| Leadership Development and Jumping Out of Airships | | | | good products. All organizations that fail to get, keep, |
| A German silent film melodrama depicts an airship | | | | and develop good leaders eventually founder. This isn't |
| bombing London during World War I. Lit up by | | | | a secret. Most leaders know this. |
| searchlights and strafed by fighters, the crippled airship | | | | Here's the secret: The fact that leadership |
| loses altitude as the captain frantically jettisons | | | | development is viewed as dispensable is not the |
| dispensable gear to lighten weight. Eventually, the only | | | | captain's making. It's the crew's making. The blame lies |
| weight left is human. So the captain orders members | | | | with the people in charge of the leadership |
| of the crew overboard. A grisly scene unfolds as the | | | | development. They simply have not defined leadership |
| airmen, one by one, without parachutes, step up to the | | | | development in indispensable ways for results. Sure, |
| hatch, salute the captain and the first mate, then jump | | | | they have defined such development for training |
| to their deaths. Lightened, the airship returns safely to | | | | results but not for the results that really count, business |
| Germany. | | | | results. |
| That scene is not a relic. It's happening in corporations | | | | And when training people focus on training results not |
| frequently these days, clearly not as fact but | | | | business results, they are always put at the front |
| metaphor. Companies, shot up in the cross fires of | | | | when the superfluous are told to line up to leap. |
| increasingly competitive markets, must lighten their | | | | What is leadership but results -- not training results, |
| loads to get earnings' growth buoyancy. The captains | | | | business results. If leaders are not getting their business |
| are jettisoning all but the indispensable employees. | | | | results, they are not leading. Results can be defined in |
| Commonly, one of the first functions to be ordered out | | | | many ways, productivity, operating efficiencies, sales |
| is the training function -- in particular, leadership training | | | | growth, cost reductions, etc., but leadership |
| or leadership development. | | | | development has no real value unless it is helping the |
| Many company heads view such training as | | | | leaders get those results. |
| dispensable as the airship crew in the melodrama. | | | | Here are two simple ways to position your role to |
| Yet leadership isn't dispensable to business success. | | | | notably increase your value to your company. |
| It's absolutely indispensable. Good leaders are far more | | | | 1. Define results. |
| important to the long term success of companies than | | | | |