Putting “Development” Back into Leadership Development
Why “unlearning” misses the point
One of the most common recurring beliefs that I see people bring into a coaching conversation or a training room is that they have something “wrong” with them that they need to “unlearn”. I have been around long enough to have seen “unlearning” have its day in the sun. It was a very fashionable term for some time (still is, in some quarters) and it’s one that I am personally very happy to see fall back into the shade somewhat.
On the surface, it seems a perfectly benign approach. You learned to do something, so now you can learn not to do it. It’s similar to saying you have a “bad” habit that you need to stop doing.
The approach we take to leadership development at The Works Partnership and The Coach Partnership is fundamentally different.
Our approach starts from a position of whatever you are doing now, you are doing so for a reason. On the surface, it might appear “bad” and something you would be better off stopping or unlearning. Underneath the surface, however, it is serving you in some way.
That’s not to say you should carry on doing it. However, it is to question whether focusing on stopping/unlearning/changing it is the best way to go about your desire for new results. It is called Learning and Development for a reason. There’s a clue in there.
Adding versus Replacing
Development offers a very different context; one that asks you to focus on adding to your current capabilities. Increasing your range, rather than seeking to change what you already have. This isn’t semantics. Take an example from the world of sport:
A tennis player who wins on grass can develop their approach to win on clay without changing the way they play. They just need to extend their range of strokes and strategies so that they can make new choices according to the current challenge that they are facing. They don’t waste energy angsting about unlearning their grass court strategy, they focus on developing their game to suit the new surface. Now they have two strategies to choose from.
The other advantage of this approach is that they will develop according to who they are, rather than try and change by adding shots and strategies that worked for Rafa Nadal. His shots and strategies worked for him. They might not work for Roger Federer.
This idea is not new or unique to us, but it is one that sits very well with the ontological coaching work utilised by The Coach Partnership, the leadership development work I lead at TWP and Start with Who, the book I wrote on working with your concept of identity some years back.
It’s not to say that the idea of change is bad or wrong and it can certainly work at times. However, it tends to set up your willpower against one of the most fundamental parts of a human being’s ontology: the desire to be right. When you try and change something, you are sailing into a very strong headwind. You are essentially resisting your current behaviour, mindset, etc. Resistance tends to create and indeed amplify that which is being resisted.
Changing a belief
As an example, let’s say that you want to work on speaking up in senior meetings. So, you set your SMART goals and get clear on your purpose (the “what” and the “why” questions). Then you walk into the meeting and…you bottle it.
Why? Because you possess some very well entrenched beliefs, supported by evidence from your past, about what will happen if you do speak up. (“I’ll make a mistake”, “I’ll look stupid”, etc.). You forgot the “who” question!
Beliefs such as these have kept you safe and helped you “look good” for a long time. As a result, justifications pop up: “this wasn’t quite the right time” etc. Then you get down on yourself because you have given yourself one more piece of evidence that your limiting belief is correct: “Only a stupid person would know what to do and then not do it!”
Incidentally, also notice that by not speaking up, you also create or reinforce the very belief that you were hoping to hide from the senior managers. Once you leave the meeting, guess what they say or think? “s/he never speaks up – s/he’s not very smart”.
You don’t avoid judgement when you play safe.
Good luck trying to change that mechanism. Resisting that kind of belief is a long, hard and lonely road with a very low chance of success… and yet, even today, that’s essentially what most training solutions offer.
Accept the belief, then add the range
Our approach has you spend your energy and focus in a very different place. First of all, whatever your limiting belief might be (“imposter syndrome” is currently fashionable) you don’t need to change it. Read that sentence again. You. Don’t. Need. To. Change. It. Nor unlearn it.
Instead, you just welcome it. Accept it, rather than resist it. It’s the difference between an exhale and an inhale. As you exhale and accept, so you create a space; a space where you can focus on what you want now, rather than what your beliefs are predicting, based on your past. It’s a completely different game.
The old limiting belief can sit there, and there are times when you will want to call it back into action. There’s nothing wrong with playing safe, when it’s consciously chosen. It’s only limiting when it functions as the only option available or visible to you. That’s another reason why you don’t want to erase it, change it, lose it or (gasp!) even unlearn it.
The belief isn’t bad or wrong. The belief isn’t the problem. What’s been in your way is treating that limiting belief as though it was a fact. Once you see it as a belief that you created, then you see that you are perfectly free to create other beliefs as well. If you see the old limiting belief in the same way that you see gravity, then you are forever limited.
The frame of growth, expansion and development is far more attractive to most people than that of change or unlearning because the latter immediately make you and your current behaviour / way of thinking wrong. “What made this belief coherent in the first place?” is an easier way in than “Why are you still doing or not doing that?” (“…you idiot”, being the unspoken closer).
That is where Start with Who comes in. A belief is never floating around on its own. It belongs to an observer, and that observer has a familiar context. That is why simply telling yourself a new belief rarely works.
“I am confident.”
Lovely, but generally unhelpful. It makes the existing pattern even more entrenched because you can hear yourself saying something you do not yet believe to be true.
The real questions are:
Who am I being in the present that has the old belief feel true?
And:
Who do I believe I can become in the future?
Then:
What range is missing?
That is the ontological move. We are expanding and developing range. In particular the range of who someone believes they can become. This is the invisible shroud that hangs silently over all leadership development initiatives (individual, team and organisational). Most arrive dead in the water because they are held back by deep-rooted, unspoken and often unconscious beliefs about what is possible for me or us to achieve.
Range gives more options without requiring a war against the old ones.
The person who is frightened of speaking up does not have to eradicate the part of themselves that wants to be safe. That part may have kept them out of trouble for years. It may even have got them promoted. Is it really that surprising that they therefore resist changing it?
Authenticity is something you author
One of the most common objections to this is that people say, “but that’s just not who I am”. This is where the ontological coach development methodology that we use at The Coach Partnership dovetails with the “authentic leadership” approach that we use at The Works Partnership. We work with the idea that “authenticity” is who I have the “authority” to “author” myself to be.
The version of yourself you are most practised at being is not the end of the story. Your process of expansion only stops when you stop it.
Authentic leadership is a creative force. You author it through choice. People often trip themselves up by mistaking authenticity for comfort. Just because something is uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean that it is inauthentic. In fact, very often the opposite is true. The reason this new way of acting or thinking is uncomfortable is not that it is inauthentic, it is that you simply haven’t practised it, for fear of doing it badly, or losing face etc.
It’s the same principle as going back to the gym after a long break. You are going to experience some discomfort and some soreness in the process. It doesn’t mean that “exercise is not for me”; it just means that you haven’t done it for a long time.
As your focus shifts from resistance and change to acceptance and range, so your energy grows. It allows you to declare a vision of who you want to be and to set about proving your new beliefs right, as opposed to trying to prove your old beliefs wrong. Totally different experience. This idea is fleshed out more fully with actionable strategies in my book, Start with Who.
The reason most people end up so frustrated, tired and ultimately disillusioned about leadership development initiatives is that they end up pulling themselves apart. They spend half their time trying to prove that their limiting belief is false or wrong and the other half of their time giving themselves evidence that it is true or correct.
Another common objection to this idea is that it will set up contradictory beliefs in my head: e.g. “I can’t speak in public” and “I can speak in public”. That is simply not a problem. As human beings, we are all one big jumble of living, breathing messy contradictions. Your brain is perfectly able to live with such inconsistency and ambiguity when it suits it.
The task then is to add range, rather than to murder the old self or the old beliefs in the name of progress. To create more ways of seeing, standing and acting. To treat your old beliefs as what they are: beliefs, rather than laws of nature. Because when a belief is treated as fact, it owns your future, but when it is seen as authored, it can help you design your future.
Maybe you were never in need of change.
Maybe you had just stopped your own development process too soon.
Interested in developing greater leadership range in your organisation?
Let’s explore what would be most useful for your leaders or teams.
Managing Partner: The Works Partnership, The Coach Partnership. Program Consultant: WEGVISOR Author: Start With Who. Co-author: Fit To Lead. Editor: The Purple Book of Coaching
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