Mitchell Phoenix - Leadership and Management Training

Few CEO’s Cite Paint-Balling as their Chief Leadership Influence

Rare quotations:

“I paint-balled my way to the top”

For comedians training is one of the most fertile areas of business life. The tenuous links made between a host of activities – from actors’ trust games to orienteering – and our working practices are funny because we can all recognise the scenario. Whether it is making the accounts team go through an army assault course or asking the production division to do a karaoke for leadership programme, everyone knows someone who has done something ridiculous in the name of development, or – worse still – has had to take part in something ridiculous themselves.

If you want a development activity which is useful, rather than simply entertaining, what should you look for? After more than 25 years in development, Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates concludes that there are four pillars of successful development programmes. “Look for expert facilitation, an unwavering focus on the creation of results, a structure which will allow the creation of results, and tried and proven content,” he says.

What should this content consist of? First of all it should be usable in the workplace. Under pressure in a real life work situation, anything overly complicated, such as a theoretical ‘model’, will be difficult to bring to mind or use. Second, content should be useful, so that when it is applied it will solve a problem and/or generate concrete results. This means the content should focus on how to conduct the key activities managers and leaders undertake. Whether the focus is delegation, persuasion, motivation or anything else, concrete detail on how to do each of these things is vital. It is not enough to define the problem, the content must take us towards the solution and then prompt us to take action back in the workplace.

“Perhaps most important,” says Yates, “is that the content is based on strong, ethical business principles which senior managers can relate to, and on which they can build. They must see clearly how what is being suggested to them fits with the business principles they already hold, or with principles they aspire to and are likely to adopt.”

This article follows on from Kevin Yates' previous post on the Four Pillars of Successful Management Development (see below).

Management Development and the Middle Ages


Businesspeople are good at measuring a return. Stereotyped from at least the Middle Ages as bean-counters with abacuses, the Blackberry-wielding modern version of the medieval merchant knows how much things cost and how many of them s/he is selling. You measure the impact of lean manufacturing techniques on the bottom line. You measure the ROI of developing and marketing a new product. You can even measure how much each individual salesperson pulls in for the business.  

But modern businesspeople are useless at measuring the return on investment in management development. Research conducted by DDI found that only around 25% of organisations formally measure the results of leadership development programmes. A recent IRS survey polled 74 organisations which ran management development programmes, out of which 13 said they were a failure, 22 said they hadn’t achieved a return on investment, and only six believed their programmes had been a great success. Both sets of findings suggest that today’s management development is a long way from the shrewd calculations of yesterday’s merchants.

What can the past teach us? In the times when Powerpoint, flip-charts and break-out groups didn’t exist, the closest businesspeople got to management development was the apprentice system. Of course, no-one would advocate asking managers to live in poverty for seven years, sleeping on their boss’s floor and only having Sundays off if they are lucky (if you recognise any of that, it’s time for a move - depressed job market or not). What is instructive about the apprentice system is that it asked apprentices to produce something to prove they had learned the skills of their trade. This “Masterpiece” was visible proof of whether the apprentice had become a master or not.

Management development programmes which do not create measurable results are like apprenticeships where no masterpiece is required. In fact, they are like apprenticeships where no work at all is required. What guildsman would accept an apprentice into the stonemasons’ guild without visible evidence that he could carve stone to an acceptable standard? As turnaround specialist Ross Stuart observes, “if you can’t see any results, you have to question whether there are any.”

Management as we know it did not exist seven hundred years ago, but Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates is convinced that we should judge the development of our managers by the same yardstick that guildsmen used: the evidence of our eyes. “Only by creating results in response to the live challenges of the workplace can managers truly measure their development,” he says, “and that’s the only way you will be able to accurately judge ROI.” Because of this, Mitchell Phoenix programmes are designed to create results from the first day. “Focus on results is one of the four foundation stones of successful management development programmes,” says Yates, “and in conjunction with a unique structure, robust content and expert facilitation, they will repay your investment many times over.”

I was recently invited to discuss the concept of best practice in training: what it looks like, how it works, the measurement of effectiveness and so on.  One of the aims of the meeting was to identify parameters through which the organization and design of training could be securely improved and rationalization carried out.

Between us we had a great deal of experience in the area of Learning and Development and all were keen to engage in the discussion.  What became apparent was the elusive nature of the answers to the questions raised.  For example: “What would you consider to be modern best practice in training?” Quickly we realized that different training requires different practices.

Training which equips others with a technical skill (banking, IT, insurance, engineering, etc.) requires the transfer of knowledge from the trainer to the delegate, and the subsequent application of that knowledge to a problem or process – simple cause and effect.  For example, compliance training involves the transfer of knowledge about compliance to the delegate, who then applies this knowledge to their area of the business.

Management skills and disciplines also require knowledge (most managers have this) and the application of that knowledge in the workplace. The difference is, that knowledge is applied directly to the people we manage, rather than to the systems, products or services under our control.

People react and respond dynamically and in complex ways – they are a more unpredictable variable than almost anything else in business. The training of managers demands a learning environment which can create understanding of people and how they behave in the workplace – not simply a transfer of knowledge.

What managers learn must then be practiced in the workplace, where they can grow their understanding through their own experience. Courses should be designed to facilitate this. Straightaway it is clear that knowledge transfer is not up to the task. Just as we can’t learn to swim from a book, so developing a manager’s understanding of how he/she can be more effective requires more active engagement than simply listening to a talk or reading an article.

In addition, consider the range of factors managers deal with:

• relationships in 4 directions (up to a boss, down to staff, sideways to peers and clients)
• the execution of corporate strategy
• the management of resources
• rapid shifts in external influences – customers, markets, money, people, competitors

all of which will defy the application of simple knowledge and yet can be resolved by broad understanding and good management.

As the conversation turned to leadership the game was raised another level. Here there was no doubt that understanding and effectiveness were the critical goals.  To create learning that delivers this level of effectiveness requires 4 elements:

Robust content that stimulates questioning, curiosity and deep understanding

Training based on output, not input – leaders and managers learn through their own experience and need training that causes a change in thinking, understanding and practice

A structure that promotes learning transfer – Short, intense and demanding seminars followed by a period where learning can be realized

Expert facilitation – not facilitation by experts - What’s the difference? Leaders learn from their own experience, not that of others.  Leadership learning occurs when people work on their own approach, not when trying to adopt that of others.

All Mitchell Phoenix programs are built on these 4 principles.

If you are searching for factors that separate successful businesses from the herd, sooner or later you will seek out a meeting with a business transformation specialist. Business transformation specialists make their career in exactly that: they arrive at companies which are performing sub-optimally, and guide those businesses to greater profit and achievement. For organizations which are experiencing difficulties, transformation specialists are ambulance, fire service, analyst, strategist, psychologist and motivator, all rolled into one.

When Ross Stuart arrives at an assignment, what does he usually find? “Almost all of the problems I find in one business I will have seen before on other assignments,” says Ross, “in fact the pitfalls management fall into are the same both within and across industry sectors.”

Here are the ten management pitfalls Ross encounters most often: 

The Ten Most Common Pitfalls in Running a Business

1. Ineffectual, poorly trained senior management
2. Lack of leadership and robust governance: no clear direction and support from the top
3. Senior management in denial
4. Poor quality
5. Narrow customer base
6. Poor financial systems
7. Poor communication with the employees
8. Poor stock control
9. Little or no marketing expertise, a depleted and demotivated sales force
10. High overheads

Mitchell Phoenix' Managing Director Kevin Yates recently published the ebook, How to Build a Successful Leadership Development Project in which he outlines the central factors required if a leadership program is to yield real return on investment. In this extract, he explores who the sponsor of the project should be...


It is quite likely that an incoming senior executive has identified the opportunity for an improvement in the leadership skills of the management group. This may be a promoted MD, CEO or someone brought in with recent experience of greater leadership capability in another organisation (competitor perhaps?) This sponsorship is the best possible start point for gathering support from the board and will be a natural step to engage the wider management population. 

Three levels of management need to be converted for the culture change to take effect.  This means CEO, board and senior operational management.  In a large organisation you will also need to engage the best of the next tier down to make it complete and secure.  After that, leadership by example and sweeping demand for better practice will permeate the business.  In the longer term, standards of behaviour have to be rigorously applied and defended.  (This latter effect will be determined by the quality of leadership thinking delivered by the development project itself).

What happens when only HR or a more junior group have identified the need? Clearly we have to build more support into the senior operational areas and the CEO has to be sold on this need.  By highlighting concrete examples of sub-optimal behaviour; raising questions about succession, ownership of goals, poor meeting management, and crisis culture we can lay the groundwork for a decision to be made.  In addition, issues of falling standards of recruitment and greater attrition can be flagged.  Lack of choice and quality in promotions and honest performance review will further bring the messages home.  Leadership profiling tools can be brought to bear to display, empirically, the opportunities for personal growth.

There has to be acceptance of this need at the highest levels.  Ready & Conger, in their analysis of why leadership development projects fail, identify lack of ownership as the principle ‘pathology’.  Their solution, ‘everyone should own it’, is long on good advice but short on how to achieve it. In this article, I discuss the 5 steps necessary to build a successful leadership development project (click to read).

Mitchell Phoenix' Managing Director Kevin Yates recently published the ebook, How to Build a Successful Leadership Development Project in which he outlines the central factors required if a leadership program is to yield real return on investment. In this extract, he explores the initial situation - the reasons why companies might decide to strengthen the leadership capabilities of their staff.

Recognizing the Overall Need

Firstly, what is the problem?  Presumably your organisation has a sense of what it needs to achieve in broad terms and in detail - strategy, business plan, distributed goals etc.  There will be people in place (mostly) and the wherewithal to achieve the goals. All of these lend themselves to analysis and verification: what is the current capability to enact the organisation’s strategy?

If there is a perceived lack of leadership in your organisation, this implies two things:

1.  An observer (or observers) has compared the current standard of leadership in the   business with a higher standard known to exist elsewhere (at a previous company,   at a higher level of management, etc) and found it wanting

2.  This observer understands the drag on business performance that poor leadership   exerts, and the potential boost to business performance that higher quality leadership will provide

Needless to say, where there is no perceived gap between current standards of leadership and a higher standard, the link between leadership and business performance will not be understood, and there will be no investment in leadership development.

If we are going to measure improvements in leadership then what is it that we are to measure?  We are all likely to have a definition of leadership, and who is to say if my definition is better than yours? Let’s sweep this debate aside for now, it requires time not available in this paper and is not entirely necessary. What counts is your recognition of potential. At this stage, it is enough if you and/or your organisation have recognised a leadership gap to exploit and the potential to exploit it.  Here are some clues as to the extent of that potential:

    * Ownership of initiatives and/or goals is patchy

    * Blame culture when things go wrong

    * Complaints of phoney reward systems

    * Pockets of ‘resistance to change’

    * Upward delegation prevalent

    * No trust between people and divisions

    * Gaining commitment is like herding cats

    * ‘Yes but’ begins every sentence

    * …and finally the simplest of all – you prefer not to battle against it!

These are the symptoms of poor leadership.  There is a neutral position where leadership is adequate and displays few of the negative factors and some positive attributes.  Most organisations occupy this position. 

click here to download the full ebook

Here is a sample of the latest results from their Foundations of Management programme today.

A cornerstone of Mitchell Phoenix's approach is that participants on their programmes are required to create concrete business results by applying what they have learned in the seminar room back in the workplace.

For this reason Mitchell Phoenix programmes are structured a day a month for five or six months. In between the days delegates apply the material in the workplace and create results to be reported at the following seminar.

A sample of the results from the latest Foundations of Management programme:

Making a business more profitable

A chef at a restaurant was tasked with improving sales over the Christmas period. He noticed that team meetings were usually held between three and six pm on a Friday, when the team were distracted by the thought of the busy evening ahead. So one Friday he asked his team to go away and think of ideas on how they could increase sales, and to bring those ideas to a special meeting which would be held on the following Wednesday afternoon.

Suggestions included:

Selling mulled wine and mince pies at the bar
Improving the children’s menu – giving them colouring books, pencils, balloons and better drinks
Making a Christmas party menu – which they had never done before
By the time the chef reported his results to the Foundations group, the Christmas party menu was proving popular, and they were selling approximately 50 mince pies a day from behind the bar. When he was asked why this particular idea had been so successful, the chef replied that it was the member of staff who works behind the bar who proposed the idea. Because it is his idea, he is working hard to make it a success. The chef commented that his staff are more engaged, and the restaurant is more profitable.

Retaining a valued employee

A sales team manager ran an appraisal with a salesperson who had become so demotivated they were ready to leave the organisation. The manager used the tools acquired on the Foundations programme to explore the reasons why the salesperson had become so demotivated, and used the salesperson’s own ideas to define what action they would take. Based on what the salesperson said, the sales manager created a series of concrete actions to be achieved in the months following the appraisal. This process has restored the salesperson’s confidence and passion for the job, which in turn have led to more consistent performance on a day-to-day basis.

Developing your people resource

A manager in a charity had to construct a proposal for an external body to fund a three-year project. Usually the manager would write this funding proposal alone, shutting herself in her office for a considerable length of time. Using the material from the Foundations programme, she decided to consult her project team manager, asking the team manager a number of carefully considered questions about how the proposal should be constructed.

The project team manager, seeing the way in which her manager was working with her, called her team together and asked them the same questions she had been asked. Then the two managers and the project team met and shaped the proposal together.

The feedback the manager received from the project team manager and the project team was that they had enjoyed the process and were looking forward to the changes in their way of working that the suggestions in the proposal implied. They were more motivated and confident than they had been before. This was unusual because it is more natural for teams to resist change than support it. The manager had made the chore of writing a proposal into a motivating exercise on selling change.

Creating resilience

A manager in a bank runs a team whose busiest period is in December. Last December was no exception, and the manager noticed the team were struggling to meet their timescales, the staff had concerns about some of the tasks they had been set, and they needed a boost. The manager decided to speak to each individual in the team every two days, find something to praise them about and praise them. As a result of this, the people in the team felt they were valued and coped with the pressure of the December rush.

Final Evaluations of the Programme

This course has made me analyse every aspect of my management style and made me aware of how important my influence is. Being spread over 5 months it has enabled me to really absorb and practise many tools that I know I will continue to use to enhance my practice. I feel it has given me confidence to go forward and be successful. - A manager at a national charity. Final evaluation = excellent

This course is presented in a fun and interesting way and the huge amount of information has been presented in a way which has meant that you don’t realize the volume until the end. - A manager at a bank. Final evaluation = excellent

It definitely makes you a better manager. It takes you out of your prejudices and is good input on how to create a good and happy company. - A chef at a restaurant. Final evaluation = excellent

It does change the person. It is very useful. It gives me the tools so I can do my job better. It is very dynamic and it is over five months so results have to be delivered. - A manager at a bank. Final evaluation = excellent

The last five seminars have taught me how to become a structured, effective and professional manager. Mitchell Phoenix, and especially Sean, are an asset to any company that wants the best from their managers and directors. - A manager in a technology company. Final evaluation = excellent

Quite apart from the fact that I learnt a lot about the role of managers in business and was able to practise all the theory learnt in a real working environment, I feel that my confidence with presentations and my ability to achieve and the feeling that I am capable has improved remarkably. - An executive at a specialist ship operator. Final evaluation = excellent

The next Foundations of Management programme starts on February 2nd in London.