CFO asks CEO : “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?”

CEO responds: “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”

The above dialog is openly discussed more often than we think. Conversations and debates about training occur at all levels of the organization. When planning the budget some leaders decide not to address training at all. Other leaders review their budgets at year end and notice that only 10k out of the allocated 100k was spent on training. The team members were directed to schedule their classes but the classic story about, “We did not have time” still persists. In both scenarios, leadership failed in building a culture of learning, execution and or influencing the team members.

On the flip side, great leaders develop new leaders to scale leadership within an organization. Great leader will encourage personal development and some take it a step further by incorporating training as part of their annual goals. I have encountered some leaders that will reprimand team members if they don’t make time for personal development. In professional sports we often see great head coaches develop assistant coaches who become part of the succession plan or the leadership ecosystem. Often the assistant coaches eventually elevate to head coach position or they are sought by another growing organization.

As leaders, if we choose to develop our people we:Albert

  • Create a culture of “peak” learners
  • Will attract the best talent available
  • Extend and expand our leadership ecosystems
  • Distribute our tribal (institutional) knowledge.
  • Can promote from within
  • Develop a powerful legacy

If we choose not to develop our people we:

  • Stifle company growth
  • May lose the most talented team members
  • We may keep petrified people (managers, team leads, high potentials) who will eventually become “dead wood”, exacerbating the root problem
  • Increase the risk profile of the entire organization and slowly damage the company’s reputation
  • We expose our true self as an unconscious incompetent leader
  • We may end up collecting unemployment and government cheese

What kind of legacy are you developing?

Now, take a deep breath…do you wreak of the smell of fear or are you emitting a cool scent of tempered confidence? If you smell the former, it’s not to late, write up an action plan to train your staff.

“Once you stop learning, you start dying”   – Albert Einstein