Leaders as Teachers

The Milestone Way

While I eventually realized that I did not want to be a teacher, one of my most enjoyable roles as a consultant is that of trainer. And in this role, it turns out, I do get to teach. As a trainer, one group of people I often work with is leaders, and as I develop them I see just how much potential leaders have as teachers too.

In fact, in the field of leadership development, there’s a growing emphasis on tapping into the amazing power of leaders-as-teachers.

The principle: When they are charged to share what they have learned, leaders benefit greatly and so do others. By teaching the concepts they know, leaders become subject matter experts—which has a positive effect not only the leaders but on their employees, teams, peers and the organization as a whole. It multiplies the impact of learning.

LEADERS-AS-TEACHER BENEFITS LEADERS 

• Strengthens leadership skills
• Makes learning stick
• Holds leaders accountable to “walk the talk,” creating vested individuals who become effective models of leadership behaviors and values
• Provides opportunities to cross-pollinate ideas and hear new points of view from their team and others

LEADERS-AS-TEACHER BENEFITS ORGANIZATIONS

• Builds culture laterally rather than top-down only
• Gives new and established leaders a forum to demonstrate company values, share business strategy, and set expectations of what it means to effectively lead
• Helps align and communicate the organization’s priorities and values
• Prepares a pipeline for future leaders

Evidence of the power of leaders-as-teacher emerged recently through work we’ve done with Milestone Contractors. Milestone, a highway, heavy construction, and site-development contractor, is harnessing this transformative power by developing leaders-as-teachers. Many lives literally depend on them developing the next generation of leaders to embody and model their values of safety, quality, integrity, and continuous improvement.

In a recent culmination of two leadership programs FlashPoint helped create, eight program graduates presented to a roomful of fellow Milestone employees. Not only did each of these leaders provide a compelling presentation on how they live their organizational values, they also—through their role as “teacher”—helped other Milestone employees learn from the leadership concepts they had learned. These leaders also strengthened their own knowledge on the subjects they learned about in their training because of their charge to teach the subjects to others.

Quite simply, leader-as-teacher development models transform the culture of organizations. When leaders have to prepare their own presentation and think about what the organization’s value means to them, they have to personalize the content to themselves as individuals, and they pick up additional skills while researching and preparing to present. Meanwhile, presenting and sharing their leadership vision allows other people to see leadership development as something meaningful to aspire to as well.

At FlashPoint we incorporate the leader-as-teacher approach in our leadership development because it reinforces learning in such an important way. Teaching cements the concepts more deeply in leaders when they’re not just listening to what they need to do, but when they also have to learn the content so they can tell it to a different group of people. It triggers leaders to pay it forward and hold themselves accountable to what they learned.