How Leadership Development Impacts Productivity

Now that we’ve looked at what we’re up against when we can’t find anything in the budget for developing our leaders and we’ve worked through some things we need to consider to make sure any leadership training we do provide is really worth it, let’s start closing the loop by looking at how we can be sure we’re creating a true development process rather than just checking a box by doing a bunch of talking without any doing…

The “How Leadership Development Impacts Productivity” part is really simple to answer! In fact, we looked at that as we started this process… Think back to the Harvard Business Review quote I shared earlier stating that “increased commitment can lead to a 57% improvement in discretionary effort… which produces, on average, a 20% (more) individual productivity.” That’s stinking huge! Now add to that what I shared from the SIS International Research study citing that “a business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communications.” If that doesn’t increase a business’s overall productivity, I’d hate to see what other issues they have!

And guess what… earning that additional discretionary effort and minimizing those communication issues tie directly back to leadership development! If you’re still not convinced, I’d challenge you to answer two more questions:

• Who was the one person you’ve worked with that you were willing to run through a wall for?
• And who have you ever worked with that provided you with a crystal-clear picture of why even the most difficult task mattered?

My guess… each of the names you’re thinking of were effective leaders! And both just happened to be the same person, that leader was responsible for some really high productivity!

But hold on Wes… What if that person wasn’t my supervisor or manager?

Fair question, but I’m not about to confuse a position or title with defining whether or not someone is an effective leader! As we wrap this up, we’ll look at a few key things we can be sure to put in place to make sure we’re building a leadership development process, not just checking the box with some one-off training, and we’re able to capture the return on investment in our overall productivity. So next time, we’ll start by looking at what we need to do to make sure none of this is left to chance…