Why We Have to Start Leadership Development at Day One

“The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations.” 

This statement was uttered by a financial planner who was counseling customers to understand what the fundamentals of their stock purchase were – what attracted them to the company… were they in it for the long term or short term…. at what price point would they believe it was wise to sell the stock….

Here’s how we relate the quote: “The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations” to leadership…

In today’s business environment, we are under the gun all the time. Things are in constant flux … and we can never count on tomorrow being the same as today. Therefore a lot of decisions are made on the fly. Which may not be based on your company’s values or principles – and which may actually hurt your business or your reputation.

Look at what happened at Wells Fargo. Somewhere along the line, someone in a leadership position decided it was OK to commit fraud in order to make sales quotas. To hell with ethics. To hell with serving the customer responsibly.

What if – long before that high-stress situation in which they made that decision – they already had a fundamental belief or value, that ethical behavior was of utmost importance?

How or when would they have had to develop that belief system?

Early on in their career – when they were not in a high-stress situation and when they were not in a position of authority. If they had that fundamental belief system early on – it would simply carry with them – through their career.

Here are two analogies to further make our point:

The “first job” analogy.  Many of us continue to practice behaviors or hold fundamental beliefs that we learned through our first jobs. Think about that for a minute.

What was your first job and do you find yourself operating today – in a way that you learned decades ago from a manager or a leader who said “this is how we do things.” We might dress a certain way, address customers a certain way, define “quality,” a certain way… all based on learning those principles in our first jobs.

So – why don’t we teach leadership skills and behaviors to your employees at the START of their careers? Why do we wait decades and then have to undo basic principles or value systems that they hold? Teach them what your company values and what is acceptable leadership behavior – from the get-go; even before they become leaders.

And even if they don’t become leaders – you still have a BUNCH of people who are operating under the same principles and with the same understanding of your business values and how they should conduct themselves accordingly.

Which brings us to our 2nd analogy: Baby manners.

Right around the same time that your baby learns to talk – you start teaching manners. Do they know what manners are? No. Are you going to wait until they UNDERSTAND what manners are before you teach them? No. Do you have to EXPLAIN why what you are telling them is appropriate behavior? No.

You say: Say goodbye to Grandma! And you say it over and over until, as the child gets older, they are able to independently say “hello” and “goodbye” to people they encounter.

Which is good manners.

You say: Don’t hit the dog! Don’t hit your sibling! And you say it for 7, 8, 10 years! until eventually, as your child gets older, they recognize that that is not an appropriate behavior; and most of us grow up to be people who don’t smack the crap out of one another.

You teach your children to speak politely, to share with others, to be cognizant of other’s feelings and many, many more fundamental principles of being a responsible human. And you start teaching those principles even before they know what they mean or why they should or should not behave that way.

You start to teach those things even before they are verbal.

So why are we not teaching leadership skills to everyone who walks in our doors? Why are we reserving that knowledge for a ‘select few’ … and why are we waiting so late to start?

This is the foundation of Leadership From Day One.

If you teach EVERYONE to be a better communicator, to work cooperatively with others, to understand that they contribute to the greater good of the organization – and at some level are fundamentally responsible for it – to behave in an ethical manner…. The list goes on and on of things that we consider “leadership skills,” which really aren’t.

They are the basic, fundamental manners of being a worker in a business and YOU – as their leader – business owner, director of operations, GM, department head… are responsible for teaching them that.

Think of how differently your company would be operating – and how confident you would be in your employees and your organizational capabilities – if you knew that everyone operated in the same way and embraced the same principles and values.

Help them to make the right decisions, early in their career.

We can help you do that.