Leadership: You Don't Have to Just Wing It!

In my previous articles, I’ve been discussing how leaders can take the “book smarts” they acquire in the classroom and turn them into “street smarts” – that is, convert learned skills into applied skills. By such strategies as stealth learning (learning while doing other things), unlearning of old habits, targeted practice, and visualization, they can integrate new ways of leading and interacting into their daily behavior.  And – returning now to “Route 66” (see my previous article) – they can also use another mechanism, one that we can derive by analogy from the world of flight instruction.

First, a pop quiz: How do pilots best learn to fly?  Is it better for them to (A) Take classes in flying, or (B) Jump into a plane and learn from their mistakes?

Few people, I think, would select Option B – because the (literal) impact of making mistakes far outweighs the hands-on experience they would acquire.

But other people might also point out the downside of Option A, observing that you wouldn’t want to get into a plane with a pilot fresh out of the classroom with no hands-on experience at all.

But, aha, you would then say – I’m setting up a false dichotomy. The real answer (you would continue) is (A) and (B), since a pilot requires both book learning and practical experience to pilot a plane successfully.

Well, you’re way ahead of me – except for the fact that we’re all leaving out a third option that fits between A and B (call it Option A.5): A flight simulator.

A simulator is a necessary transitional step between the ground and the air. In a simulator, a student pilot can take his book learning and practice applying it to real-life situations in a safe environment. To mix metaphors, we can say that a simulator provides an alternative to the “sink or swim” approach, as a way to bridge the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

Yet let’s consider now the way we commonly train leaders. Don’t we often just:

Use only Option B – i.e., don’t provide them any training and leave them to try to learn leadership through (often painful) experience?

OR:

Use both Option A and Option B – i.e., send them to class and then throw them into the leadership arena, expecting them to immediately apply their classroom learning to in-the-moment situations?

But if we don't just rely on Option A and B for pilots, why do we rely on only those two options when we're training leaders?  Why can’t we also use an Option A.5 to help leaders apply their newly learned skills to unexpected situations in a safe environment?

Well, in fact there is an Option A.5 for leaders: Improvisation workshops.

You can think of improvisation workshops as a “flight simulator” for new leaders. Through learning and practicing the basic skills of improv – collaborating with others, listening, being flexible, acting supportively, maintaining a positive attitude, and (yes) having fun – leaders can discover how to translate their classroom learnings about leadership to actual concrete behaviors. (And I would note that these “translations” between improv concepts and leadership behaviors comprise the major focus of The Daily Improviser blog.)

After teaching the improv behaviors, improv workshops can (like flight simulators) be structured to confront participants with “curveball situations” that they’re likely to face in their daily environment. As in a flight simulator, participants can then test out their new behaviors on these lifelike situations in a safe environment, where the potential damage resulting from using less-than-optimal behaviors is held to a minimum. And while they’re trying on new ways of acting, they can make note of their reflexive responses that serve to block the behavioral changes they’re trying to implement – another good opportunity to bring their natural style into awareness so they can see what kinds of behaviors they need to “unlearn.”

Improv workshops can thus play a role along with other transitional methods (such as mentors, coaches, and action learning projects) to keep new leaders from having to merely wing it when they emerge into the glare of the organizational spotlight after they leave their formal training.