Exceptional Leaders Mind the Gap

Organisations today, all over the world, are full of smart, intelligent, highly educated, and well-trained leaders and employees. And why shouldn’t they be? There are thousands of books on professional development effectiveness published every year and organisations are spending more than $60 billion annually on training, most of which is on leadership development. In fact, 32% of organisations spend more than $4,000 USD per year per person on leadership development and 94% of the organisations surveyed are planning to increase or keep their existing level of investment in training.

And yet, despite our leaders and people being better informed through the wealth of knowledge acquired at seminars, training, through books and professional development, this increased knowledge results in little, if any, sustainable change in what our leaders actually do in the workplace i.e. they don't appear to be any more effective as a result of the increased knowledge.

The Knowing Doing Gap

This is what it called the ‘knowing-doing gap’; the difference (or gap) between what I know I should be doing and what I actually do. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you have either been part of or witnessed conversations where smart people are strategising about what needs to happen, planning how to make it happen, collecting and analysing data to support what needs to happen …. only to see it not happen. The rhetoric rarely turns into action. Organisations all over the world have beautifully documented business cases, strategies and plans on what they need to do. The challenge? Converting all the knowledge into action consistent with that knowledge. 

Let me put it another way. Have you (or someone you know) ever said they are going to lose that magical 5 or 10 kilos? We all know how to do it and what we need to do to achieve it. We know we need to exercise regularly, we need to eat healthily, that the number of calories we consume needs to be less than the total calories we burn. We know this, yet how many of us actually do this? If we're lucky, we're doing what we know we should do for a month, at best two. But for most of us, well we're going to fall back into those old habits within a couple of weeks.

This is exactly what is happening in our organisations on a daily basis. And why is this? Because without a burning need or desire, people will do what they have always done (our habitual behaviour) without any conscious thought of why they are doing it (reflecting on what needs to change).

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton in their book “The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action” state, time after time, people understand the issues, understand what needs to happen to affect performance, but don't do the things they know they should. And this is despite evidence that when organisations do implement that knowledge productivity can increase on an average of 50%.

Pfeffer was intrigued to find over and over again that people knew what to do but didn’t do it. A case study completed by Pfeffer and Sutton involving Restaurant Managers found a huge difference between what the Managers believed produced success and what they were actually doing in the restaurants, citing the differences were a function of differences in their BELEIF about what ought to be done rather than because that knowledge wasn’t being implement.

And what is BELIEF? A belief is a habit. And a HABIT is an idea fixed in a person’s subconscious mind that causes them to do something without any conscious thought and science states that human beings spend 96% of their waking life ‘reacting’ from their subconscious mind.

Leaders who close the knowing-doing gap, are conscious leaders.

Conscious Leaders, exceptional leaders, understand this. They understand the knowing-doing gap. They understand the importance of working on closing the knowing-doing gap both in themselves and their people.

Why do they do this? Because they understand, if left to their own devices, after any form of training or development people’s behaviours will not change, the new learnings will not be implemented and the organisation’s return on investment will be nil or negligible at best. They also understand, as a leader, when they are consciously helping their people develop professionally, they are allowing them to grow and perform at their highest potential. And when your people are growing and performing at their highest potential, so too will retention, morale and productivity increase; which in turn impacts the bottom line of the organisation they work for.

So, how does a conscious leader close the knowing-doing gap for both themselves and their people?

1. Awareness:

The awareness that to effect sustainable change in belief or behaviour you can only work on one belief/behaviour at a time.

Awareness (knowing) of all the things you (or your team) KNOW you should be DOING to make the biggest improvements in effectiveness, success, productivity or morale.

1. Better Questions:

Asking more questions, better questions to understand what is stopping you from DOING what you KNOW you should be DOING.

Asking better questions of yourself, your team.

Asking more questions, digging deeper to get a greater understanding of why you are not DOING those things you KNOW you should be doing. Those things that will get better results.

1. Action and Accountability

Identify one thing you KNOW you need to DO that will result in the greatest improvement in your effectiveness, success, productivity or morale.

Agree and document on what you and your team members will DO differently, how will you think differently about it, how will it look different in the workplace and how will you feel when it’s done.

Agree and document how often you will check in, how you will hold each other accountable for DOING what you agreed to DO, how you will share what is working and what is not, how you will share your learnings.

Agree and document when you will KNOW it’s DONE, so you can pick the next thing on your list and DO that.

Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to BEHAVE as they do not behave - John Ruskin

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

__________________________________________________________________________

Kathryn is a Leadership expert, specialising in Confidence Resilience, Purposeful Leadership and Change, in particular for women leaders. Her combined passion for people and leadership has led her to helping leaders and teams reach their full potential.

Kathryn has 20+ years experience working with individuals, leaders and teams as a mentor, coach and corporate facilitator; generating conversations that create sustainable change through connection, clarity, confidence and creating a new path toward success.

Kathryn brings a different dynamic to the world of mentoring and facilitation through a balance of raw honesty and humour and the ability to find creative solutions through her energetic personality, persistent curiosity and process. She prides herself in obtaining results through tailoring an approach to the individuals, leaders, and teams she partners with.