Leadership training is a big industry. It is estimated that businesses spent approximately $60 billion on such training in 2011. This raises two questions.

1. Why is so much money spent on leadership training?
2. Is the money well spent?

Leadership training is more about showing respect to certain employees than it is about improving their leadership performance. Being sent to a leadership training course seems to be more of a perk than a response to a perceived need. As to whether the money is well spent, the answer is, “Who knows?” The literature regarding the evaluation of leadership training is sparse, and that is no accident. 

In the absence of empirical data, the issue of leadership trainability can be analyzed logically. Leadership is typically defined in terms of the people in charge. This is the place holder theory of leadership. Because, in most organizations, people are promoted into leadership positions primarily based on politics and only sometimes based on demonstrated leadership, the lessons learned from a study of leadership concern how to climb a hierarchy, not how to run an organization. Moreover, defining leadership in terms of place holder theories is the reason there is so much variability in leadership training curricula. 

Drawing on the study of human origins, Van Vugt, Hogan, and Kaiser propose that leadership is a resource for a group, not a source of privilege for incumbents; in this view, leadership concerns building and maintaining a team that can outperform the competition. Leadership should be defined and evaluated in terms of the performance of the followers; in business this performance is usually specified in terms of profitability. A person can rapidly climb the hierarchy of an organization while ruining the teams he/she leads—and still be called a leader—but a person who leads a team to victory is, in fact, a leader. 

Leadership is a skilled performance. Leadership performance involves building a team by creating team member engagement. A person must behave so as to be perceived by the team members as having:

• Integrity
• Good judgment
• Competence in the activity in which the team is engaged
• An attractive vision for the future of the team

How do potential leaders persuade their teams that they have integrity, good judgment, competence, and an attractive vision? They do this by putting on a consistent and credible performance that displays probity and astute decision making, demonstrates competence, and explains the vision. However, team members will watch closely for signs that potential leaders lack these characteristics and every lie, bad decision, operational oopsie, and sign of self-serving behavior will undermine their claim to legitimate leadership and alienate the team.

A major factor in the development of any talent concerns coachability - it is the one thing that all professional athletes and good leaders have in common. Coachability can be conceptualized in terms of two components: (1) a desire to improve one’s performance; and (2) being responsive to critical feedback.

Leadership training should follow from one’s theory of leadership. The place holder theory of leadership suggests that we should train people to lie and steal ideas, to bully and humiliate subordinates, or to plunder and bankrupt organizations. In contrast, the team builder theory of leadership suggests we should train people to act with integrity, exercise good judgment, become experts in the business, and be able to persuade the team that their goals are worthy. This analysis also suggests that training money is best spent on people who have talent for leadership and are coachable.

I am the proud father of three children: a 4-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl, and a 7-month-old baby girl. As you might assume, the 4-year-olds are twins. I have observed many things that have amazed me with the twins over the past 4 years. One observation was that a multitude of people, from strangers at the shopping mall to professionals with PhDs, would ask me if the boy and girl were identical. I would, of course, politely respond “no.” I wanted to say that not only did these children not result from the splitting of a single zygote, but there is a very fundamental difference between the anatomy of a boy and a girl that prevent them from being identical!

Another observation that I noticed very early on was how differently they behaved when they were upset. The children share the same family circus environment and around 50% of the same DNA, however their reactions under stress follow very consistent, yet distinctly unique, patterns. Through my work at Hogan as a consultant, I began to see clear parallels between the derailing behavior of leaders as assessed by the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) and the challenges I was facing at home as a father.

A derailer is a counterproductive tendency that, in normal circumstances, likely manifests as a strength. When we are tired, pressured, bored, or otherwise distracted, these behaviors can become overused strengths or risk factors that inhibit our effectiveness. The HDS measures 11 such risk factors. For example, leaders scoring in the high-risk zone on two of these HDS risk factors, Excitable and Diligent, are likely to struggle with a vicious cycle of behavior when under stress. They tend to be perfectionistic and typically impose high performance standards on their employees causing others to view them as demanding and nitpicky (Diligent). When employees do not meet these lofty expectations, the leader may react with emotional outbursts and become overly disappointed in others performance (Excitable). As a result, leaders might demoralize and disempower staff through moody overreactions and a refusal to delegate, which places additional pressure upon the leader to deliver results, and this increased stress level is likely to further trigger the Diligent/Excitable cycle of behaviors.

Now, I obviously cannot administer the HDS to my 4 year-old son. If I could, I would bet dollars to donuts that he would score in the high risk zone on both Excitable and Diligent. Like any leader, child, or human, my son has many wonderful aspects to his personality. He is very hardworking (loves to help his dad shovel snow, pull weeds) and his positive enthusiasm is contagious in our household. However, he has very specific and rigid expectations for his own and others behavior (Diligent) and he becomes overly upset when things don’t play out to his liking (Excitable) such that his negative emotions also set the tone for the house.

Another interesting combination of HDS factors occurs when a leader scores in the high risk zone on both Mischievous and Colorful. These leaders tend to get noticed and succeed early on through their ability to command the spotlight with outgoing and animated behavior (Colorful) and charm others with their impulsivity and excitement seeking (Mischievous). However, these behaviors can cross the line into the realm of derailment when leaders are too dramatic too often such that they manage by crisis in reaction to stress. Performance can also be inhibited when leaders invite negative attention by testing limits, taking risks, and favoring pleasure over commitments. On a smaller scale, Colorful and Mischievous are very accurate labels for my daughter. On the positive side, she is endlessly entertaining with her family room theatrical productions and already demonstrates a capability to use finesse to win others over. However, her dramatic antics are less entertaining when she reacts to a simple splinter extraction as if it were major surgery without proper anesthetic.

The real fun begins when one person’s derailers collide with the derailers of another individual. In my work life as a consultant, these derailers collide among members of work teams. In my personal life, they collide between my twins. What do you think happens when you pair one child who demands that everyone color inside the lines and gets upset when they don’t with another child who truly relishes coloring outside the lines and pushing other peoples’ buttons? Sometimes it resembles a mixed martial arts pay-per-view event. That being said, the twins also function like a little old married couple where neither individual could function without the other. I can’t wait to see what my 7-month-old eventually adds to this behavioral stew!

The Hogan leadership research tells us that most people will struggle with at least one or two derailers. So I guess that makes my children normal. The research also indicates exactly what I’ve observed in that we develop risk factors early in life while learning to deal with parents, peers, and relatives. This behavior that develops while we are young may become habitual and we may be unaware that we behave in certain ways because it’s simply the way we’ve always acted. These derailers can inhibit both individual and team performance both at work and at home. Strategic self-awareness of these potential risk factors is the critical first step for understanding our behavior and beginning to manage ourselves to get the most out of our strengths.