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

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

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

Part 2 was also aimed at trying to answer how a leader could achieve the lofty goal in this quote:

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

If you read Part II, you know that even if you walked the talk, celebrated regularly, had a relentless, drumbeat message, and told clear stories imbued with company values, that would probably still not get you close to spending 90% of your time teaching the next generation of leaders.

In my view, a leader can close the remaining gap through the environments she creates, specifically through what I am calling "teaching forges" which teach, often without the leader saying a word.

How Leaders Create Teaching Environments that Do the Teaching for Them

Here are three forms of teaching forges that do the heavy-lifting on the teaching front: Delegation and Decentralized Decision Making, After Action Reviews, Op Review Dojos.

Delegation & Decentralized Decision-making. These two are closely related, but there is also an important distinction between them.

Decentralizing decision-making forces others deeper in the organization to step-up.  They have to assess the situation, calculate the ROI of options, manage risk, make strategic bets, be accountable, and course correct.  The "teaching" is putting them in that cauldron.  And the learning is of the fire hose variety.

Berkshire Hathaway owns sixty-five whole companies and has forty-one equity investments.  The company flirts with a trillion dollar valuation. 

Despite the mind-boggling size and scope of organization, there are less than fifty people in the corporate office.  Those sixty-five businesses make all their own decisions.  No one from corporate coddles them and as such the leadership teams experience rich and rapid learning cycles.

When one teaches, two learn. ~Robert Heinlein

Delegating is similar because it pushes decision making and responsibility down.

But what delegating adds is this element of a leader consciously taking something...that she could do, that he is good at, that would make her look good...and giving it to someone else to do.

Most executives I know could do a lot more delegating.  There are a number of reasons why they don't.

First, they're human after all.  Those future-oriented strategic efforts, though they would have a far greater return (who else is trying to see around corners and planning for the future?), are hard and filled with uncertainty.  Hanging onto stuff you know and like is just plain easier.

Second, while leaders often talk a good game about employee development, executing on that talk would require more long term focus and resource investment.  Far too often leaders let the urgent drive out the critical.

Robert Kierlin founder of Fastenal, tells a story of learning this firsthand in the Boy Scouts. "One of my first lessons in how not to promote creativity came from the Boy Scouts.  The troop I joined when I was 10 had a leader that did not challenge the kids.  He arranged everything for us.  Obviously when you teach someone, when you let someone do something they they have never done before they are going to make mistakes.  But the troop leader would say, "I'll set up the tent.  I'll do all the cooking. I will start the fire," while his troop sat around useless.  We watched other troops cooking stew, making fires, setting up teepees and rope bridges, while we sat around.  At the end of a few years, nobody was above the rank of second class scout in our troop.  Today, I probably couldn't survive in the woods for more than a few hours."

Finally, they also want to look good, doing stuff in their wheel-house, and, at the same time, fear actually looking bad if someone with less experience, underwhelms or makes a mistake.

So there is a multi-front "letting go" element with delegation that takes real courage, and thus is as much a part of the leader's learning as it is for the ones who the work is delegated to. 

As Robert Heinlein said, "When one teaches, two learn."

Reflections for Leaders on Delegation and Decentralized Decision-making: What is hard for you to personally let go of, to let others get visibility for, to go slower on than if you did it yourself?  What story do you tell yourself about what would need to be true for you to delegate more? Are so many consequential decisions being made so close to the action that it actually worries you a little?  (N.B., If not, you probably have a ways to go on the decentralization of decision-making front.)

As such, AARs are the single best activity I know of to create "psychologically safe" environments, which seems to be important for consultants who work with teams because that's the basket many have put the bulk of their team effectiveness eggs into.

After Action Reviews. AARs were designed by the Army in the 1970s. 

Peter Senge observed over 30 years ago: “The Army’s After Action Review (AAR) is arguably one of the most successful organizational learning methods yet devised. [emphasis added]"

But despite a decades long awareness of them, they are surprisingly infrequent and often, perhaps not surprisingly, ineffective.

"Instead of producing a deep and honest analysis of error and oversight, they are reduced to a pro forma exercise. Leaders use them to duck accountability and cover up mistakes. Inconvenient opinions are ignored or silenced. Hard conversations and painful reflection are avoided. Superficial changes are grandly announced, and the organization pats itself on the back and rolls on."  From A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews, in the Harvard Business Review.

[N.B., AARs have been on the Leadership/HR/OD radar for 30 years...30 years (!)...as a high-leverage tool for helping organizations learn.  How often do you encounter them in the organizations you are in or that you work with?  If you keep asking Why (TPS's Five Whys) I am confident you will get to what the organization's real priorities are (sotto voce:  It's not learning.)

AARs are simple enough.  Key stakeholders involved in a project's decision making or implementation are brought together after the project.  Five questions are asked and answered: 1) what was supposed to happen, 2) what actually happened, (articulated in narrative form with input from all), 3) what went well, 4) what did not go well, and 5) what should be changed for next time.

Two things make them hard and likely contributes to their infrequency. 

First, you have to keep "rank" and politics out of the room to ensure you can get to what really happened, why, and what needs to change. 

And, second, you have to be willing to publicly acknowledge and accept your share of accountability for the less than perfect outcomes.

Both are long putts with egos and the potential impact on paychecks swirling about.

Still, when done correctly, the team will walk away with a collective story (the story element seems to be particularly important in making AARs effective) and learn what to do differently next time to achieve better outcomes.

Moreover, AARs that are regular...and not optional...do something else that might even be more important than some process improvements.  They signal that management knows that projects never go smoothly, that there are always opportunities to streamline processes and refine decision making, that there are always improvements that can be codified and disseminated.

I have always loved the expression, "Those that like laws and sausages shouldn't watch them being made."  The same is true with our organizational efforts.  The outcomes can be great, the process, sometimes, not so much.  We'll never be perfect, but we can be better.

Thus, an organizational culture that includes regular AARs at all levels is a signal from leadership that while we hope to avoid mistakes and missteps, we know they are inevitable, and though we can't be perfect, we can learn and continuously improve, and help one another do both. 

As such, AARs are the single best activity I know of to create "psychologically safe" environments, which seems to be important for consultants who work with teams because that's the basket many have put the bulk of their team effectiveness eggs into.

Reflections for Leaders on AARs: Have you created an environment where AARs are the norm?  Do you personally sponsor them and participate?  If not, why not?

Imbuing your Op Reviews with the dojo spirit of coop-etition is a powerful growth catalyst. Sadly, most Op Reviews I have observed are neither effective, nor oriented towards learning. Look no further than the number of people with their laptops open, catching up on email or social media.

Op Reviews Dojos.  I am old enough that I saw the Bruce Lee and Billy Jack movies...in the theater...when they were released!  And I remember when the original Kung-Fu Fighting  song (not the one co-opted by the Kung Fu Panda movie) was on the radio!

It is hard to imagine today, but back then, it was not Crossfit gyms, Pilates, Yoga, and Soul Cycle studios that were everywhere.  It was martial arts dojos...Judo, Aikido, all the Kung-fu "animal" syles, Jujitsu, and every Karate variation from every Asian country that had its own style. 

I spent a lot of time in those dojos, nearly two decades, earning multiple black belts. 

More important than self-defense were the life lessons that often had less to do with defense, and everything to do with refining Self.

Though less popular now, dojos still are places for people to do physical training and learn martial skills.

One plain advantage of training in a dojo vs. training on your own is the group. Groups provide a variety of people to practice with and learn from.

Further, people train harder in group settings than they do on their own (ask a Cross-Fitter). Why? Because a group environment introduces this element of what I call "coop-etition."

Yes, you are cooperating and trying to help each other improve your self-defense skills.  And while people do occasionally get hurt, people work hard to maintain safety.

But there is also an element of competition...you're assessing yourself and how much you are improving on an absolute basis as well as relative to the others.

Imbuing your Op Reviews with the dojo spirit of coop-etition creates a teaching forge, a powerful growth and learning catalyst. 

Sadly, most Op Reviews I have observed are neither effective, nor oriented towards learning. Look no further than the number of people with their laptops open, catching up on email or social media.

Done well, your Op Reviews are a chance for people to get up in front of each other and tell their story, ensure their strategy is clear, outline their logic, defend their position, share concerns they have and what they are doing about them, spread best practices, ask for help, lead a pre-mortem so others can poke holes in their plans, commit to the team what deliverables they will be accountable for over the next few weeks and months, etc.

Insisting that the rest of the team put their laptops away and engage, react, support, ask questions, challenge, make suggestions and heap on the praise for good analyses/slides/handling questions etc builds confidence and prepares the team for communication challenges they will face outside the relative safety of your Op Review learning dojo.

You won't have to wonder if it's working.  They're teaching each other.  And the learning is palpable. 

When you as the leader recognize and praise someone who...gives an insightful analysis, uses a slide which cogently frames a result, tells a clear story, facilitates in a way that allows all voices to be heard and moves an issue forward...you signal what is important, what you are looking for, and the standard of excellence expected. 

With that clear to everyone, the speed with which the approach you gave the nod to gets copied and leveraged by the rest of the team will take your breath away. 

Op Reviews as dojos, as a teaching forge, will raise everyone's game.  They will produce people who are better story tellers, better on their feet, better at handling opposing views with aplomb, better at being accountable and not making excuses, better at, sorry, taking a punch...getting up...and learning from their mistakes, better at asking for help, better at supporting each other and lifting each other up, better at thinking through issues, and better at setting achievable targets so as not to let their teammates down.

If that isn't teaching, I don't know what is.

Reflections for Leaders on Op Review Dojos: What is the energy like in your Op Reviews? Do people challenge each other?  Are the attendees abilities to strategically frame getting better?  Are the discussions getting better? Are individuals getting better on their feet, better at telling their story, better at handling challenges, putting up more points and driving better org outcomes?

Conclusion

These last two posts have been exploring teaching vehicles, as well as the question of whether it is humanly possible for leaders to spend 90% of their time teaching. 

I hope you can see now that, taken together...with leaders role-modeling, celebrating, maintaining clear focus, telling stories, and creating teaching forges...it's easy to see how a leader could spend 90% of her time teaching.

While Parts II and III have covered teaching vehicles, Part IV of this Leader as Teacher series will address some obstacles leaders will need to remove to teach more and better.  Part V will address what organizations who want their leaders to teach more and better can do.

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.