Turn leadership insights into a development plan

Plans fail when they only list intentions

Check each leadership insight against what you actually do. Then set three goals: for the next few weeks, the term and the year. Give each one evidence someone else could see.

Most leaders finish an assessment or a feedback exercise with a fair idea of what to work on. Far fewer have a plan that lasts past the next busy month. The usual reason is that the plan is a list of things they intend to do more of. Intentions are easy to write down and easy to drop.

Intending to change is not the same as changing

A 2006 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, pooled 47 experiments. Each one changed people's intentions and then measured what they went on to do. A medium-to-large change in intention led to a small-to-medium change in behaviour: roughly half the effect.

The experiments covered everyday behaviours rather than leadership, so treat this as a general caution. Even so, the pattern will be familiar. Deciding to delegate more feels like a step forward. Your team will judge it by what you hand over next week.

A plan therefore needs three things beyond good intentions. Choose a small action you can repeat. Fix the moment in your week when it will happen. Decide how you will check whether it did.

Separate what you chose from what you do

A scenario-based assessment shows how you chose to act in situations you read about. Call that a preferred response. Demonstrated practice is what you did last week, ideally something a colleague saw. The two often agree. Your plan should start where they do not.

Take an assistant head in a large primary school. Her responses favoured handing real ownership to the people she line manages. She looks at the last four pieces of work she delegated. She reworked three of them herself the night before they were due. She does value ownership. Close to a deadline, she takes the work back.

Sort each insight you might act on into one of three groups. Contradicted insights usually make the best goals. Confirmed ones are strengths to use on purpose. Untested ones go on a watch list for now.

• Confirmed: you can name two recent, specific moments when you acted this way.
• Contradicted: your recent examples point the other way, especially under pressure.
• Untested: the situation has not come up, so you do not yet know.

Test your assumptions before you write goals

An executive leadership coach is useful at this point because they stand outside your account of events. They ask for specific examples, and they ask what other people would say. A good coach will also point out when your evidence flatters you, or when it is harsher than the facts allow.

The assistant head assumed her colleagues wanted her to step back entirely. Her coach asked how she knew. When she asked them, one said he wanted more help at the start of a task and far less checking at the end. The other agreed. Her goal moved from doing less to supporting earlier. Without that question she would have spent a term practising the wrong habit. If you have no coach, ask yourself these questions, or ask a colleague you trust to put them to you.

• When did this last happen, and what exactly did you do?
• Who would describe it differently, and what would they say?
• What are you assuming about other people that you have not checked?
• What would you see in six weeks if this goal were working?

Each time horizon needs its own evidence

Short, medium and long term only help if each one asks for a different kind of evidence. Otherwise you have the same goal written three times with three dates. Here is what each horizon asks for.

The assistant head's short-term goal reads: when I delegate, I agree the outcome and a halfway check-in. I log each time I rework the result. Her medium-term goal is to keep that habit through report-writing season, when deadlines tempt her to take work back. In the spring she will ask the two colleagues involved whether they felt trusted with the work. Her long-term goal is that colleagues describe the work they lead as theirs.

• Short term, the next four to six weeks: one behaviour repeated in your normal week. Evidence: a simple log of each time you did it or did not.
• Medium term, this term or the next: the same behaviour in harder moments, such as a tight deadline or a tense meeting. Evidence: feedback you ask a colleague for.
• Long term, about a year: a change other people describe without being prompted. Evidence: their answers to an open question, and the pattern in your log.

Write goals that survive a bad week

Old habits return in the worst weeks, so test each goal against one.

A head of science whose responses leaned towards solving problems himself chose developing others as his priority. His short-term goal was to answer each colleague's first question with a question of his own. He also stopped attending a weekly meeting that his second in department could run. Dropping that meeting gave him the time the new habit needed.

Before you commit to a goal, check it against four tests.

• It names when it happens: 'at the start of each line management meeting' beats 'more often'.
• It is small enough to do when you are tired, such as one open question before giving advice.
• It leaves a trace: a log entry, a changed agenda or a comment from a colleague.
• It says what you will stop doing to make room for it.

Review the plan as well as the goals

Put the review dates in your diary when you write the plan. Look at the log every fortnight. Hold a fuller review at the end of term, and revisit the long-term goal once a year. Each time, ask three things. Did I do it? Did anyone notice? Is this still the right priority?

A goal you met early can be replaced with a harder one. A goal you kept missing is usually too big or in the wrong part of the week. Shrink it before you abandon it.

Your organisation may have assigned you the OTO Assess Leadership Development Assessment. Its report sets out strengths, reflection questions and development priorities, with guidance over short-term, medium-term and long-term horizons. Treat its priorities as insights to sort, using the three groups above. The report describes the evidence from your selected responses and does not predict performance. Your own examples, and the people you lead, supply the rest.