Are Organizations Educating Leaders Out of Leadership?

Sir Ken Robinson famously challenged the way we think about education and creativity. His argument was provocative: children possess tremendous creative capacity, yet the systems designed to educate them can gradually educate some of that creativity out of them.

His argument raises a question that I believe deserves serious consideration in organizational life:

Are organizations educating leaders out of leadership?

Organizations invest enormous amounts of time and money developing leaders. We create competency models, conduct assessments, offer executive coaching, build leadership-development programs, and send people to workshops designed to make them better leaders.

But perhaps we have overlooked something.

While we are intentionally teaching people how to lead, organizations are also teaching leaders something every day through what they reward, tolerate, discourage, and punish.

And those two lessons are not always the same.

What We Say—and What We Teach

Consider some of the messages leaders receive.

We tell leaders that people are our most important asset.

Then, when performance is threatened, we teach them that the numbers come first.

We tell leaders to listen.

Then we reward them for having the answer.

We tell them to develop people.

Then we fill their calendars so completely that meaningful conversations with those people become something they have to squeeze between meetings.

We tell leaders to encourage candor.

Then they watch what happens to someone who tells a senior executive something that executive does not want to hear.

We tell them to create psychological safety.

Then we punish mistakes.

We tell them to collaborate.

Then we reward individual performance.

We tell them to take thoughtful risks.

Then we make sure everyone remembers what happened to the last person whose risk failed.

We tell them relationships matter.

Then, when pressure rises, we teach them exactly how much they matter.

And leaders learn.

The Organization Is Teaching

One of the mistakes we make in thinking about leadership development is assuming that development primarily occurs when we deliberately attempt to develop someone.

It doesn't.

Organizations are classrooms.

Every meeting teaches.

Every promotion teaches.

Every performance review teaches.

Every decision about who gets heard teaches.

Every reaction to failure teaches.

Every time someone challenges authority—and what happens afterward—teaches.

Every time a senior leader says one thing and rewards another, people learn which message actually matters.

Leaders become remarkably good students of organizational life.

They learn what gets rewarded and what gets punished. They learn when to speak and when to remain silent. They learn whether admitting uncertainty demonstrates intellectual honesty or threatens their credibility. They learn whether disagreement is genuinely welcomed or merely tolerated until it becomes inconvenient.

And gradually, leaders adapt.

The person who entered leadership wanting to make a difference may become exceptionally good at surviving the organization.

Good at managing the numbers.

Good at managing upward.

Good at appearing certain.

Good at avoiding mistakes.

Good at navigating organizational politics.

Good at getting through the day.

And perhaps, somewhere along the way, less able to do the thing we originally asked that person to do:

Lead.

Maybe We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

For decades, leadership development has largely been organized around a reasonable question:

How do we develop better leaders?

We identify competencies. We assess them. We teach them. We coach them. We measure them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But I think there is another question we need to ask:

What has organizational life been teaching our leaders to stop doing?

Have we taught them to stop listening because speed is rewarded?

To stop wondering because certainty looks more like leadership?

To stop admitting they don't know because leaders are supposed to have answers?

To stop being curious about another person's experience because there is always another meeting?

To stop having difficult conversations because avoiding conflict is easier?

To stop challenging assumptions because disagreement carries relational consequences?

To stop noticing the human being sitting across from them because there is another performance objective to achieve?

If so, adding another leadership competency may not solve the problem.

Because the development program is teaching for a few hours.

The organization is teaching every day.

Leadership Happens Between People

There is another problem with the way we sometimes think about leadership.

Leadership does not happen inside a competency model.

It does not happen on an organizational chart.

And ultimately, it does not happen in a leadership-development classroom.

Leadership happens between people.

It happens when someone disagrees with you.

It happens when someone makes a mistake.

It happens when someone brings you bad news.

It happens when someone challenges your judgment.

It happens when someone needs something from you at precisely the moment you have nothing left to give.

It happens when the pressure is high, the answer is unclear, and another human being is watching what you do next.

Those moments teach people something.

They teach people whether speaking honestly is safe.

Whether mistakes can be discussed.

Whether disagreement threatens the relationship.

Whether vulnerability will be respected or exploited.

Whether they matter when their needs conflict with organizational demands.

Whether the leader can be trusted when things become difficult.

And those experiences do not disappear when the meeting ends.

They accumulate.

Relationships Have Histories

Yesterday's interaction becomes part of the context for today's conversation.

Today's conversation influences what someone will be willing to say tomorrow.

Tomorrow's interaction changes the relationship again.

Over time, repeated interactions create patterns and expectations that shape subsequent interactions.

I refer to this accumulated relational context as the Relational Environment.

And I use Relational Intelligence to describe the individual capacity to perceive, understand, interpret, and intentionally engage the relational environment.

That distinction matters because leadership is never occurring in an interpersonal vacuum.

A leader's words today are interpreted partly through the relationship that existed before those words were spoken.

“Tell me what you really think” means something very different when previous disagreement has been welcomed than when previous disagreement has carried a cost.

“I want you to take risks” means something different when previous failures have been treated as opportunities for learning than when failure has resulted in blame.

“My door is always open” means very little if experience has taught people that walking through it is dangerous.

People don't respond only to what leaders say.

They respond to what the relationship has taught them those words mean.

Leaders Are Teaching Too

This brings us to the other side of the equation.

Organizations teach leaders.

But leaders also teach everyone around them.

A leader teaches people what happens when they disagree.

A leader teaches people what happens when they fail.

A leader teaches people whether questions are welcomed.

A leader teaches people whether vulnerability is safe.

A leader teaches people whether dignity survives pressure.

Often, none of this teaching is intentional.

But people are learning nevertheless.

This creates a powerful cycle.

Organizations teach leaders how leadership works. Leaders teach people how relationships work. Those repeated interactions shape the relational environment in which tomorrow's leadership will occur.

And then the cycle begins again.

That means leadership development cannot simply be about changing the individual leader.

We also have to examine the environment that is continually teaching that leader what leadership looks like.

The Question Organizations Should Be Asking

Imagine asking a leadership team a different set of questions.

Not simply:

What are our leadership competencies?

But:

What does someone have to learn to succeed here?

What behaviors do we actually reward?

What happens when someone admits they don't know?

What happens when someone challenges authority?

What happens when someone makes an intelligent mistake?

What happens when performance pressure collides with our stated values?

What do our leaders learn about relationships from watching our most senior executives?

And perhaps the most important question:

What kind of leaders is this organization teaching people to become?

Because organizations are already developing leaders.

Every day.

Every meeting.

Every promotion.

Every reward.

Every difficult conversation.

Every silence.

Every time someone speaks up.

And every time someone decides that next time, they won't.

The organization is teaching.

The leader is learning.

And everyone around that leader is learning too.

So the question isn't whether we are developing leaders.

We are.

The question is whether we are developing the leaders we say we want.

Dale L. Hudson writes about Relational Intelligence, leadership, executive coaching, and the relational dynamics of organizational life.