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Lessons for experience    49

Thus, the gulf between the study of leader-ship and the practice of leadership has beenrather wide.

Academic preparation can help bridgethe theory–application gap by providingbasic classroom education in combinationwith lab experiences. Interestingly, thework environment can seem like the labexperience without the guiding theoreticalmaterial. Without this guidance, the worklab may be experienced as a fairly randomand trial-by-error situation or one that isguided by opinions and biases rather thana more controlled environment influencedby known best practices and optimalframeworks. Conceptual tools developed

from specific academic preparation canhave considerable value weeks or yearslater when that leader is practicing withinthe laboratory environment of the worksetting. Furthermore, academic preparationmay actually extend the talent pool of available leaders. Typical estimates of leadership incompetence are around 50%.Early leadership education could improvethis figure and correspondingly decreasethe likelihood of leader derailment.

McCall offers seven sure bets regardingexperience as a crucial teacher aboutleadership. Using an earlier entry point, weoffer five sure bets on the actual teachingof leadership. Specific coursework priorto assuming a leadership role could bea significant catalyst for what Avolio andHannah (2008) describe as acceleratingleadership development. That said, thevalue of the academic experience may

actually be dormant for years.

Challenge the Great Man Theoryof Leadership and Its Implications

Although emerging evidence is making itclear that leaders aren’t just born, accep-tance that leadership can be developeddoesn’t yet have full traction. Clearly this isan impediment for leadership courses, anddefinitely is a barrier for those who believethat leadership ability is innate. As anexample, Foster and Lindsay (2008) foundthe belief that leadership is a fixed entity was

negatively correlated with mastery goals,effort, and intrinsic motivation toward aleadership course. Without any modifica-tion to fixed beliefs about leadership, notonly are students who hold this belief likelyto be less enjoyable in the classroom, moreimportantly they are unlikely to learn muchthat can be applied later, and they aresimilarly unlikely to be primed to look foror profit from any leadership developmentexperiences that come their way.

Fortunately, the classroom provides anopportunity to evaluate leadership beliefsin light of evidence, including results indi-cating that leaders are strongly influencedby ‘‘nurture.’’ Although this evidence may

not shift everyone’s convictions, it is cer-tainly data that are hard to ignore. Thesedata could be used with motivational inter-viewing techniques in the classroom, thatpromote shifts in thinking and behavior notby directly confronting resistant beliefs butby examining the advantages and disadvan-tages of reaching the conclusions they havereached. Class discussions can reveal thatbeliefs that leadership ability can’t changelimit leadership for all but the exception-ally talented. In addition, Socratic questionsabout the components of effective leader-ship can lead students to see that leadership,to a degree, is composed of certain skills orcompetencies that are enacted. Because itis possible to learn other skills (ranging fromgolf to empathy), it would certainly be pos-sible to learn leadership skills. Collectively,this information and learning approach canshape future leaders’ attitudes regarding the

developmental aspects of leadership.

Make Assessment and Feedback aCore Part of the Academic Course

Self-awareness is commonly regarded as afundamental requirement of leaders. Thisis reflected in the popularity and valueof 360-degree feedback assessments. Theformal impetus for self-awareness, however,tends to occur at some juncture in thework environment—a transition to a higherlevel position or expressed concerns aboutderailment tendencies. Arguably this kind of 

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50   R. J. Jackson and D.R. Lindsay 

feedback, although better late than never,is nonetheless late. By this time, leadersare fairly entrenched in their styles andabsorbed in the day-to-day demands of work. It would be prudent to promoteself-awareness at a much earlier time.Embedding assessment in an academicleadership course can help future leaderslearn about their tendencies and associatedstrengths prior to assuming formal positionsthat involve influencing and leading others.A number of relevant assessments are onlineand in the public domain and can easilybe incorporated into lessons on leadershipcompetencies, personality and leadership,emotional intelligence, and derailment.

Although feedback is very valuable forunderstanding oneself, it is also a greatopportunity to learn about others. Feedbackis typically presented in a normative fash-ion, enabling the recipient to observe themagnitude of a particular characteristic rel-ative to others. The chance to see whetherone is at, above, or below a mean value pro-vides valuable insight into how others areand how one operates in the context of sim-ilar or dissimilar others. This can help dispelthe false consensus phenomenon (the ten-dency to overestimate how similar one is toothers). This bias can be particularly detri-mental in the leadership context, that relieson the ability to work effectively with otherswho might have quite different work ethics,social styles, problem-solving capacity,energy level, change orientation, and so on.

Show How Effectiveness as a

Leader Requires Different SkillsThan Does Effectiveness as an

Individual Contributor

Typically, development in the U.S. educa-tional system is about individual achieve-ment. As a result, by the time one becomesa leader, he or she has a lot of experi-ence in an individual contributor role. Thiscan create a significant leadership challengebecause leadership is about getting resultsthrough others. It is often the technical com-petence of the individual contributor thatpropels them into a leadership role, despite

the fact that the technical competenciesmay have very little overlap with leadershipcompetencies. Thus, it isn’t too surprisingthat the rate of leadership incompetence isas high as it is.

To apply an early prevention strategyto this problem, formal coursework couldset the stage for future leaders by explor-ing the stages of organizational leadership.Such instruction provides a cognitive frame-work for understanding and recognizingthat leadership is not a ‘‘one size fitsall’’ enterprise and that ongoing leader-ship development is required for leadershipeffectiveness at varying levels of the orga-nization. To prompt an appreciation of the

frontline leadership role as distinct fromthe individual contributor role, academicassignments in leadership coursework caninclude team projects involving deliver-ables and consequences for the qualityof products and performance. Assignmentscan range from team-based papers to mar-keting type presentations in which only oneteam can earn the ‘‘A’’ contract.

Provide Experience in and

Mental Models for

Effective Team Leadership

Leaders are often so focused on executionand short-term success that they too heavilyrely on compliance-based and transactionalleadership styles. They don’t recognize ordon’t know to apply other approaches toget the best, over time, from their cur-

rent personnel. However, this knowledgecan be implanted early on by orientingfuture leaders to leadership models relatedto transformational leadership, ideas abouthow to elicit motivation from subordi-nates, about the effect of leader–memberexchange and the organizational impactof the quality of the supervisory relation-ships, and about organizational citizenshipbehaviors and the contributions these ‘‘extrarole’’ behaviors have on leadership and

organizational effectiveness. These con-cepts provide useful mental models forfuture leaders about tactical methods for

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Lessons for experience    51

achieving organizational objectives, mean-ingfully organizing competing demands,and optimizing critical talent in a hightempo work environment.

Teach Systems Thinking

A common problem in organizations is thetendency to operate in narrow stovepipeswith the typical leader progressing up aparticular silo. Ultimately, experience mighthelp the leader to think in terms of trade-offs, synergies, and sustainability, but suchlearning is generally not systematic andthe leader needs to be developmentallyready—to have ‘‘both the ability and moti-

vation to attend to, make meaning of,and appropriate new knowledge into one’slong-term memory structures’’ (Avolio &Hannah, 2008, p. 336). Providing futureleaders with academic material related toboth systems thinking and strategic think-ing can implant the right knowledge intothese long-term memory structures for laterretrieval. Case studies that compare andcontrast outcomes of systemic versus nar-row thinking and strategic versus tacticaldecisions can be used to highlight thispoint. Such learning primes future leadersto recognize and recall learning related toenterprise-wide thinking, boundary span-ning, deliberate change, and prioritizationfor the future.

Academic learning is an experience.However, academic learning (lessons   for experience) is different from learning fromexperience in an organization in several

important ways. First, in an academic set-ting, lessons can be provided for a widebut general audience, whereas lessons fromexperience (e.g., challenging assignments)target a limited player pool. Second, aca-demic experiences can be deliberatelydesigned in advance to accomplish spe-cific objectives. Obviously not all expe-riences can be designed (e.g., hardships),

and moreover, as McCall notes, learningobjectives are rarely attached to many expe-riences. Third, because organizations havemultiple, competing objectives, leadersmay be rewarded for pursuing performanceobjectives that interfere with learning objec-tives. In an academic environment, thelearning objectives are primary and can bedirectly mapped onto the rewards. Finally,although both lessons   for   experience andlessons   from   experience require a leaderto be receptive to learning, because of themultitasking that occurs in organizations,in these settings it may be more difficultto facilitate not only the right takeawaymessages but any learning at all. In an aca-

demic environment, the nature of a gradingsystem, especially if it is properly tied tocourse objectives, at least creates someextrinsic motivation to process critical lead-ership information and related learning.

In conclusion, leadership developmentcan be primed through deliberate academicexperiences. The lessons   for   experienceequip future leaders with a mental modelabout leadership in the organizationalenvironment, increasing their potentialto lead in ways that are academicallysupported best practices. These lessons  for experience certainly complement lessonsto be derived   from   experience, and theymay increase both the readiness and thecapacity to draw vital information fromexperience.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Hannah, S. T. (2008). Developmentalreadiness: Accelerating leader development.  Con- sulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research,4, 331– 347.

Foster, C. A., & Lindsay, D. R. (2008, September).  Lay theories of leadership ability and leader develop- ment . Paper presented at the 50th Annual Inter-national Military Testing Association Conference,Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

McCall M. W. (2010). Recasting leadership develop-ment. Industrial and Organizational Psychology , 3,3–19.