Experience: The Most Brutal of Instructors
‘Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but their capacity for experience.’
—James Boswell
‘For age, tho’ scorn’d, a ripe experience bears,
That golden fruit, unknown to blooming years:
Still may remotest fame your labours crown,
And mortals your superior genius own.’
— Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 6, paragraph 4
5.1 Introduction
Some argue that there are certain things that you cannot learn in a classroom using slideshow presentations. You cannot learn to ride a bicycle or to swim. The question then becomes: What is best learned through experience, and what is the best way to learn about management and leadership? Can it be taught, and if it can, how?
Experience is an essential part of development and training from earliest learning. Even very young students benefit from experiential programs tailored to their ability levels and capacity for learning (Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius and Worrell, 2011). Providing opportunities for those who excel to further hone and develop their skills improves performance and increases confidence and motivation from an early age.
There are two key reasons why work and personal experience are so important to understanding and spotting potential. First, gaining experience (or failing to gain experience) affects the trajectory of potential over time. Second, experience, or a lack of, can easily compound over time.
One can have a virtuous cycle: gaining knowledge, insight and skills from experience make it easier to gain more. ‘To him who hath, shall more be given.’ Equally one can have a vicious cycle where little experience leads to fewer offers to gain experience and hence a serious lack of growth. The question is twofold: First whether people volunteer for, and put themselves forward for activities that provide rich experiences; second, what opportunities are available.
Those with salient, early experience related to their future career, and those who demonstrated success and achievement early tend to lead to more varied and high status achievement. Those who take part in community, school, or work competitions (be they musical, athletic, debating, artistic, or hold some other talent or interest) gain experience and achievement in those areas. Further, they learn all the so-called soft skills of networking, influence, and persuasion that generalise to all aspects of the workplace. This is why extra-curricular activities are often studied so intently, because they provide insight into the person’s energy, motivation and passion and experience.
Furthermore, employers look for experience: those with motivation and flare to seek out and excel at a variety of experiences. It is not uncommon for job requirements to be something like: ‘requires 3/5/10 years experience in a similar position’. Many young people describe a very common trap: they can’t get a job without experience, but it is the job that gives them experience.
Unlike many of the foundational traits, like personality and intelligence, employers and employees are jointly responsible for offering and making the most of opportunities for experience. You might not be able to change personality very much, but you can fairly easily provide very useful, even life changing, learning experiences. It is essential for developing high potential, but developing the experience that is really necessary for growth into truly high potential requires continuous effort and engagement from both the employee and the employer or leaders.
5.2 Ten Thousand Hours of Experience
The rule of thumb, popularised by Malcom Gladwell is that it takes 10,000 hours of work (or, about 10 years) to master anything. The 10,000 hours rule states that, whatever your ability, build, or aptitude, you (or anybody else) can show expert talented performance with (as little as) 10,000 hours of coached, motivated, and structured practice. The magic ingredient is the power law of practice: the more practice, the quicker and more skilled people become at a task.
The idea is that practice not only makes perfect, it makes talent. So if you practise yet you don’t succeed in winning an Olympic Gold, appearing at the Carnegie Hall, or starting a successful company, it is not that you simply don’t have the talent, but rather that you have not practised enough or have not done it right. The argument is that you make your talent.
Certainly it seems quite reasonable to assert that practice is an essential component to elite, expert, or excellent performance: be it on the sports field, in the examination hall, or in the office. This is necessary, but hardly sufficient. A good coach, hard work, and a good practice schedule all aid success; but is that enough for real success?
Unfortunately, practice in most areas may have limitations that cannot be overcome. Consider athletes: sprinters, swimmers, pole-vaulters, and basketball players all may be born with physical advantages. They are remarkably similar for each sport and often somewhat different from the normal population. The sheer amount of practice cannot finally explain the very real and manifestly apparent differences between elite or expert performers. Take ten random people, put them through the same well designed but gruelling 15–20,000 hour practice programme and one is a star, another barely managed to finish. Even 100,000 hours cannot teach the 5’1” high jumper to outperform the 6’2” high jumper. That is latent talent.
Talent is not innate or fixed. It is potential that needs shaping. The seed is important but so is the soil, the fertiliser, and the nutrients.
Some people learn faster than others. Ten thousand hours is neither simple nor easy, but comes more naturally to the motivated, dedicated, and conscientious. They are ‘naturals’, and they take to practice. Even when putting in maximum practice some people are constrained by natural limitations in physiology, morphology (shape), or capacity (intellect).
The investment or experiential theorists argue that talent comes from the application of motivation to ability. So people have different learning experiences and they exhibit their opportunities in quite different ways. The bright, curious child reads more and therefore becomes more knowledgeable.
Few high performers achieve entirely by themselves. Most high performers are more than willing to share credit for their achievements with friends, parents, partners, colleagues, or mentors. Take out the parent, the teacher, or the coach and their motivation to practice dwindles. It’s the opposite of ‘falling among thieves’. Stay in the right crowd and the motivation to succeed develops. Take them away and the idea of the 10,000 hours to ensure success becomes deeply demotivating.
Different skills also place different demands on an individual’s assets. These are necessary but not sufficient to become talented. People differ enormously in their passions and capacity to invest in their talents. Outside influences can help people over their performance plateaux by only so much.
Thus it can be argued that talent is not a genetic endowment. It is not something that only needs to be ‘discovered’ within, but neither is it something you can acquire by willpower and practice alone. The desire to be talented or a high flyer is not enough. Hard work, indeed 100,000 hours of practice, will not suffice. Neither will foundational potential. You get into the talent group by effort and ability. The less ability, the more effort is required. But there are minimum thresholds for both; experiences build upon foundations, but beware of building too much on weak foundations.
The real question about experience is not about whether or not it is important, but about what, how, and when it is advisable to provide work experiences. What does experience teach that is important at work? But first, what kind of experience really matters?
5.3 Active Experience, Engagement, Deliberate Practice
All experience is not equal. Experience to improve and realise potential needs to be deliberate, purposeful, and focused. Practicing to achieve mastery is not mindlessly repeating the exact same thing over and over; it is mindfully and deliberately practicing in order to develop insight, expertise, and to broaden (instead of narrow) focus and ability (Colvin, 2008).
Repetition can help people to master a specific task. This is something that most people who drive a car would be experienced with. The constant repetition and experience turns it into an unconsciously directed activity. Experienced drivers can change gears, street, use buttons and controls on the steering wheel, and pay attention to traffic lights and traffic effortlessly, amongst other things.
Most people who drive will be familiar with the feeling of losing lengthy periods of time, lost in thought or conversation. Likewise, one can switch back into being conscious of one’s driving, especially in difficult conditions like bad weather or unfamiliar road. It’s a relatively difficult and complex task that with experience can be automated and pushed to the back of the mind.
To broaden the metaphor, at work, driving the same car on the same journey every day does not help to increase skill or to develop potential. It can help to make the task more automatic and feel easy, but that is not the same as deliberate practice. If the objective of practice is to become exceptionally good at a single task that varies little, then basic repetition can be useful. Take Ivo Grosche from Germany’s achievement, he holds a world record for ‘most garters removed with teeth in one minute’ (Guinness World Records, 2013). This is an achievement, of sorts, that would require constant practice on exactly the same task. Of course, there are fairly narrow, limited applications of this skill.
Deliberate practice in particular is essential for turning high potential into high performance. Experience is necessary for everything from starting a new job, acquiring a skill such as playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, or learning about the best ways to get a job done. Everyone starts with limited (or no) skill and knowledge in a particular domain. Learning a language is a process of acquired knowledge and experience. It is entirely possible to learn the basics of a language from a book and mental rehearsal. The words can be practised and the grammatical rules can be memorised. Yet it is impossible to become fluent in a language without speaking that language with other people.
Languages are a process of mutual communication, so they can vary by region (dialects), they can vary depending on who you are talking to or the social situation. Fluency in a language is like expertise in a skill. The expert public speaker can gauge the audience, establish rapport, and modify the presentation accordingly, just like the native speaker of a language will be more able to pick up the subtleties of another’s speech, phrasing and linguistic particularities to improve communication. This has to be done by practice, practice, and more practice. The more varied the practice, the more adaptable the talent. New and different situations broaden the experience and deliberate, effortful practice leads to greater improvement.
This applies to any work. Different skills or positions at work vary in complexity and difficulty, but (nearly all) require practice. Many people who begin a job after a long period in education or training can initially be frustrated because of seemingly trivial problems in the workplace. There can be excessive paperwork, challenging colleagues, delays, bureaucratic and political delicacies, and difficulties that seem entirely unnecessary. These are difficulties that were never present in the training or education because the practice didn’t involve many of the difficult day-to-day (or sometimes, exceptional) circumstances.
Mastering a skill requires deliberate practice and the broadest range of experience and opportunity to practice. That is one of the main reasons ability and potential can plateau once performance increases to a certain level. Then they either stop looking for new ways to improve, or their work does not give them opportunities to continue to improve their performance. Some managers and leaders may feel that once performance reaches a satisfactory level, their responsibility to improve the employee’s performance is finished.
Ericsson and colleagues, when discussing deliberate practice, describe a classic, early example of practice and skill development in Morse code operators during the late nineteenth century. After improving their performance to certain levels, the Morse code operators could not improve further. Practising the exact same task in the same way only improves it up to a certain level, but not beyond. Research half a century later showed that the plateaus in Morse code operator skills were not always inevitable; new, improved training techniques could help people exceed these skills plateaus.
The key message is that repeating the same task will improve performance on that task to certain levels – but only to certain levels, and only in that domain. No amount of practice working as a Morse code operator will make that person a better tap dancer. This may seem silly, but consider a common situation in development: the highest performing Morse code operator is rewarded with a promotion, and is made the line manager. But, why? Managing and motivating people are as similar to being a Morse code operator as tap dancing.
A further consideration of practice and learning is that skills, knowledge, and experience are relative. A top-performing student may be the most knowledgeable in their peer group, but that is not the same as being a top performer. Formal education is a specialised environment, with specific sets of tasks to master along with general competencies. The most successful student can feel like an expert in the field upon graduation and may get annoyed when seemingly unnecessary complications make getting ‘the real work done’ more difficult.
True high potential requires learning to practice and master skills in many environments. The best experience teaches people how to do their job, improve their performance wherever they are and whatever the obstacles. A public speaker is not good at their job if they are exceptional when speaking to their own mirror, but cannot speak to larger groups or in unfamiliar places. But this highlights the role of experience.
The true expert will have real experience with the delays, the extra paperwork, the shiftless colleagues, or the bureaucratic hindrances. High performance means learning the systems, adapting to their demands, and gaining the new skills when required. The non-experienced employee (who has learned the basic skills, but has not learned them in the real world) sees their skill set as separate from the obstacles that keep them from doing their job well. The experienced worker knows how to get their job done while working within the immediate problems and systematic barriers because that is part of the job. Experience leads to expertise because the expert has learned how each of those problems can be solved or bypassed.
5.4 Three Types of Job
Furnham (2012) argued that the path of management and leadership is usually a journey through these three types of jobs. Not everyone continues the journey. Not everyone wants to or should. It can be a journey from specialist education and training to corporate strategist, if desired. This can be true of individual career paths, and careers within large organisations. Small business leaders and entrepreneurs typically find themselves doing some combination of the three types of job.
A) The Technical Job.
To acquire their technical skill may involve years and years of intense and demanding education and training followed by a long period of apprenticeship.
Many CEOs are trained accountants and engineers. Some start life in marketing; others in research and development; and a few in human resources, as technicians, salespeople or tradespeople. They acquire skills as they move around and up the organisation usually as a function of their own ability and ambition.
Most people are selected on their technical knowledge and skills, and leadership positions should be no different. They require a unique skill set. They may be relatively easy or difficult to acquire. They may require years of training or it can be achieved in a matter of weeks.
Technical jobs are evaluated primarily on skills and knowledge. These often take many years to acquire through learning, training, and experience: this might be done through the apprenticeship model, such as that of carpentry or academics; the teaching model; or the experiential model. A newly trained doctor or driver, accountant or actuary, cook or carpenter must acquire the skills and experience to do the job well.
Thus a young ‘certified’, ‘chartered’, ‘qualified’ lecturer, lawyer or land surveyor attempts to get a (good) job after qualifying. They hope for a job that is interesting, well paid and one that offers the possibility of progress and promotion. A certification serves as a recognised description of a complex skill set. It is shorthand for supposed competency.
Over time, demonstrated success is typically rewarded with offers of promotion. There are essentially two types of promotion. The first is to be made a senior ‘X’ such as a senior train conductor, a senior house doctor, a senior lecturer. Rewards and greater prestige typically accompanies the promotion along with more money and more difficult tasks. Or it may be just a reward for years of work with essentially no differences in work tasks. Technical people are recognised for their ability, skills and knowledge and through experience, are asked to do more complex, difficult and demanding tasks within the same area.
However, there is a second, very different type of promotion. This involves supervision. It is the transition from managing ones own abilities to managing other people. It means doing less of the task oneself and more monitoring, motivating and engaging others. Whilst supervisors often do a great deal of ‘the task’ themselves their newly promoted role is supervisory. In essence, others report to them who require help, guidance, and instruction. The exasperated customer or disgruntled employee often demands to ‘see the supervisor’.
B) The Managerial Job
This job becomes managing people. It is the job of supervisors to get the best out of those that work with, and for them. They need the ability to plan, organise and control but more than that they need the ability to engage staff. Job satisfaction, commitment and engagement are, to a large extent, a function of a supervisor. These will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 11, ‘Retention’.
For many the problem is ‘letting go’. Supervisory jobs are much less ‘hands on’ and more ‘hearts on’. It is about helping, aspiring and supporting others to do the task. It is about achieving goals with and through others. Hence the importance of interpersonal skills and learning how to work with and among many people and groups.
The time between moving from a technical to a supervisory job may be long or short depending on the job itself, the individual’s ability and ambition as well as company policy. Some organisations have very clear ideas about how to develop people, such as moving people around the organisation to get an understanding of how it all works, learning about systems as well as people. Other organisations or environments such as those of unions base promotion and pay on aspects like length of tenure instead of ability or potential. How to give a technical person the best experience to become a good leader is an important task for all organisations.
C) The Strategic Job
Promotion from a supervisory-interpersonal-management job is also a recognition of a particular kind of effort, ability, and potential. The third type of job is a strategic planning job. This is usually thought of as a ‘broad-level’ job. At this stage a person, often a senior or possibly a general manager, relinquishes direct supervision, and manages both people and systems at a larger scale. The task moves on to direction giving. Strategy is about the future. People at the strategic level have to learn to ‘read the signals’ from the future. What is coming down the line? What are the opportunities or threats to the company? No organisation can afford to stand still and become complacent. ‘Third-level’ top strategic jobs are about the future.
This involves looking more outward than inward. Strategists need to look to the future as well as the present and they need to look around them at competition. Changes in technology, in customer expectations and in population as well as laws can mean a successful organisation can potentially ‘go-under’ overnight.
The strategist job is to plot the journey into the future. It is partly an analytic and partly a planning function. But perhaps more than anything else it is a job that requires the leader to sell his/her plan, vision and values; a brilliant strategy that no one understands or believes in is a failed strategy.
Strategists need to align and motivate their staff often through charismatic speeches and clear documents. They need to inspire the confidence of all their staff. They need integrity and, most of all, to be inspirational, to communicate their strategy and make sure others are behind it.
The question we can glean from all this is: What experiences can teach technicians to manage people and systems? How does different experience influence potential?
5.5 Direct and Indirect Applications of Experience
Useful experience can be broadly classified into two different categories. First, there is active, competency-focused experience. This is about developing a single skill (or related set of skills). Practising a musical instrument or a single piece of music alone can improve the skill of playing that instrument, and the ability to play that piece of music. While rehearsing the same piece of music in an orchestra involves playing in concert with other musicians, playing a solo piece in front of an audience involves developing a stage presence and establishing a certain level of rapport while playing the music – and while some people can master a skill, they cannot always apply it to broader successes. This is specifically, or loosely related to the career. It involves building up and advancing skills that can be directly practised, used, and applied; for example, interpersonal skills, computer programming, writing, musical ability. Experience provides a deeper understanding, knowledge of contexts, and allows the skills to be used and applied more broadly, skilfully, and elegantly.
Secondly, there is the very different, contextual experience that is not about practising a specific skill, but about learning how to really use and apply skills within an environment, situation, or context. This can be loosely or completely unrelated to the specific job or career, but it broadens perspective and allows one’s intelligence or knowledge to be applied in different situations. Contextual experience is either about using already available skills optimally in a certain workplace or among a group, or unrelated experience and learning seemingly ‘useless’ information that turns out to be useful in the future.
Serial entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne provides an example of this: ‘For example, it was because of a skiing accident that I established Bannatyne Health Clubs. My injured leg needed strengthening, but my nearest gym was a 25-minute drive away. As I rebuilt the muscle I began to calculate the figures and became determined to build a health club of my own to service the people of my area. We now have more than 60 throughout the UK. I set up Just Learning, a chain of day-care centres, because I needed a nursery for my kids in Darlington but all the centres had waiting lists – clearly there was a demand to be met. So I built my own. [ . . . ] I was able to reuse my basic principles about human resources and staff development as I graduated from one business to the next’ (Farleigh, 2007, p.45).
This is a great example of using general, seemingly unrelated knowledge and experience to come up with business ideas. An entrepreneur may benefit from knowledge of the local community, first-hand experience with what people need, from hobbies and related service. This is not only true for entrepreneurs or leaders, but in any job. A broader perspective and greater understanding of a wider range of issues will improve potential. A narrow and focused approach that deliberately ignores outside or differing information can seriously limit performance.
5.6 The Performance Delusion
When we talk about experience, the easiest way to measure experience is based on past performance, qualifications, and achievement. Performance is regularly equated with potential. Morgan McCall, who offers insight into the importance of experience in development focuses on the role of experience in determining potential. He says of what determines potential, ‘One of the first conclusions to be drawn is whatever “it” is, it is ultimately determined by performance’ (McCall, 1998, p.6).
It may be true that potential is ultimately determined by performance, but we need ways of estimating who is likely to perform better (higher potential), and who will benefit the most from which types of experience. Hindsight is difficult to apply to selection procedures. It is important to distinguish exactly how performance is being evaluated and potential is being defined. It is true that performance, in the end, should be how results are evaluated. A programme aimed at identifying potential should ultimately be evaluated by the performance of those identified as high or low potential. If those identified as high potential end up being low performers, something has gone wrong. Yet, this should not lead to the conclusion that past performance is the only predictor of future performance.
The performance delusion is a mismatch between the skills or characteristics being evaluated in the context of performance and the conceptualisations of potential. In other words, assuming someone who performs well at one thing will perform well at another task can be a huge mistake. The most common example of the performance delusion is the mismatch between technical or specialist skills with leadership skills. When someone is good at his or her job, be it a nurse, accountant, mechanic or professor, the best performing people in their current position tend to be considered the most viable for promotion to manage and lead their colleagues.
Take nursing for example, which is a skilled, challenging, and specialist occupation. However, when looking for nurse managers, the available talent pool is screened for the highest performing nurses. Those who have the record of strong and consistent performance, dedication, affability and interpersonal skills appear to be the best candidates to be a nurse manager. Yet, they are fundamentally different jobs, despite both having the term ‘nurse’ in the job title. It’s like mistaking an ophthalmologist for a proctologist. The results may be unpleasant. Figure 5.1 below shows extracts from real job descriptions of nurses and nurse managers.
Figure 5.1 Job Description Extracts for Nurses and Nurse Managers
Promoting the highest performing nurse to the position of nurse manager, based on the job description of a nurse, is the performance delusion exemplified. It is easy to believe that the highest performing person in one job will be the best able to take on what is seen to be a higher ‘level’ position. Yet, in actuality, it requires a fundamentally different set of responsibilities. The reason this assumption is so widespread is because some of the foundational traits that lead to good performance in some positions lead to strong performance in others. For example, those who are intelligent can be adaptable and quick learners. Those who are very conscientious tend to be better at long-term planning, organisation, and goal setting. These traits will lead to improved performance in most jobs. But the performance delusion is equating other characteristics that can lead to high performance (such as conscientiousness) with the actual skills and expertise that lead to high performance in the prospective position.
For a nurse, the key responsibilities include establishing rapport with patients, helping patients plan their care, checking progress, monitoring and administering treatments, working with patients about health issues, routine and administrative tasks, along with other responsibilities. Whereas a nurse manager is responsible for hiring and evaluating other nurses, managing budgets, monitoring service quality, coaching and disciplinary actions. These are entirely different skills, although the positions are clearly linked. Of course, knowledge about what makes a good nurse, and first-hand responsibilities of nursing are excellent qualifications, and will be useful to the nurse manager, but (alone) are not very good indicators of a high potential nurse manager. Much of the experience that makes for a high performing nurse does not transfer directly to predicting high potential to succeed in the nurse manager role. Evaluating potential in the two different jobs requires evaluating potential to gain very different types of experience, and then use very different sets of skills.
The greater the overlap between performance on Task A and Task B, the better past performance is at predicting future performance. If potential means the potential to do a similar job, at a similar level with similar results, then yes, current performance is a good indicator of potential. However, especially when looking at high potential, promotion or additional assignments typically involve very different positions that require new skills, experience and characteristics.
The greater the similarity between two positions, the more skills transfer between the two, the stronger past performance is as an indicator. However, when looking at high potential people and promoting people, typically the purpose of a promotion is to move people into new jobs, with new and different responsibilities, and more complex or very different demands.
Instead of measuring past performance overall, it is much more effective, and more appropriate to make a list of the current responsibilities, and prospective responsibilities to compare how the two overlap.
Figure 5.2 Performance Comparison Between Current and Prospective Positions
Figure 5.2 shows that current performance is good or excellent, in many areas, but those areas of performance are not responsibilities that are important to the prospective position. Although the person’s current performance would generally be considered good, that performance cannot necessarily be compared to prospective performance. The responsibilities of the new position are largely unknown, and the responsibilities that are similar to the current position are the person’s lowest performing areas.
If the person is already excelling in some of the key areas of the prospective position, and has the capacity to learn the remaining areas from experience then the promotion may be a good idea. If the person’s current performance is much higher in the skills that are essential for the current position, but shows little potential of learning from experience in the areas necessary for the potential position, it may be a challenging transition (to say the least). In both cases, it is useful to look at foundational traits such as personality and intelligence. In some cases, it can be as simple as an honest conversation. Many people who are performing well and have self-awareness know if they do not want to, or will not be suited to positions when they have a clear and honest description of the other position – particularly when it comes from a trusted manager or colleague.
Promotions to new and very different types of work also create a challenge(s) for the employee who receives promotion. People may, justifiably, become frustrated, confused or defensive when most of their skills and experience from the past position are not useful for the new job. The fewer the skills that are transferrable to the new position, the more frustrating it can be to go from a top performer to struggling with the demands of a new job.
It takes resilience (emotional stability) and perseverance (conscientiousness) to develop and deliberately practice a whole new set of skills. This can be particularly challenging when the person’s pride and satisfaction with their work came from their ability in certain areas. If those are skills they no longer get to use the person can feel disappointed and even resentful of the responsibilities. This is particularly a concern when people are thrown into a new position with limited help or support. The importance of mentoring and supported learning and development will be discussed in Chapter 10.
This is one of the reasons many promotions that come from the best intentions can be misguided. Leaders, who are looking to promote a team leader or manager, may look to members of the team as the talent pool. Especially at lower levels of management, hiring externally from someone who has no experience of the business, and may not have a relationship with other employees does not seem a very desirable option. Furthermore, for many good reasons, many people prefer to promote from already available talent pools – so that they can choose based on previous experience and knowledge of the person’s performance. Whether conscious or not, many people involved in selecting employees prefer to select a person they feel they already know and are comfortable working with.
5.7 Learning from Failure
‘The most interesting thing about any technique is how and where it goes wrong.’
(Grayson Perry, 2013).
Do you learn more from failure or success? Do you learn more from others ‘war stories’, ‘cock-ups’, disasters and errors or successes, triumph and victory? Research shows people learn valuable lessons from failure. Error management training (Keith and Frese, 2008), as it is referred to in the HR jargon, tends to be helpful. This involves making mistakes and learning from them, or learning from the mistakes of others. It is argued that errorless learning promotes happy, quick and, seemingly effortless skill acquisition. But error exposure training teaches people how to react more effectively in unexpected situations. People remember error exposure training better.
There are various arguments in favour of focusing on failure:
• Firstly, it helps understanding. Errors illustrate underlying principles clearly;
• Secondly, errors are seriously memorable: people tend not to repeat errors if they are aware of the cause and the effect from it, and can reflect upon the errors in a supervised environment;
• Thirdly, errors underline the message of thinking before acting, of being attentive, being ‘all there’. They help to concentrate the mind, identify problems and generate sensible solutions.
But, what of ‘war stories’? This is when people tell hyperbolic or embellished stories based on true events. Old soldiers talking of lost battles, accident-emergency people telling of serious mistakes; managers talking of disastrous products or shambolic mergers and acquisitions.
One study looked at the training of fire fighters. Some learnt with case studies that described errors and their consequences while others had errorless versions. They also varied the complexity of the scenarios from simple to complex. The different groups were later measured by the number of appropriate alternative actions they could generate when given a unique and novel scenario. They also were evaluated on the problems they could identify in realistic scenarios. Results showed the groups who learned from errors had higher performance later: stories of others’ errors, particularly complex problems, clearly helped people learn lessons.
Everyone will make errors and mistakes throughout their career, although the visibility and consequences vary greatly. Few organisations or people, except the most histrionic, want their mistakes to become public. People, groups and organisations miscalculate, overextend, miscommunicate, err, and fail. It happens in every organisation at every level. A single failure should not usually be career-ending. High potential people, like those with lower potential, will make mistakes. The difference is in how that failure is dealt with.
High potential people make mistakes, and then learn from the mistakes. They take responsibility, reflect on the error, and consider what they would do if a similar situation arose again. They learn from each experience of failure how to get a different outcome from a similar situation. Lower potential employees and managers are more likely to make the same mistake over and over again, because they either do not take responsibility for their part, or do not understand why things are going badly.
High potential people have the intelligence, the problem solving and reasoning abilities to understand where things went wrong, the self-awareness to understand their part in it, and the emotional stability and fortitude to realise that failing at a task is entirely different from failing ‘as a person’. The high potential person has the motivation to continue, and seek more experience, to put things right and do it better next time. They also need supportive leaders and colleagues who they can speak openly and honestly about why things went wrong, get help fixing the problem, or moving past it. Even the most motivated, intelligent person with all the right personality traits, with the best intentions, can become a scapegoat – so although internal factors are important, individual characteristics alone are not always enough to overcome adversity.
The experience is important, particularly in the learning and development of high potentials. However, experience does not always have a direct or immediate connection with performance and potential. Experience is accumulated over time, but may not show immediate benefits. Take for example an employee who has a personal interest in social media, runs a small blog in her spare time, or is active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and various other sites: she has spent years of interacting with people in the context of social media, has a general knowledge of how each of the systems work, knows the etiquette for different platforms, has a few businesses that she really likes to follow on social media and has seen some examples of when businesses use social media badly. This hobby may never have affected her work before, or may have slightly diminished her performance when distracted by a sly Tweet or two during the workday.
Now, suddenly, her boss has gone to a social media workshop, and decides the small, local business needs to launch itself into the world of social media. Now, her experience as the only person at work with any knowledge of social media is a huge advantage. She takes on new responsibilities, her performance improves because it’s another responsibility and one that she enjoys, and is knowledgeable about. That’s why wide-ranging experience is so important to success, and bringing together teams of yet wider ranging experience and a broad base of knowledge.
5.8 Internships and Apprenticeships
An internship is the middle-class, white-collar equivalent of the apprenticeship and is typically less structured and unpaid. It is about practical training but without formal learning outcomes. Typically, students might do a summer or even longer stint with an organisation in the private or public sector. The demand seems to have exploded and well exceeded supply, though some organisations are noticing the enormous benefits of having an intern: unpaid, available, and ambitious workers. So what is the role and function of the intern? Who is the internship good for? What do the intern and employer really want from the exchange? And who, when, and where are these fuzzy expectations clarified?
Certainly it is obvious that some things cannot be very well taught in a classroom setting. Classroom learning and training has its place, but some skills seem best acquired and honed in the work environment. Book learning and test writing is one thing; the ability to understand and how to use a skill among colleagues, clients and customers is quite another. Intelligent and experienced employers know this. Students complain that they can’t get a job without experience but they can’t get experience without a job. So, one solution is that internships provide experience, but what sort of experience and for whose benefit?
Universities tumbled to this concept years ago with the ‘sandwich course’. The language teachers knew this all along; people learn best when in the country of the native speakers during informal and unstructured conversations. But the same may be true of other things. So you do a four-, not a three-year degree, the third of which is essentially an internship organised by the university. There are benefits and criticism of internship programmes. The key question is really who benefits? A good internship program has three benefits:
• First: it develops young or emerging talent;
• Second: it helps employers find suitable workers;
• Third: it creates pathways from training to employment.
In this sense the internship is a sort of selection and probationary period all wrapped up into one. The politically savvy employer has usually learnt a simple lesson: select for attitude, train skills, not the other way around. The problem is getting enough accurate data at the interview. You simply can’t keep up the pretence of being a motivated, enthusiastic, ‘keeny’ for weeks while on the internship.
Thus the question is what companies need to think through when they offer an internship? Who do interns report to, and why? What sort of experiences they offer over what period of time: is there a well thought through syllabus/path that they follow? What is the outcome of the internship in terms of references; evaluations? Many interns complain about being underworked and supervised; being given menial work by someone who neither wants the task of supervision, nor knows what the company wants. Both parties need to clarify expectations. Forbid that the whole thing becomes regulated by some ghastly bureaucracy full of form-filling, compliance-demanding, ‘net’ oriented officials paid from the public purse. But is does seem a good idea that there is a forum where buyers and sellers may discuss what they offer and expect.
Apprenticeships, on the other hand, tend to be well-structured with clear learning outcomes and required skill development. Many apprenticeships combine standard in-school book learning and lecturing with practical experience. Apprenticeship programmes (when done well) are far better developed than internships, and the programmes involve relationships between governments and employers: the idea is to get people into good training programmes that will then lead into a job. Thus apprenticeships can combine standardised learning outcomes with experience with specific employers, workplaces, colleagues, equipment, and technology. The Germans, Austrians, and Swiss are widely regarded as having the gold standard apprenticeship programmes. The programmes don’t just teach skills, but help people become experts, and provide a clear and well organised transition from training into the workplace. For detailed information about apprenticeships and national differences, the OECD produced an excellent series of reports detailing best practices and recommendations in different countries: Learning for Jobs OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training.
5.9 Types of Experience
Talented leaders with a record of success consistently report the value of experience. A broad range of experience in varying settings is fundamental. Studies from different organisations in different sectors across different corporate and national cultures, even different time epochs, reveal the same story. Talented leaders mention six powerful learning experiences.
A) Early Work Experience
The early work experience can vary broadly between people. There is no common job or specific experience. The key similarity is an experience that seemed to teach a lifelong lesson. The experience could be an early part-time job, volunteer work-experience, or practical work at school or university. The early experience is positive for some, where they enjoyed the work, found a lifelong passion, or learned skills that benefit them for the rest of their life; for others it is a tedious or frustrating summer job.
For some it was the unadulterated tedium or monotony which powerfully motivated them to avoid similar jobs in the future. The key similarity is that the person learned some sort of important lesson, or gained personal insight from the experience. It could be a leader or colleague that inspired them, taught them skills or outlooks that they carried forth into future work. Or, it could have been an awful job experience that taught them what kind of work they did not want to do, what kind of person/employee/boss they did not want to be, or simply inspired them to work harder to never have to be in the same type of position. It should not be surprising, after reading the characteristics of potential like intelligence and conscientiousness, that potential High Flyers will take any experience (positive or negative; success or failure) and use that experience to improve the chances of future success.
B) The Experience of Other People at Work
This is someone those with high potential will learn from. It is typically an immediate boss or mentor, but could also be a colleague or peer. As with the early work experience, they could be remembered as good or bad. The best and the worst are the most memorable, and both teach lessons. The good teachers and leaders teach through examples, provide exemplars of behaviours that lead to success. They also may provide feedback, advice and support. The worst leaders or role models also teach lessons to those who are willing to learn. They teach those with high potential how they don’t want to be treated, and provide a reminder of how not to treat others. They model negative behaviours, or provide examples of behaviours that inhibit one’s own success or organisational success.
The lesson from this is that a key aspect of developing employees is to ensure strong leaders can also act as mentors for those with high potential. It is also, to some degree, the responsibility of those with high potential to seek out people they can work with and learn from. High potential employees should be aware of the development opportunities in the organisation, and be aware of managers, bosses, teachers, or colleagues who are willing or interested in mentoring others. For the high potential employee it is a balance; be interested and receptive, but not too pushy and demanding.
C) Short-term Assignments
Project work, standing in for another or interim management; this takes people out of their comfort zone and exposes them to issues and problems they have never confronted, so they learn quickly. For some it is the lucky break: serendipity provides an opportunity to find a new skill or passion.
D) First Major Line Assignment
This is often the first promotion, foreign posting, or departmental move to a higher position. It is frequently cited as important because suddenly the stakes are higher; everything becomes more complex, novel, and ambiguous. There are more pressures and they are ultimately accountable. Suddenly the difficulties of management become real. The idea then, is to think through appropriate ‘stretch assignments’ for talented people as soon as they arrive.
E) Hardships of Various Kinds
This is about attempting to cope in a crisis which may be professional or personal. It teaches the real value of things: technology, loyal staff, and supportive head offices. The experiences are those of battle-hardened soldiers or the ‘been there, done that’ brigade. Hardship teaches many lessons: how resourceful and robust some people can be and how others panic and cave in. It teaches some to admire a fit and happy organisation when they see it. It teaches them to distinguish between needs and wants. It teaches about stress management, as well as the virtues of stoicism, hardiness, and a tough mental attitude.
F) Management Development Programmes
Some remember and quote their MBA experience; far fewer, some specific (albeit an expensive) course. One or two quote the experience of receiving 360 degree feedback. More recall a coach, either because they were so good or so awful. This is bad news for trainers, business school teachers and coaches.
To the extent that leadership is acquired, developed and learnt, rather than ‘gifted’, it is achieved mainly through work experience. Inevitably some experiences are better than others because they teach different lessons in different ways. Some people seem to acquire these valuable experiences despite, rather than as a result of, company policy.
Experiential learning takes time, but timing is important. It is not a steady, planned accumulation of insights and skills, but some experiences teach little or indeed bad habits.
Three fallacies conspire to defeat the experiential model. First, both young managers and their bosses want to short circuit experience: learn faster, cheaper, better; hence, the appeal of the one-minute manager, the one-day MBA, and the short course. Second, many HR professionals see the experiential approach as disempowering because they like to be ‘in charge’ of the leadership development programme. Third, some see experience as a test, not a developmental exercise. Be wary of extraordinary results promised in exceptional timeframes for exorbitant sums.
5.10 Conclusion
Experience must be deliberate, targeted and provided to the right people at the right time. There is no substitute for good experience combined with support from excellent teachers, mentors and coaches. Yet experience alone is not enough. Most people will never be Olympic athletes, Nobel Prize winners, multinational CEOs, or ground-breaking artists; there’s nothing wrong with that. Certain individuals who are intelligent, motivated, and are guided by strong mentors, colleagues, and peers benefit more from experience, and this is the focus of Chapter 10, ‘Development’. Although not everyone (by definition) will become a top performer, nearly everyone can benefit from experience. Different types of potential require different types of experience. The leader and strategist needs a broad base of experience, while the technician or subject matter expert requires more targeted, consistent experience.
Figure 5.3 Dimensions of Potential (Revised)