May 2022 | Management
Amazon currently sells over 60,000 leadership titles, including The Art of War, believed to be written about 2,000 years ago and considered by many to be the first book in the genre. If you’re seeking to improve your leadership, you don’t need to confine yourself to the page, though — over 10,000 of those Amazon titles have audio versions, and then there are podcasts, YouTube lectures, and seminars.
With so much wisdom available, why do so many managers continue to struggle? McKinsey interviewed hundreds of chief executives about leadership development and distilled their input into four reasons why most efforts fall short. Their insights probably won’t surprise you if you’ve read any of those 60,000-plus books: passively consuming information about what to improve and how to improve it rarely creates positive, lasting change.
What does work? The McKinsey survey’s top observation is that context matters: a one-size-fits-all approach usually fails because it doesn’t take into account the unique, existing strengths and challenges of individuals and their teams and organizations. Personalization is key. That’s why Wharton’s Executive Development Program (EDP) (among other leadership offerings) provides a holistic, deep, real-time exploration for each participant. It begins with a 360-degree leadership assessment completed before the program starts.