All organizations face the problem of developing leaders. Yet, how leaders are really made remains elusive. Despite significant investments in leadership development, few organizations can demonstrate that it resulted in enhanced leadership effectiveness or can prove its impact on organizational performance.

Even more unsettling is that, more often than not, organizations find themselves in a leadership succession crisis. They have struggled to proactively develop a bench of future leaders who can deliver the strategic wins that will secure the organization’s survival. This article will provide a new way of thinking about leadership development that remedies these challenges — the Keystone Method. But first, let’s explore the main fallacies that dominate the way leadership development is currently operationalized.

The Fallacies of Leadership Development

There are three main fallacies that compromise the current thinking of leadership development:

1. The Quick Wins Fallacy

Leadership development practitioners are frequently directed to use pre-packaged solutions that can be implemented relatively quickly and that give the illusion of effectiveness. There is an abundance of leadership development vendors that can deliver on such a leadership development solution on short notice. When faced with the quick wins option, it is harder for leadership development practitioners to get buy-in to develop a personalized multiyear leadership development experience that drives permanent behavior change.

2. The One-Size-Fits-All Fallacy

There are countless articles on leadership effectiveness that cover well-intentioned best practices and an exhaustive list of leadership behaviors that are common in high-performing organizations. The “fear of missing out” pushes leadership development practitioners to adopt these generalized research findings without truly diagnosing the critical leadership behaviors that matter most to their organization’s specific context. The result is a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development that is not customized to the organization’s strategy, maturity level or critical leadership performance metrics.

3. The Skill Is Behavior Fallacy

Skills are an enabler of behavior change but do not guarantee it. A tactical focus on skill development results in leadership development practitioners missing the forest for the trees. It inevitably leads to a programmatic and closed approach to leadership development that ignores the realities of the wider organizational culture and structure. The most critical determinants of permanent behavior change are the work environment and the leader’s personal readiness. These factors, rather than skills, should dominate the design of a leadership development intervention, if the investment is to yield a strategic return.

The Keystone Method

The Keystone Method is a new way to think about leadership development that can remedy the challenges that arise from these fallacies. This method positions an organization’s leadership development capability as an integral part of the strategy development process. If effective leadership is required for strategy execution, then leadership development cannot be a strategic afterthought relegated to the tactical abyss of a learning needs analysis. When this method is used, leaders are made through three key systemic pillars: Leaders are designed in strategy, nurtured in culture and rewarded in structure. This method disrupts the traditional approach to leadership development as a programmatic tactic that supports strategy. It demands that leadership development co-exist with strategy development and execution.

With this method, leadership development is defined as the act of identifying, investing and focusing on a few critical or keystone behaviors that, given an organization’s unique context and business challenges, produces and sustains a competitive advantage. This modern definition of leadership development addresses the fallacies inherent in the dominant programmatic view of leadership development where the goal is to prepare individuals to be effective in future roles. This individualistic perspective prioritizes generic best practices at the expense of a systemic perspective that sustains permanent behavior modification.

Three Principles

The Keystone Method of leadership development is supported by the following three key design principles that cumulatively produce and reproduce the success conditions that make the leaders needed to execute a particular strategy:

Principle 1: Leaders are Designed in Strategy

This principle requires the explicit translation of strategy into a few do-or-die leadership behaviors that clinch the organization’s competitive advantage. This directs leadership development practitioners to engage in activities that allow them to distinguish between behaviors that disproportionately drive strategic performance from those that are the baseline expectations of good leaders in general. It inoculates learners against the “quick wins” and “one size fits all” fallacies. This principle guides us to answer the question: “What key behaviors does the organization need to execute its strategy?”

Principle 2: Leaders are Nurtured in Culture

This principle accepts that leadership culture significantly shapes an organization’s culture. Through targeted stretch experiences, an organization’s culture exposes leaders to social and emotional norms that inspire personal commitment to practice the keystone behaviors. More importantly, it provides the opportunity for these leaders to reshape the leadership culture so it supports organizational strategy.

There are two key culture carriers: coaching and role modeling. A leadership coaching philosophy that is scientifically grounded in positive psychology will produce a positive affective state in a leader that is essential for permanent behavior modification. This whole-person, human-centered approach is a prerequisite for permanent behavior change, as it mitigates the “skill is a behavior” fallacy.

Role modeling is also an important conduit through which social and emotional norms are communicated and altered. Observations of how those at the top handle tough situations allows future leaders to gain insights that can increase their confidence to exhibit the keystone behaviors. This principle guides us to answer the question: “How do we intentionally design a leadership culture that enables a leader’s development?”

Principle 3: Leaders are Rewarded in Structure

With this principle, the leadership development practitioner must intentionally design an organizational structure that systemically promotes and reinforces the desired keystone behaviors. This involves updating the critical job tasks of a leader in a manner that nudges repeated practice of the keystone behaviors in the normal course of their work.

Essentially, the job’s design must direct leaders to routinely use the keystone behaviors to achieve their personal key performance indicators (KPIs). Repeated practice of these behaviors in a variety of high-stakes situations will increase a leader’s self-efficacy and ultimately accelerate their mastery of the keystone behaviors. The cumulative impact is that leaders who use the keystone behavior will be rewarded for delivering strategic wins. Put another way, leaders who spend the majority of their time doing strategic work will outperform leaders who prioritize operational work. This principle guides us to answer the question: “How do we structure the work of leaders to reward the practice of the key behaviors?”

Where to Start

Ultimately, accountability for an organization’s strategy starts and ends with the CEO. With the Keystone Method, the CEO plays a pivotal role in disrupting traditional approaches to leadership development. The first step that leadership development practitioners can take to use the Keystone Method is to ask their CEO these three questions:

1. What do leaders need to do differently to support the strategy?
2. How will this behavior change improve organizational performance?
3. Who will be held accountable for driving this change?