In modern terms, behavioral science concepts of team learning form a concrete link between the process of learning and the leadership development program. Establishing this link is important as it solves a long-standing problem in the industry with leadership training:
Ways to test and demonstrate the large-scale use of human relations research and teaching in organizational development. In the process, the article also describes a rather new approach to the leadership development program and, more broadly, to organizational development.
How Does Leadership Development Program Help Your Personal Growth?
Barriers to Success
It might surprise you a bit, but a large-scale leadership training for organizational development with the top leadership development program is very rare to obtain the measurement of results even though management is the most sought-after and even implementing the important findings of behavioral science research has been very difficult to implement. This is mainly because the findings are subtle and complex, and other findings mostly relate to individual insights or knowledge, which is hard to build into the organization’s professional spectrum.
Besides that, most behavioral scientists do a better job of identifying technical findings and addressing them rather than communicating the relevance of their research findings to practicing managers in leadership training.
With earnest attempts to make the behavioral sciences useful to business, government, and service institutions, the success of the implementation has been elusive because of the complexities of these dynamics.
Within organizations, there are active human relations that certain enthusiasts form as they usually find themselves bucking complacent or skeptical management. These enthusiasts retaliate by overselling their beliefs, thereby generating more skepticism for leadership development programs or by withdrawing from the accusations of being lenient towards workers, profits, and tough-minded traditions of management.
Selected executives enroll in management development programs following the feature human relations concepts. Quite often, companies identify those who need it the most and provide sensitivity leadership training programs so that these men are placed under considerable strain. Though psychiatric problems rarely occur, this becomes a source of concern for faculties of such programs. Companies inadvertently send employees with histories of previous mental illness, and under such conditions, psychiatric problems can occur, and program effectiveness decrease for all concerned.
Other executives that have completed the leadership development programs are highly enthusiastic. In some cases, researchers have gathered real evidence of increased insight and individual learning. However, the problem for these men is mostly coming to implementation unless they have considerable organizational influence along with a new, supportive climate, they will probably be forced back into old behavioral patterns and relationships.
A total working group or department is generally given for leadership training within a company. At best, these efforts generate high morale and productivity within the members of the group and enhance their productivity. At worst, the “chosen” group becomes the target or scapegoat for others in the organization, and intergroup differences and conflicts increase.
In a company, leadership training programs are majorly established for foremen or other lower-level managers. As per the famous study of the International Harvester training program, most trainees go back to the job and conform to their bosses’ expectations, often at the expense of human relations concepts outlined in the program for organizational development.
Organizational Development With Leadership Development Program
Now that you understand some of the concepts of behavioral science in organization development, you must understand that it moves beyond team areas into problems that require commitment at all levels. Such broad problems in the organization include cost control, union-management relations, safety, promotion policies, and overall profit improvement.
These problems are identified by special task groups, which form a “diagonal slice” of the organization chart. Departmental groups may also help in defining goals and assigning roles that prove to be “practical” when managers who must implement leadership development programs establish responsibilities for implementation. This helps them with gaining commitment from the goal-setting procedures of the leadership training phase by avoiding those negative responses that are then grouped under “resistance to change.”
Goal Attainment
This uses some of the same educational procedures, but the issues here are major organizational concerns, and the stakes are real.
When the special task groups are defining problem areas, other teams are set up throughout the organization that is given a written “task paragraph,” which describes the problem and the goal. Team members are also are then also given packets of information on the issue under discussion.
As studying the information, individual managers check themselves on a true-false test designed by the special task group, and the teams begin a discussion on the same items, checking their agreed-on answers against an answer key. Then the agreement is reached based on the nature of the problem being addressed. Henceforth, the team members work towards a better statement of the problem and toward corrective steps, and they also start assigning responsibility for these corrective action steps with leadership training.
Stabilization
The final phase of this is designed to support the changes brought about in the earlier phases of strategic intervention. However, as these changes are assessed and reinforced to withstand pressures toward “slip back” and regression, this allows management to evaluate its gains and mistakes under the leadership development program and improvise on them.
