5-Smooth-Stones-of-Student-Leader-Development.pdf - Alan Nelson

Please enable JavaScript to view the full PDF

5 Smooth Stones of Leader Development An Audacious Strategy on Finding More & Better Leaders In this presentation, Five Smooth Stones of Leader Development, Dr. Alan E. Nelson will describe a revolutionary strategy for rethinking how and when leaders are developed. Although nearly all serious leadership development experts work in the adult world, we believe that educators, those who work with children and youth, and parents desiring to develop their child’s leadership potential, will especially find this information helpful and practical. The reason is that Dr. Nelson’s strategy to solve the need for more and better leaders in the world, is to think young, very young, between the ages of 3-23. Dr. Nelson is social entrepreneur. He teaches at USC and the Naval Postgraduate School, is the author of over 20 books and over 200 articles, and the founder of LeadYoung Training Systems. Dr. Nelson is also the master designer behind LeadYoung Training Systems, an age-and-stage leadership training curricula for 3-23 year olds, being used globally. The biggest challenge facing our world today, is how to find more effective and ethical leaders. The reason this is the most critical is because leaders help us handle the complexities in society and organize our abilities toward a better future. Leaders always have been the most important single factor in determining history, but while knowledge and technology have developed in leaps and bounds, we continue to go about identifying and developing leaders, much the way we did in primitive eras. In his book, David & Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell uses the Bible story of the shepherd boy defeating a giant soldier, as a metaphor for how people succeed in overcoming difficult circumstances and complex problems. The giant, in this presentation, is the looming issue of finding more and better leaders, whether at local, regional, national or international levels. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 2 The typical approach to leadership development in most modern cultures, involves waiting until an adult becomes an employee of a n organization. Potential leaders are then identified and groomed, through assigned responsibilities, and sometimes, executive training. The problem is that this training comes far too late in life. According to a survey noted in a Harvard Business Review publication, the average age of formal leadership training among managers is 42, long past the time when most developmental psychologists agree that character and cognitive pliability are optimum. The giant we perpetually face is how to find more effective and ethical leaders. The steady stream of books, classes, conferences and degrees on leadership do not seem to significantly fix the problem. Year after year and decade after decade, we face the giant of evil and inadequate leaders, while never significantly changing the strategies by which we find and develop them. The 5 stones in the title of this presentation refer to the 5 stones David selected, prior to his confrontation with Goliath. They represent a paradigm shift in how leaders are developed, along with what we’ve learned the last several years of working with leaders between the ages of 2-25. The stones reflect five significant discoveries we’ve made in our pioneer work of identifying and training social influencers, during their early developmental stages. Stone #1: Clearly Define Leadership Although this may not seem like a significant issue, we’ve found it is. Here’s why. Few people who speak about leadership ever define the term. Out of the 700 books of leadership I had in my personal library, less than 5% attempted to explain what they meant by the word. As a result, leadership becomes a lot of things to a lot of people. For many, especially those who work with youth and children, leadership is a matter of good citizenship, character, self-esteem, and confidence. These are noble qualities, but they don’t define what leaders do as opposed to others. Here’s how we’ll define leadership: Leadership is the process of helping people accomplish together, what they could not as individuals. And leaders are those who get leadership going. Because leadership is such a hot topic these days, we try to pin it on things that have little or nothing to do about leading people organizationally. We use it to sell ©2013 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 3 books, seminars and degrees, when in reality they don’t focus on helping people achieve things together. Our definition, while simple, separates leading from any number of other nice, but non-leadership qualities. Another reason for narrowing the term from other good human traits, is that it helps us select those who truly demonstrate an ability to lead as well as helping us determine what they should be doing. While it may seem to be a rather small stone among the five, it is nonetheless an instrument for killing the giant, because it clarifies the target and allows us to identify those who do and do not, can and cannot lead. Stone #2: Identify Leaders While They’re Moldable. In the cultures where we’ve interacted so far, leading is considered adult behavior. Young and very young leadership development isn’t even on the radar of most people. Again, the token few books or courses for youth leaders, focus on non-leadership specific qualities of citizenship, service, and character. But these don’t distinguish those with leadership ability at an early age. Fortunately, the tide is beginning to change. Perhaps because savvy leaders understand that formal leadership training starts far too late, a growing number of people are expressing the need to begin this training earlier, much earlier. The Center for Creative Leadership published survey results of several hundred leaders, asking them when leadership training should begin. Half said that it should start by age 10 and 90% by 18. The problem is that no one is seriously designing leadership training resources for these ages. While most cultures do not recognize leading as a serious option for children, preteens or youth, the United States does this as much as any. I know this seems ironic, but here’s why. Awhile back I was speaking with Dr. Bill Damon, Director of the Center for Adolescence and in the Education Department at Stanford University. He said, “The typical school in America tends to overlook the students with high creativity and high energy to get things done (leaders), because they value equality to the point that it is often non-productive.” Our work with 2-18 year olds the last 8 years, causes us to concur with Dr. Damon’s commentary. A landmark education books of the 1980s was by Harvard Professor, Dr. Howard Gardner. The book, “Multiple Intelligences,” explains how the typical IQ tests and academic agenda focus on only two of eight intelligences that people possess. Gardner points out that if language and math/logic are not your forte, you’re not apt to do as well in school and may be labeled slow or stupid, even though you are incredibly gifted in other areas. Some of these other intelligences include kinesthetic intelligence, artistic intelligence, and social intelligence. Within this latter intelligence, Gardner says there exists a domain called leadership. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 4 In my interactions with Dr. Gardner, he admitted that his work did not go deeply into this area. But our work, over the last several years, has shown us that aptitude is essential to learning leadership skills at an early age. When life experience and social-emotional maturity are limited, natural wiring and aptitude are essential. And when these are present, you can teach preteens and teens very sophisticated social skills, with the right curriculum and coaching methods. Think of it as a software program, required to process the data for organizing people to accomplish things together. Over the last several years, we’ve had opportunities to interact with 1000s of children, preteens and teens, around the world. We developed a leadership aptitude assessment called the Nelson Young Leader. Inventory, identifying students gifted in lead- ership (NYLI). Although we can tell who won't lead later in life, we have discovered how to identify those who can learn to lead very early in life. Adults take the 30-mutiplie-choice questionnaire on a child or youth. This is free on the Kidlead.com website. Depending on the demographics of the group, between 10-20% possess a significant level of leadership aptitude. We call these habitual leaders, because they tend to gravitate to leader roles, sometimes when they shouldn’t. As a result, they sometimes get labeled as trouble makers at school and even bossy and opinionated at home. Another 60% or so can learn to lead in situations, but this tends to come later, with life experience and as social-emotional intelligence matures. The remaining 30-40% do not possess this wiring, as we define leadership, but they can be very successful in life. They are often quite smart and talented, but just not in the area of organizational leading. The goal for this group is to teach them about leadership as a social process, but not expect them to lead. As Dr. Gardner said, “The question is not how smart are you, but how are you smart?” These percentages shouldn’t seem astounding. Most teachers, from preschool on up, recognize that 2-3 students in the typical class, tend to demonstrate significantly more influence than the others. This is similar to other gifts and talents, whether it’s academics, sports, art or music. Identifying aptitude at an early age is important for developing them while they’re still pliable. Based on developmental psychology principles and our work, the optimum period for training effective and ethical leaders seems to be the 10-13 Window. By overlaying Kohlberg’s work in character development with Piaget’s research in cognitive development, you find four fertile years in which cognitions are elevated and character is still very pliable. I am amazed at how high aptitude preteens can articulate and demonstrate the ability to learn leadership qualities. While a skeptic at first, I’m convinced that while high aptitude preteens and teens lack experience, they do not lack capacity. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 5 Yet, most adults resistant recognizing high aptitude leadership students, even though we do so in other areas. Identifying leaders while they’re moldable is both possible and critical. Stone #3: Train Young Leaders Experientially The reason we must train experientially is because leadership is a soft skill. We can’t adopt a Western classroom pedagogy where students sit behind desks, attend seminars or listen to talking heads teach on leading. Active learning is key. In addition, conceptual thinking doesn’t kick in until around years 13-14. Before then, young leaders are concrete thinkers. Therefore you need to create learning environments that offer opportunities for leaders to experience real time leadership concepts, so that you can then identify and discuss them. A large training company we work with in Thailand suggested that we remove the word trainer from our materials, because we really don’t train, we facilitate learning. By creating an environment where individuals take turns being team leaders, students gain experience in safe and structured settings, where with feedback, they get to see and feel the results of their actions and attitudes in social settings. For example, when a team leader is responsible to help her peers build a free-standing tower of index cards in four minutes, she experiences a majority of the dynamics present in most leadership situations she’ll face throughout life. These consist of goals, limited resources, talent, roles, people, potential conflict, and measurable results. Our creation of LeadYoung Training Systems focuses on this type of leader skill training curricula for ages 3-23, based on developmental age-n-stage characteristics. Stone #4: Coach Young Leaders Socratically Effective training methods go beyond experiential, project-based learning methods. They also include interactive coaching. Although this happens periodically in traditional executive caliber training, it is all but absent when developing young and very young leaders. One of the things we notice about adults who try to teach children, preteens and teens is that they think they must tell them what to do. In other words, they rarely let the student leaders think for themselves. Legitimately, part of the reason for this is because when you have children and preteens who possess little leadership aptitude, you need to take a more direct, telling method. But for students who possess a high aptitude for leadership, question-oriented coaching offers a far superior training method. We refer to this method as leader-whispering, in that we train Trainers and Koaches to stand beside the Team Leaders during an activity, and offer questions that direct a Team Leader’s thinking along the paths most apt to result in effective leader behavior. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 6 When we tell young leaders what to do, we’re not teaching them how to think, but rather how to obey our orders and basically act like puppet leaders. This is problematic, because when you remove the adult from the scenario, you have a debilitated leader. But the goal is to help students learn how to think like leaders. You want them to come up with their own leader ideas and decisions. Unfortunately, a Socratic approach to coaching only works when the young leader possesses the cognitive software program to process the data. Students who lack this aptitude must be told what to do and how to behave as a leader, but tend to forget how to lead when the adult offering the suggestions is absent. Although I was a skeptic when I began this process, I quickly became a convert after hearing preteens articulate things that I’d never heard 40 and 50 year olds matriculating. Many youth possess amazing capacities to learn leadership at a very young age, decades before most will ever receive formal leadership training. Koaching young leaders is not an easy skill to develop, but we’ve learned a lot about this and have witnessed impressive results. Stone #5: Expect Social Benefits The Pygmalion effect states that people become as they are treated; we reap what we sow. Perhaps the reason we perceive leading to be an adult behavior is because we’ve not treated our children, preteens and youth like leaders. As a result, we’ve not seen them demonstrate leader behavior, at least not with significance. But what we’ve noticed is that students with aptitude, offered the right training, will begin demonstrating very impressive leadership behavior. When we began our work with young leaders, our goal was to give them a 20-30 year head start on leadership development, so that we would see more effective and ethical leaders in the future. But we began seeing more immediate benefits. Schools began reporting a reduction of bullying and other negative social behaviors. Teachers started telling us that the students trained as leaders begin policing their peers positively. When a student would misbehave in a class, the trained leaders would say, “Max, knock it off. Mrs. Jenkins is trying to teach.” Schools tend to value conformity, but leaders by nature are non-conformists. As a result, young leaders untrained in how to lead effectively often get labeled as trouble makers. But by affirming their social influence and teaching them how to use it constructively, we reduce the stigma of demonstrating opinions and a strong will. The results include a reduction in trips to the Principal’s office, as well as an enhanced learning environment, so teachers can teach, not just manage their classrooms. The social-emotional effect is significant, allowing schools to focus on the important tasks of academics. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 7 For example, take the issue of bullying. Typical anti-bullying strategies consist of adults, telling children and youth not to bully and to stand up to those who do. Unfortunately, these strategies tend not to work because most bullying occurs when adults and authority figures are absent. The natural social context is that those with power exert it against those without it. Instead of going against the grain of society, leadership development is a means of tapping social influence to extinguish negative social behaviors. As a result of our work with young leaders, we’ve been approached by organizations interested in reducing bullying, promiscuity, obesity, and improving physical health. The goals of these people are to identify and develop young leaders who will then take their messages and propagate them among their peers. This is a Trojan Horse strategy, by taking advantage of the natural social influence that goes on among children, preteens and youth. Instead of adults lecturing the masses to do or not do certain behaviors, peer leaders now carry the messages of social transformation, when adults are not present. The potential long term results are transformational. Not only do you give students the opportunity to exercise real leadership at an early age, but you prepare them for exceptional leadership in the future. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, offers research on why people become successful. He notes that successful people tend to be those who have an amazing opportunity to practice their skills, 1000s of times more than others. When young leaders are given the opportunity to develop their skills 10, 20 and even 30 years or more than their colleagues, there’s no doubt that they can do intuitively what many only learn after decades of experience and skilled training. I grew up in rural Iowa. My dad farmed 540 acres with crops and livestock. Historically, in early Agrarian eras, families raised their own food, consisting of fruits and vegetables in gardens and a few livestock on a handful of acres. But over time, larger farms like ours came into existence, where tractors and better technology out-produced individual gardeners. In the last quarter century, farmers have been replaced with ag business professionals, creating crop and animal factories that produce a cornucopia of foods. In comparison, leadership development remains in the gardening era with individuals emerging here and there as we hope for a periodic winner and to avoid weed leaders. This is the giant we face, finding more leaders who are both effective and ethical. But the giant killer strategy is available. Ironically or not, David in our story represents not only the new strategy, but also young leaders, who possess far more capacity than most perceive. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected] 8 David was that kind of leader; young, daring, confident, and effective. We are learning how to identify and develop leaders like these, twenty to thirty or more years before most will ever be offered formal leadership training, getting to them before their character is set and as their cognitions are elevated, and prior to negative programming and the formation of bad habits. Based on this new strategy, we believe that the finest leaders the world has experienced are yet to be. That’s why we believe that if you want to change the world, you need to focus on leaders, but if you want to change leaders, you must focus on them when they’re young. For more information on Dr. Nelson’s pioneering work in young leader development and the LeadYoung Training Systems curricula that can be used in schools, civic groups and local communities, please go to www.kidlead.com. ©2013, 2021 Alan E. Nelson, EdD [email protected]