This is the fourth article in my Leader as Teacher series.

Part 1 outlined 1) why it's important for leaders to teach (develop the next generation of leaders), 2) what they should teach (values, norms, and what it means to be an effective leader in that particular organizational environment), and 3) what they should not be teaching (functional skills).

Parts 2 & 3 were attempts to address this challenging quote: 

If you are not spending 90% of your time teaching, you are not doing your job.  ~Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco

Part 2 suggested ways a leader could do the teaching themselves (role modeling, celebrations, drumbeat messages and stories).

Part 3 described how leaders can create "teaching forges" which do the teaching without the leader having to say anything. 

Part 4, here, is for leaders who want to teach more and want to know what they can do. 

What Do Leaders Need to Do to Teach More Often and More Effectively?

I'll answer that question by noting the blockages and then offering some options for working with them:

• Failure to prioritize teaching
• Lacking a specific curriculum
• Frustration at slow progress due to not understanding what it really takes for people to learn.

'[The ones we really value are the ones whom] in the first moment we meet them, we sense they are in love with the future flourishing of our organization more than they are in love with doing a good job and their own success'.

Teaching Barrier #1: Failure to Prioritize Teaching

Clearly, leaders are not prioritizing teaching.  But why?

First, the urgent, short-term overpowers the critical, long-term. Unfortunate, but completely understandable...it's an area where leaders are constantly trying to find the right balance.

Second, they don't think it's their job to teach the next generation.  Not sure why this is.  Maybe they think it's something HR will handle. 

Or worse, perhaps similarly to the way Seniors/Juniors in a fraternity might look at Freshman/Sophomore hazings, they think, "It's survival of the fittest and a rite of passage.  Nobody taught me and I figured it out. That's how we find the good leaders. "

OK.  Competition and Dawinism certainly have their place, but for organizations that prize efficiency, I'm not sure that The Hunger Games is the best approach to development.

In my view, the more likely reason teaching is not a priority is because many leaders are still on the "First Mountain." 

In The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, David Brooks argues there are two distinct phases or approaches to life, which he refers to as the First and Second Mountains. 

The first mountain represents the conventional path in life, often centered around personal achievement, status, and external success.

Brooks suggests that the first mountain is driven by ego and societal expectations.  And many people begin their lives on this mountain, focused on themselves, their goals, their career, and their material and social scoreboard.

However, many find that these pursuits and this effort...even when they "reach the top"...do not come with the lasting happiness and fulfillment they thought they would.

The second mountain represents a shift toward a more other-centered life that is focused on service, community, relationships, and deeper intrinsic values like meaning & purpose. The second mountain is about the transcendence of Self, finding joy in serving others and committing to something bigger.

The motivation becomes less about ego-driven ambitions and more about contributing to others' achievements and working to ensure the long terms success of 'the group," however defined.

Any leader still climbing or enjoying the view from the First Mountain is unlikely to prioritize teaching others.

I think this idea is so important that I discussed this joy-in-others'-success, including what to do about it in my article Answering the Call of the Generosity Gene: Helping Others Develop.

I am guessing you know where this is going, so I won't belabor it:  any leader still climbing or enjoying the view from the First Mountain is unlikely to prioritize teaching others.

A leader reading this may be wondering how to move from that First Mountain to the Second.  Watch what you wonder about.

Brooks argues that getting from the first mountain to the second involves traversing a "valley," which might seem rather pleasant, but is tougher than it sounds.  This is often a period of suffering, setback, or personal crisis, such as loss, failure, illness, or disillusionment.

It’s during this time that some people start to question the values of the first mountain, recognize that the pursuit of personal success may not be the ultimate path to fulfillment, and begin to seek a deeper, more meaningful life.

The transition between these mountains then...if a leader can even make the journey...is going to require a fundamental change in purpose and core values. 

Reflections for Leaders on How they are Prioritizing Teaching: Which mountain do you think you are on?  When you reflect on "what really matters," what answers do you come up with?  [Would your family and co-workers say your actions are aligned with your answers?] If your attention has not turned to developing the next generation of leaders, when do you think it should?

Finally, in trying to answer that first reflection about which mountain you think you're on, this vignette might give you a sense of what it looks like:

"I was working with a Senior Global People & Strategy Director and I asked him, 'What's the difference between the [people] you really value and the ones you wouldn't employ again?' 

And I loved his answer, it was so precise, he said, '[The ones we really value are the ones whom] in the first moment we meet them, we sense they are in love with the future flourishing of our organization more than they are in love with doing a good job and their own success'."

Imagine you had to teach a two hour class to middle managers on being an effective leader in your particular company or organization.  What would you teach them?  Be specific.

Teaching Barrier #2: Lacking a Specific Curriculum

Part 2 argued that leaders should be teaching and role modeling norms, values, and the keys to leadership effectiveness in that particular environment.

But knowing what to teach likely isn't enough.

Anyone who has deep experience with behavior change or organizational change management knows that "a definitive first step" helps overcome inertia.

With respect to teaching more, the definitive first step is getting clear on your curriculum, what it is you want to teach. 

Until that is defined any teaching will be haphazard and episodic.  However, once it is defined, you can start looking for opportunities and forums and figuring out a rhythm that works for you. 

Reflections for Leaders on a Specific Curriculum:  Imagine you had to teach a two hour class to middle managers on being an effective leader in your particular company or organization.  What would you teach them?  Be specific.  What values would you emphasize?  What stories would you tell that would convey what those values really mean in practice? Does your organization have defined leadership competencies and how would you teach or demonstrate those competencies?  If there are no defined competencies, what are the practices that make you an effective leader?  How would you convey them to the class?

Sometimes your knowing interferes with others' learning. 

Teaching Barrier #3:  Frustration at Slow Progress Due to Not Understanding What It Really Takes for People to Learn

Some leaders get religion and make a real effort to teach only to be frustrated when it takes people so long to "get it." 

The two insights I want to discuss to head off this frustration are 1) showing you care and 2) understanding how to work with "the curse of knowledge."

Showing You Care. I used to be the Strength & Conditioning coach for a youth travel hockey team.  Before beginning, I studied with an array of collegiate and professional Strength coaches. 

A common aphorism in those circles was "The athletes don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care,"  a simple truth that holds far beyond athletes and coaches.

There are endless ways to show you care, large and small.  But with showing you care, it is often not the big things like elaborate birthday or work anniversary celebrations or awards.  It is the little things like thank-you notes, taking photos with employees, especially at other facilities and posting them in your office.  It's remembering the names of your employees' children.

Reflections for Leaders on Showing You Care:  What grade would you give yourself, not on how much you feel you do care, but on how much you show you care? Can you list little things you have gone out of your way to say and do? If I asked your team to make a list of how you show you care, would it have the same items on it?

The Curse of Knowledge.  Sometimes your knowing interferes with others' learning. This common cognitive bias is referred to as the curse of knowledge..

In the Tappers & Listeners study, participants were divided into two groups: "tappers" and "listeners." The tappers were given a song to “tap out” on the top of the desk. These were common songs like Happy Birthday, The Star Spangled Banner etc.

The tappers knew the common song.  The listeners had no idea.

For our purposes, the most interesting thing about the study was that tappers thought that listeners would guess the song correctly 50% of the time, but in actuality, listeners only got the title of the song 2% of the time. The tappers couldn't understand how the listeners weren't getting it. 

As an aside, if the gap in those percentages seem familiar to you, you might recall, in Part 2 of this series, I mentioned an Inc. Magazine study that asked leaders what percent of employees would be able to list the company priorities. They thought about 65% would be able to. In fact, only 2% were able to state the company's priorities.

To bring this home, substitute leaders for tappers and employees for listeners.

What leaders need to keep in mind is the employees. In some ways it doesn't matter what you know.  It matters what you can convey so others can follow and do their part. 

This study also underlines why the drumbeat message outlined in Part 2 of this series is so important. It is a great prophylactic to help make sure that the Curse of Knowledge does not get in the way of effective teaching.

Reflections for Leaders on the Curse of Knowledge:  Do you have a drumbeat message?  Are you committed to continue "tapping" it, no matter how much you are sick of hearing yourself say it, until you get the team aligned to where you are?

I am sure there are many organizations that don't care if their leaders are spending time teaching the next generation of leaders or not.  As mentioned in Part 3, the dearth of companies doing any, let alone regular After Action Reviews belies any clam they might try to make that organizational learning is a priority.

But some organizations do want to create a leadership system where leaders are spending more of their time teaching the next generation of up and coming leaders.  Part 5 will address what organizations can do to nudge the culture in this direction.

But I hope you can see there are barriers that motivated leaders can remove and steps they can take to teach more, whether their organizations care or not.

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service that has helped hundreds of leaders get the best start of their careers and given them tools and templates for continued success long past their First Hundred Days.