Why leadership development means losing the comfort zone

From which approach to how to learn
Just as psychotherapy offers different streams or approaches – from behavioral, psychodynamic, and cognitive to systems – there are different ways to develop leaders, all of them effective, albeit in slightly different ways.
In our review of LD techniques, the approaches we have found focus on distinct aspects ranging from cognitive (changing what I know) to behavioral (changing how I act), identity (changing who I am), and system (changing who I am connected to)-oriented approaches. We have noticed in our developmental work that people often seem to prefer one approach over another. Research on their effectiveness, however, seems to suggest that more effective programs try to combine multiple approaches to development.
We encourage you to consider how you might have an ideological preference not only for what you want to develop but also for how that development happens. Perhaps learning new cognitive frameworks can help you view a problem through a different lens. Maybe you need to experience and feel things first before learning follows. Perhaps you need time and quiet reflection to allow you to develop. Perhaps you simply need to consider an approach that is maximally opposite to your own preference.
We know from research that stepping out of our comfort zone can be challenging but often leads to the most significant behavioral change. However, we often self-sabotage because we assume that this new approach will not work for us. In other words, the biggest reason that engaging in a new approach doesn’t work is because we are simply not open to it; we are not developmentally ready. Some of that low developmental readiness comes from having strong ideological preferences for a certain method. Low developmental readiness, however, is inversely related to the potential for development: when things feel uncomfortable, that usually indicates that we are not yet good at or competent in this approach – meaning that this is the area where we have the greatest potential for development.
Imagine that you prefer deep-level identity work – that is, the intensive work of understanding who you are, perhaps in terms of your childhood roots, or past experiences, and building a coherent narrative around it. In this case, you might benefit from a more behavioral approach where you try to experiment with implementing new behaviors. This might help counter a self-absorption paradox, where people who focus intensively on their emotions, thoughts, and past experiences might better understand who they are, but paradoxically experience lower well-being. Furthermore, expanding one’s behavioral repertoire can ensure that one’s development is not just on an internal deep level but is also effectively translated into behavior and results for the leader, others, and the organization. Thus, we encourage you to examine your own ideology around development and explore other approaches.
Below we offer two more resources to help you think counter-ideologically in terms of developmental approach.
Figure 2 highlights different approaches to leadership – the four ways of developing mentioned earlier, further differentiating them in terms of eight common developmental methods. These represent high-level approaches to the types of development available in the market. For each, we share a concrete example of the type of developmental approach that follows under this. Cognitive approaches, for instance, involve a preference for acquiring theories, commonly encapsulating online course material, reading materials, learning by testing, and other methods, all to accumulate knowledge on a certain topic.
In addition, Table 2 presents four common preferences for development and their counter-ideological option.
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