guide and mentor. I am
going to discuss the influence of boss on the learning process in a different article. But anyone can imagine that a good supervisor will provide guidance, suggest
corrections and provide moral support.
One more factor is the team, peers and other
coworkers. This is where the environment gets challenging. The leader has
to earn this support. Some of people could be competitors, some others may not respect the leader.
A lot of lessons about influencing and motivating come into play in such
cases.
Another part of the environment is family. I once met a leader in a company which has a large colony to house the employees. The leader was young but was already on medication for heart trouble and diabetes. I talked to him about his stress regarding 'success'. His reply was, “Madam, if I don’t get promoted, my family will know about it even before I return from office." And the network of family members were in fact more strongly competitive, making it hard for anyone who was not growing. His reply was disturbing. Success is important, but challenging assignments will always have higher possibility of failure if the family is not supportive.
This external environment is, thus, very
critical when it comes to a person’s response to failures. If the environment
is not very tolerant of failures, as was the case for the leader mentioned
above, people will either get stressed or very cleverly hide the failure from the
system and from themselves.
I talked here about learning experiences
that developed leadership, as that is where I was connected in the past years. However, challenging experiences could be faced in multiple contexts. A simple
trek may pose a significant challenge. There are some people who just pick
a challenge and pursue it, because they just like the process of fighting that
challenge. Maybe they learn something and cherish that discovery process.
If we want to get best out of challenges, we need to take them on with preparation, observe carefully, question the assumption
and review our prejudices. As we saw, experience is not enough. We need
observe, reflect, generalize and experiment. A long chain of challenges
without a breather would simply burn us out. There are also some people who just
don’t like uncertainty. They may still learn a few
things but surely, they miss many opportunities. Many times, many of us don’t
observe these pitfalls, losing our opportunity to learn.
In my next article, I will ponder over how 'moving' i.e. changing place, team, assignment etc. introduces a set of
experiences that trigger learning.
What do you think about my thoughts so far? Do let me know
[1] “How Indian Leaders Learn” was a research project conducted
jointly by Tata Management Training Center and Center for Creative Leadership
in 2006-2007. In the study, we interviewed senior business leaders asking them
“What are the key events in your life that you think helped you develop as
leaders and what did you learn from
them?”
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