Last week, I was coaching high potential young managers at an engineering firm regarding the 360- degree feedback instruments that were done as part of a yearlong leadership development program. They were very receptive to the feedback and hungry for help in becoming better leaders. Their openness was surprising in contrast to their superiors who were not nearly as open and receptive to this type of feedback.

Why is that? Why were the younger aspiring leaders more open to hearing how they are perceived by others than their superiors? Part of the answer is that it’s easier to teach young dogs new tricks than old ones. We’ve all heard the adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” right? Well there’s truth to it.

Many of the more experienced leaders are more set in their ways and less likely to adapt, change, and learn as quickly as their younger successors. Is that because they’re just stodgy and resistant to change? Not necessarily.

Effective and experienced leaders have found what works (and what doesn’t) and, based on their experience, are going to stick to what works. It’s not that they resist change because they’re averse to changing. Rather, many experienced leaders resist because they know what has worked in the past. Thus, it’s going to take more to convince them that there is a better way. They’re not going to change just for the sake of change.

Younger, aspiring leaders don’t have the extensive experience to rely upon and thus are more open to feedback and willing to change.

What does that mean in terms of developing effective leadership development programs? There are three key lessons: Start Early, Keep At It, Make Feedback a Habit.

Start Early – If you want to develop leaders, don’t wait until later in their careers to start the process. Begin early in their careers to identify those who may have the potential and get them hooked on learning sooner. There are lots of good reasons for starting early. Here are just two.

Those who are identified early tend to live up to the expectation that they will become leaders. They want to achieve what the organization has set as a goal for them – to become a leader. And, the sooner you start developing them, the more opportunities the aspiring leaders have to learn the skills required, as opposed to jamming it all down their throats at the last minute. You’ll have more time to provide a wider array of learning events.

Keep At It – Developing leaders is not like giving someone an inoculation for tetanus, a one-shot quick fix, although far too many organizations see it that way. Developing leaders takes time; so the more time you invest, the more effective you will be. You can build one skill after another; you will have the time to revise and refine your assessment of the aspiring leaders over a longer period of time with more and better information; you will have more opportunities to engage the aspiring leaders with senior members of the organization who can help them to grow into the kinds of leaders the organization needs.

Make Feedback a Habit – The sooner you make feedback to the aspiring leaders a regular feature of their development, the better off they will be. Continuous and candid feedback on performance is the single most powerful and effective tool for improvement. Once they become used to feedback, they’ll become addicted to it and use it to become better leaders.

No matter what, the program should have as a core element the regular and continuous opportunity for the aspiring leaders to solicit and receive feedback on their performance.

I just returned from spending nearly three weeks in Greece where my wife and I own a home. While there, I had several opportunities to have dinner with friends from Greece, England, Germany, Austria, and Ireland.

Their dinners, like their working lives, are much different from those in the states. They take several hours to eat and enjoy the dinner conversation, lingering over dinner until late in the night – as opposed to getting through dinner in an hour or so and allowing the restaurants to turn the table over.

Their dinner conversation rarely concerns work. Travel, food, children, current affairs, gardens, life experiences, and politics are all part of the conversation.

Their working lives are less consuming and obsessive than ours. They place less of an emphasis on making it in the working world – their work is not the central, dominating element around which the rest of their lives revolve.

Is that good, or bad? What do you think? What is the work/life balance you want in your life? Do you have it?

Yesterday, as I was waiting to get my hair cut, I perused a recent issue of Fortune in which there were several articles on leadership. One, in particular, caught my eye.

It was a series of short responses from a dozen CEOs to questions about leadership. What leader do you most admire, what is the one most important attribute for leaders, what’s the best book on leadership you’ve ever read, etc.

The answers ranged far and wide – there were no common themes or ideas. That’s not surprising.

Leadership is highly personal, practical, and individualistic, notwithstanding the desire by some to make it the same for everyone. Leadership is often misunderstood and portrayed as something universal – that there are common traits and attributes that, if acquired, will enable people to lead.

Leadership is the ability to make a difference in your organization through the people you lead. It’s not the acquisition of attributes. Don’t confuse the two.

Concentrate on using what you know about yourself and your organization to analyze and assess your organization’s challenges and opportunities and to develop and implement an effective plan to enable the people who work for you to make those changes and to improve the organization. That’s leadership.

email: archie@archietinelli.com archie@archietinelli.com