I was a shy kid with very little confidence until a life changing event transformed my self esteem for the better. I went from feeling way less than, to feeling good about who I was. That’s another story I’ve mentioned before, so I will not go into it here. But if you ask my friends they’ll tell you that low self esteem is no longer one of my problems, that in fact I’m annoyingly far out on the other end of the scale. It occurred to me this morning that this metamorphosis is exactly what leadership training programs are selling. But can you actually teach success and confidence, do those programs really work?
There is a lot of research out there that is mostly negative towards motivational programs, however this post is not about statistics. This about my personal observations having been through a few seminars that were designed to transform regular people into enlightened leaders, engaging public speakers and charismatic networkers. Early on in my career, management identified me as having managerial potential so I was sent to a number of nationally known programs designed to improve these soft skills. And I saw the same thing repeat itself over and over. The training worked pretty well for the attendees who did not need it, and did not work at all for the ones who needed it most. It was a classic case of the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor.
That’s a bold observation, I know, but remember I’m not saying my thoughts are accurate or reflect on the potential of all self improvement Or leadership programs. They are just my personal experiences and “the story I tell myself about what those experiences mean”. And if you are at all into self improvement you’ll recognize that last part in quotes as being part of the Kool Aid.
The first course I participated in was in year two or three of my career. It was an 18 week, local, one night a week seminar, a very famous one still widely marketed. I’d identify it but I’m allergic to lawsuits, so I won’t. Plus, I thought it was a great course and it helped me immensely in both my personal life and my career. I have recommended it to many people. It focused around public speaking, remembering people’s names and influencing others. Most engineers are terrible at all three of those but I am actually pretty good at speaking and influencing, but I am still awful at remembering names. However, thanks to the course I know why. So if my first experience was such a boon to my career and life why am I largely negative toward the concept of leadership training?
That class had two main types of people in it. Fast movers like me who were seen to be future leaders, sent by their companies to sharpen their talents. The other half were strugglers. These were genuinely nice people that were terrified to speak to just one person, much less to a room of forty strangers. And that makes sense, because those are two groups that companies need to get the most from. The fast movers are going to run the company some day so they are always a good investment. But why did the companies sponsor the other employees, the ones with low confidence and poor soft skills?
Since I later became the guy who approved training, I think I know why it made sense to management to send struggling employees to this type of training, and it is twofold. First, it is simply out of compassion. I know some of you will roll your eyes at the very idea that a soulless corporation would care about individuals but you could not be more wrong. Corporations don’t really exist, they are just a collection of people, no different from me or you. These people, the ones that gain the higher positions, can make cold hard decisions but they also love to make warm and soft ones. The one thing I’m proudest of in my career were the struggling employees who appeared to be on their way to being terminated, that I was able to help save by moving them into a position that they could thrive in. Finding the round hole for the round peg rather than throwing them away like a defective tool was a huge victory. If we fired someone that meant we failed them, its an awful thing to have to do. But if you improve the quality of their lives by putting them in a place where they can win that’s like being a miracle worker, it’s the best feeling ever.
The second reason for investing in self improvement training for strugglers is more mercenary. Hiring and training workers is expensive, very expensive. And its worth investing a relatively small amount to try to turn a drowning employee into a competent swimmer, so to speak. And remember the people deciding who and how training happens at work are the ones who have risen through the Darwinian ranks by winning in competition with their peers. By definition the decision makers are not strugglers. These people do not struggle at all, they are where they are because they are gifted at both technical and soft skills. Perhaps, because of this, they simply do not understand why strugglers struggle. The assumption may be that it is a lack of knowledge. And they can buy training to fix that, problem solved! If it works then money is saved, if the training doesn’t work its just a small investment lost.
So how did that work out? I can only tell you what I saw, and remember I live in small town USA so I got to watch many of these fellow self improvement classmates of mine play out their lives over the next three decades, so I saw a lot. Some of them also were my coworkers. For those, I was there to see the before and after versions up close and personal.
Let me take you back to class night, thirty years ago. First, we would meet and greet and have small talk. The we would go over the homework from the previous week, and last we would do a presentation, a very short speech. Usually we had prep time before at home but sometimes it was impromptu. And it always turned out the same. The anointed ones gave amazing presentations, after all that was why their management sent them, because they had demonstrated verbal proficiency in meetings at work. They were funny, they made the class laugh and sometimes we made the class cry with stories so real and poignant. Because we were open and vulnerable, because we were already brimming with self confidence to the point that we had faced most of our dragons. We could talk about them to anyone without shame or fear. It was like a superpower, that confidence and self assurance.
But the strugglers by and large were paralyzed with fear. Maybe because there were unresolved issues in their lives. Maybe because they had faced trauma or just had lived a life where few of their dreams had been realized. I mean, what is confidence except personal experience with winning in life. And when you constantly succeed in life you start expecting to succeed because that Is what your own history has taught you. Imagine seeing someone get up and talk about how they faced their fears and overcame them if you are nowhere near being able to face your own. Imagine someone talking about winning against tough odds when you feel like a loser most of the time. Imagine being in a class full of the cool kids, the rich kids and you are poor and see yourself as hopelessly uncool. Then imagine getting up right after the best speech you’ve ever heard, having to try to follow that when you are scared to death. When you can’t be real about yourself to a room full of strangers because you just aren’t there yet. I was like that as a teenager, and its one of the purest forms of hell on earth. It is simply asking too much from someone to expect them to win in that environment if they do not already see themselves as winners. So they do poorly. And the class votes the same cool kids as the weekly winners over and over, for eighteen weeks.
At the end of the course two things are apparent to everyone. The great speakers have gotten even better, after all every week they get the best of show awards and all that class affirmation. The strugglers, in almost every case, are barely better than they were in week one. Maybe once in awhile the class becomes that epiphany in their lives when they realize they are no different than the cool kids and they start to build internal confidence. But I did not see that in that class thirty years ago and I never saw it in any of the other leadership training I went to.
Why? Why can’t you teach everyone to win in business, to speak fluently and persuasively and to step out boldly in confidence? I do not know the answer. I do have an idea based on my own experiences. I had to step way out of my confidence zone to transform my self image. And while it started with a single event it was a process of continuing to step out into scary situations over and over. I had to be the one to decide to take a huge risk and to risk a huge humiliating failure. That isn’t something you can teach someone, because they have to decide they no longer want to feel small, and that the reward of winning is worth the risk of failure. That’s a big hairy decision you make for yourself when you are ready to make it. The chance that you’ll have that pivotal moment in a class on a date decided by your leadership teacher is slim.
Are self improvement programs useless? Not useless, no, I think they help the already gifted people quite a bit. Will they turn a struggling employee into an overnight success? Not in my experience. It isn’t a lack of knowledge that causes self esteem and confidence problems. And generally all seminars do is teach knowledge. Changing how you see yourself and how you see others is much bigger than that.
By way of disclaimer I do not consider coaching, mastermind groups, counseling, therapy or any other activity dedicated to improving the quality of your life to be at all related to what I am talking about in this post. I’m only talking about classic leadership training in an in person classroom setting. That is the only thing I have personal experience with.
What do you think? Am I being overly critical of leadership/self improvement/motivational programs?
Has a course changed your life or the life of someone you know?