The Business Case for Leadership Development: Why Most Investments in Leaders Fail

Introduction

Nolan: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Talent Equation Podcast, sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout. Joining me today is Tina Robinson, who spent years inside organizations like PwC, SuccessFactors, and Fabletics building and running leadership programs from the inside, which means she really knows where the money goes and whether it’s actually working when it comes to developing our people. She’s a professional certified coach and the founder of a company called WorkJoy. She’s also the author of a book called Developing Your Business Leaders: A Guide to Investing at All Levels, out from ATD Press this year, back in March. Her core argument is that most organizations approach leadership investments completely backwards, starting with the programs before they ask the right questions. Tina Robinson, welcome to The Talent Equation.

Tina: Thank you so much. I’m so honored to be here, and happy almost holiday weekend.

Nolan: Yeah, we get Friday off, so my weekend is going to start early. I’m excited to be in the sun up here. But before we get going, Tina, and talk through some of the topics you outline in your book and that you’ve lived throughout your various roles at companies, I’d love to learn a bit more about you. You’ve worked with well-known name brands, huge organizations, beacons in our industry for talent development. And you obviously just wrote a book, and you’re a thought leader who spoke at SHRM recently. So, you have this great body of work, but where did it all start?

Tina’s Career Journey

Tina: Such a good question. I was working in publishing as an editor, working with healthcare administration products, and back then they were mostly print. As I was editing, I was drawn to the content, usually content around teams, leadership, and workplace dynamics. And I said, that’s what I want to do, not the editing of it. So, I said, I need a grounding in business, let me go back to school and get my MBA and figure it out from there. I was fortunate to go to Michigan for business school and focus on humans at work. I was one of not that many people focused on that, but I said, this is the hardest part of getting any business right.

That led to a stint in management consulting, which migrated me into corporate HR. After almost ten years leading HR functions, I hit a wall. I was burned out. I couldn’t do it anymore. Human resources is a very, very tough, challenging field. I stepped away, and then I was recruited to go work in HR technology. My role there was helping organizations build business cases for why they should invest in HR technology. I was able to use so many parts of my brain: my business background, my fluency in technology, my deep practical understanding of HR, and all those consultative skills.

That led me to realize that anybody investing in humans at work needs to make a business case for what they’re doing, whether that’s buying a cloud solution or hiring a coach. Eventually I decided that the only boss I would ever outgrow is me. So, I said, let me try working for myself for a while. That was about nine years ago. Since then, I’ve gone back in-house to help build out a leadership function for Fabletics, a global branding company, but I’ve been doing this work pretty much full time under the umbrella of WorkJoy.

Why She Wrote the Book

Nolan: At what point did you decide to write a book? There are always two questions I find fascinating when I’m speaking with authors: what made you want to write a book, and why this topic? So maybe first, give us a thirty second intro to what the book’s about, and then talk about the point of origin for it.

Tina: Okay, great question. I majored in English, I’m married to a writer, so the written word has been part of my life for a long time. I have a deep appreciation for how the written word helps communicate ideas. So, there’s that. As for why this book: it’s written as a practical field guide to help leadership investors, meaning anybody investing in the leaders in their organization. I did not write this book for HR, even though HR can use it. I wrote it for founders, for C-suite, for frontline managers, for heads of functions who want to invest in the leadership capacity and capability in their organizations.

I wrote it because I’ve seen most organizations start with the solution before they’ve identified the problem. They start with the workshop, the initiative, the coach, and the LinkedIn Learning course. All of those are valid, but they start there rather than with the business why, the business reason, the business justification. They haven’t identified the behaviors they want leaders to change, learn, or strengthen. They go right to the how, they shove people into classes, bribe people into coaching, force people to learn stuff, and then nothing changes. And then they blame the execution: it was the wrong LinkedIn Learning course, it was the wrong coach, it was the wrong class. Really, it was because the people participating didn’t know why they were doing it and weren’t held accountable for changing specific behaviors. I said, we can do better. Our leaders deserve us, as investors, to do better. And that’s at the core of the book.

Nolan: Was it something you felt compelled to write, or had you always wanted to write a book, and this was the first topic that resonated?

Tina: The tipping point is that I was asked to write it. Long ago, back in my business school application essays, I wrote an essay about launching a business book about humans at work. I’d written blogs, newsletters, LinkedIn posts, magazine articles, but there wasn’t a topic I was so desperately passionate about that I felt I needed to write a book. What I’ve learned about publishing is that many people self-publish, paying all the upfront costs, and for people like me who work for themselves, it’s seen as a marketing tool. It’s either a marketing tool, or it’s because you care so deeply about a topic that you want to get the word out in book format. I cared about this topic deeply but didn’t care as much about self-publishing it. So, I said to the universe, when the time is right, I’ll be asked to write a book. I’m a big believer in manifestation. And then I was asked to write a book by a publisher who heard me speaking at a conference about this concept. They said, we have other books on leadership development, but you’re making us realize our books are mostly about the how.

The Business Case Triangle

Nolan: Let’s get into the how. You open the book with the idea that most organizations approach leadership development backwards. Walk me through what organizations are doing wrong, and what they should be doing first.

Tina: It starts with what’s going on in your business. I created what I call the business case triangle when I was working at SuccessFactors, SAP’s HR focused cloud solution. I realized sales folks didn’t understand the world of HR and could be an educating force. It’s easy to start with the how: we need a performance management solution. But why? What role does performance management play? You have to go back to what’s driving our business. In a perfect world, you’re starting with the big industry forces bombarding your organization from the outside, because that’s how strategy is created. An organization’s strategy is its response to those external forces. Think of the SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Opportunities and threats are external, and strategy harnesses strengths and mitigates weaknesses. You turn that into an operating plan, and then you need humans to execute it. So, you ask, what do our humans need to be able to do to bring that strategy to life? What skills, talents, knowledge, mindset do they need? And what do we need our leaders to do with those humans? You keep going back up the chain to build the business case.

So, if we think about a force like AI: what behaviors, skills, knowledge, and mindset do you need your leaders to demonstrate for your organization to optimize that force? You need leaders to demonstrate agility, openness, empathy and compassion as people learn new tools, creativity, resilience. Those are all skills identified as critical human skills by the World Economic Forum and continuously shown in research as skills humans still need. You need your leaders role modeling that, especially adaptability, flexibility, and resilience, and you can tie it back to the impact AI is having on your business. Things are changing rapidly, so you need leaders who can catch whatever ball is thrown at them and role model that for their people, so you have a fighting chance of executing your strategy.

Capabilities vs. Revenue as the Metric

Nolan: I want to get your perspective on something. I was recently in a room with our CEO hashing this out. For years we’ve been told to prove our investment in training and leadership, to prove ROI. And I’ve been a big advocate for that. But I realized something interesting: everything L&D and HR does is being asked to tie to a business metric, while other divisions have metrics that are fairly unique to them, that the organization has agreed to connect to the business. Take marketing: marketing’s job isn’t to sell, it’s to bring in leads, and the salesperson’s job is to sell. Marketing says, measure me on leads, because those leads convert to revenue. When marketing starts connecting leads to revenue, there’s a disconnect, because if it fails, there are a lot of other factors at play, what if the product isn’t good, what if the salespeople underperform. Marketing did its job even if it didn’t convert.

For learning and talent development, our hypothesis was that the equivalent might be capabilities. What we’ve been proving so far is action: we did the thing, we launched the training, we used the latest technology, we used AI. We put filler in front of the word “completion.” What do you think about the idea that what you should actually be trying to prove is that you moved a capability, not a revenue number? Because I don’t think anyone, even the most stringent CFO, would say that improving a team’s capability shouldn’t eventually connect to a better outcome. If you can prove you improved the team’s capabilities, but the team still didn’t produce results, that’s on the team, not on you.

Tina: No, it’s perfect, it’s good. Something I write in the book is that ROI is an invaluable starting point, but it’s not the sole determinant in the investment decision making process. Leadership investors can be under immense pressure to prove their worth by measuring the tangible benefits of their initiatives. But investing in leaders is not the same as investing in the stock market, Bitcoin, or technology solutions. Investing in leaders is about shaping and shifting human behavior within a larger system of other humans. And humans, as we know, are complex. One of the themes of the book is start small, start somewhere, pick one behavior you want to shift, and look for creative human ways to measure that.

I lived in a world of leading talent development where we got credit for the implementation, and I lived in the tech world for five years where we got credit for the sale. There was a big disconnect between how salespeople were motivated and compensated versus customer success. A salesperson would get paid even if the implementation and usage was an abysmal failure. Humans are complex, quirky, remarkably fascinating things. So, pick one behavior, say resilience, flexibility, or adaptability. Get creative in how you try to shift that behavior. Then have conversations with the leader’s direct reports, manager, and peers, ask specific questions about that behavior. It’s qualitative research to find out whether you’re noticing a shift, and what that looks like. Then go tackle another behavior.

Nolan: So, if we choose sales as the example: what makes people sell more? What aren’t they doing today? Maybe closure rate is lower than it should be. Let’s figure out why, and connect that back to something we can improve, while still having the revenue conversation, because that’s where you have to start.

Tina: Yes.

Nolan: But then you need to realize what’s in your sphere of control and own that. Maybe you can’t move total sales, but you can move the needle on negotiation, or closure. So, you measure where people are today on that skill first, because if it turns out everyone’s already good at it, that’s not the problem, and you look elsewhere. In one example, a company’s biggest competitor dropped its price by fifty percent, so instead of focusing on negotiation, they focused on value-based selling and building product and competitive knowledge instead.

Tina: That’s not a training issue.

Nolan: It’s so important to understand that. Since we now have the ability to measure capabilities in ways we haven’t before, that’s where the focus has to go.

Hiring for Leadership from the Start

Nolan: Shifting gears, something you talk about is selection and hiring. I think 95% of companies don’t do this well. If we want good leaders in our company, we need to start with hiring good leaders, but the people whose job it is to develop leaders, and who know what makes a good leader, are often disconnected from bringing that talent into the funnel. Is this problem as widespread as I’ve seen it, and how do we break the cycle?

Tina: Yes, and I talk about this in the book, this idea that leadership development can start with recruiting. It starts with the job description and the hiring process. A story I tell: I had a leader come into my office who I loved working with. She said, I know what you’re going to say, but I’m going to ask anyway. I need you to teach my people work ethic. I asked, when did you learn work ethic? She said, when she was a kid. I asked how. She said her parents worked hard and were role models, and she had to do chores. I said, me too, my father was a house painter, I watched him and my mom work hard and learned work ethics that way. So how is my ninety-minute webinar going to instill work ethic?

So, we dissected the behaviors. Work ethic is this big, amorphous concept. We dug into the specific behaviors underneath it: leaders who can set clear expectations, leaders who can hold people accountable. People were leaving at five o’clock with things unfinished, so she needed her people to better prioritize, understand resource management and workflow. Those are all tangible behaviors. I asked, are you hiring for these skills and behaviors in your leaders? She said, what do you mean? I asked if she was asking about that in the recruiting process. She said no. I said, that’s the raw material coming into your organization, and those are behaviors that are tougher to teach after the fact. It’s a lot nicer if the raw material coming in already has a fighting chance for success. She said she’d never thought of it that way and realized she was probably hiring leaders who hit all the functional specs but not the behavioral ones. From there, they started shifting the questions asked in recruiting, things like telling me about a time when, or how do you define work ethic, to get a sense of whether people aligned with their vision of it.

Interviewing for Fit vs. Skills Assessments

Nolan: What’s fascinating is I’ve hired a lot of people. Part of my role is managing a customer service and outbound sales org, usually entry level roles, so I’ve interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands of people over the years. I’ve realized I hate the basic behavioral interview question, tell me about a time you did this, because people can fake it. It’s easy to make up a story. There are skills assessments for job specific roles, but what I’ve found is I first need to understand whether I vibe with someone, whether they hold important what we hold important, because those are the things I can’t teach. It’s really hard to take someone who hasn’t worked hard their entire life and expect a webinar or training to somehow make them a hard worker.

That connects to another question: there are two ways to bring leaders in, you hire or you promote, and a lot of times when we promote, we’re promoting on today’s performance rather than on capabilities, which is a better predictor of future performance. That’s basically the Peter Principle, being promoted to your highest level of incompetency, because you’re promoted on your performance today, not a prediction of your ability to perform tomorrow.

Tina: I want to go back to something you said earlier, about wanting people who work hard. I’d challenge you to dig into the specific behaviors that make up “working hard,” because people define it differently. And on performance versus potential: many organizations promote leaders who’ve achieved tactical, functional, financial results, and don’t necessarily promote based on the behaviors we’ve been discussing.

So, they promote leaders who lack those behaviors but have achieved other results. We all hear the story: you’re a great engineer, so we’ll make you an engineering manager, and here’s the list of leadership competencies we expect, and the engineering manager doesn’t have any of them.

Onboarding as a Leadership Investment Moment

Nolan: Something you talked about at SHRM that I found really interesting is that onboarding becomes a huge leadership moment. I don’t think many organizations do much personal development in onboarding. It’s often just learning the story of the company, not investing in the new leader.

Tina: Onboarding is your first chance to start closing the behavioral gaps you knowingly took on when you hired someone, for example, someone who lacks the ability to inspire a shared vision or struggles with a coaching mindset, but who had the unique technical knowledge you needed in the role. Onboarding is the first chance to address those gaps. You can clarify the expectations of the role, create the initial development plan, and provide the resources, a coach, a mentor, and make that new leader’s manager aware of the role modeling and coaching they may need to do.

Why wait a year, or until the first performance review, to do any of that? Use onboarding to start closing those behavior gaps early, and get people used to the idea that leadership investment is just how the organization operates from day one, because there’s no unicorn candidate. You’re not going to get everything you want, so start closing the gaps early.

Nolan: I was talking to my brother, who joined a large consulting company. He said before they let him engage with anyone, he had to go through a leadership program with several other new leaders, focused on things like removing bias. It really cemented in his mind that the organization cares deeply about its people and invests in them from day one. That’s a much cooler first day story than getting a new laptop and stickers, it’s the ability to invest in yourself within your first week on the job, and a clear signal the company has increased your personal value and shown a commitment to you. That’s a phenomenal culture alignment moment and a great investment in long-term success.

Tina: And it sets really clear expectations of what it means to be a leader there. On day one you get your laptop and your development plan, your coach, your mentor, and the expectations, including behaviors, which get as much attention as your functional and technical goals in a thirty, sixty, ninety, one-twenty, one-eighty day plan.

Nolan: At the end of the day, you learn your job mostly by doing your job. So why not flip the script rather than deliver onboarding training based on how a role was done a year ago?

The Biggest Mistake, and Closing Thoughts

Nolan: Before we end, this isn’t just a conversation for a CLO or CHRO, it’s a guide for anyone who spends money, time, or resources developing people. Where do most companies get it wrong, and what’s the number one thing that wastes that investment?

Tina: They’re starting with the how instead of the why, or even the what. They start with the solution. And to be fair, I’m part of the solution too, I do training, coaching, and workshops. I’ve had conversations with potential clients where I’ve almost talked myself out of a job because I pushed back on the why and the what. I had a client recently who wanted me to coach one of their leaders, and I said I didn’t think coaching was the right solution, that this was a performance management challenge, and that I’d rather coach the leader above him to have more robust performance management conversations. They asked if I was trying to not work. I know it sounds strange, but that’s the biggest mistake: starting with the solution.

What organizations are getting right is that, according to research, they’re still spending money, time, and resources investing in their leaders. They know it matters, even if they don’t invest in any other way in their people. My mission is to make sure those investments matter, that they have a chance at a return, and that they’re valued not just by the organization but by the people being invested in. I want to help organizations make smarter, more meaningful, aspirational but also pragmatic and practical investments.

Nolan: What a great way to end. We value our people, so let’s make sure we’re putting that money to good use. Tina, thank you so much for joining. This has been a wonderful session, congratulations on the book, and hopefully we talk again soon.

Tina: Thank you. I cannot wait. This was an absolute delight.

Nolan: Thank you. Bye.