Leadership development is more than just classroom pieces of training. It’s much more profound and broader than this type of program. There are four different quadrants we can look at when we talk about developing leaders: skill-based learning, experience-based learning, knowledge sharing, and peer coaching/mentoring. Each one has its benefits for those who participate and those who lead organizational change efforts through these methods.
Skill-Based Learning
The first quadrant is all about developing specific skills. These are things like communication, collaboration, and creativity. This type of learning can happen through workshops or classrooms where people learn the latest best practices in these areas. The benefits of this method include having an opportunity to discuss ideas with peers and receiving quick feedback on your work from someone who has more experience than you do – either a leader within your organization or another outside expert that you hire for one-time training sessions.
Experience-Based Learning
This quadrant involves coaching people through their everyday work experiences to learn from them in real-time. It helps to have an experienced coach who can facilitate these types of learning opportunities for employees but also requires that people are open and willing to be coached, which may not always happen depending upon the organizational culture or level within a company where someone works. The benefits include getting immediate feedback about how your actions affect others as well as having someone there with you who has more experience than you do – either inside or outside your organization, peer coaching/mentoring (buddying up with someone for coaching), lots of chances to practice what you’ve learned and transfer it back into your day job, etc.
Knowledge Sharing
This quadrant is all about sharing knowledge with others – either through formal training or via informal methods like brown bag lunches, newsletters, and other ways to continue learning from each other in a social setting after they leave the classroom (or wherever their experience happened). The benefits include having an opportunity to share experiences and hear how others solved different challenges that you might be facing now or down the road so that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
Peer coaching/mentoring
The final quadrant is all about having peers coach/mentor each other. One of the benefits of this method is that people are more likely to open up and share their experiences with someone who has had similar ones because they feel comfortable doing so – even if they haven’t worked together before.