Your leadership effectiveness strongly correlates with your own level of adult development. Research repeatedly demonstrates this. How you respond or react when you’re faced with adversity, conflict and other complex issues matters.
If you believe that everyone is a leader, and that organisations need leaders at every level, then prioritising adult development across your organisation is crucial. Robert Kegan explains how to do this in this Coaches Rising podcast.
What to expect
Kegan explores why building a culture of adult development is something that many innovative and well meaning companies struggle with. In this conversation, he explains what’s not working and why, before he shares the key elements of shifting an organisation into a learning organisation that rests on a growth culture. He argues that we need a very different type of organisation. “It’s time”, he says, “to create genuine growth cultures, where everyone, not only the high potentials, are engaged in growing to their fullest potential.”
What we love about it
It’s Robert Kegan – he’s funny, thoughtful and cogent.
He illustrates the reason why current organisational leadership development practices don’t work and what needs to change.
He brings the idea of a ‘growth culture’ to life.
Why it matters to leadership in organisations
You want innovation and change, but that requires teamwork and collaboration, which requires good communication, which requires psychological safety and interpersonal trust, which requires active listening and empathy, which requires a comfort level with vulnerability, which requires self-awareness and self-reflection, which requires adult development. If you want to scale this, you need adult development throughout your organisation. Every OD leader, heck every leader, needs to understand why this matters and strive to create it.
