By Krishna Savani & Xi Zou
How can leaders and human resources departments motivate professionals to enroll in leadership development programs?
Given how political and business leaders are celebrated in modern society, many HR managers might assume that highlighting the possibility of becoming a leader would motivate employees to engage in leadership development. We tested this idea in our current research.
We presented employees with a description of a leadership course. However, there were two versions. Participants who saw a course description focusing on “becoming a leader” thought that the course would be more challenging and difficult, compared to those who saw a description focusing on “learning leadership skills.” And they were less interested in signing up for it.
This finding suggests that how you frame leadership education can affect people’s interest in pursuing it. Although we did not ask people to explain their responses, we believe that a course focused on “becoming a leader” can discourage people from taking it, because it’s not clear how this would be achieved. On the other hand, “learning leadership skills” seems both reasonable and doable.
To motivate people to engage in leadership education, particularly those who have never had any previous leadership training, organizations should consider reframing the goal of the course as a chance to learn. Doing so may also help students better grasp and retain the material.
Krishna Savani is an associate professor and co-director of the Cultural Science Institute at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Xi Zou is an associate professor and co-director of the Cultural Science Institute at Nanyang Business School.