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And in my experience, nothing motivates a leader to grow and change like a problem they care about but that they can’t solve. So as powerful as this all is, it won’t be enough because motivation isn’t the same thing as realization. So that’s what we’re going to cover, how to convert this newfound motivation into profound realizations for your leaders. The first thing we need is RWD. Now, don’t confuse that with WMD. RWD is simply an acronym for real world data. We’ve got to get access to how your leaders actually behave in real conversations up, down, across, and outside of your organization.
Ideally, we’d might come up or follow them around with a video camera. And as entertaining as that might be, “Hey, would you mind if I film this really awkward conversation you’re about to have,” most leaders in organizations would be a little uncomfortable with the idea. So you might be wondering, “Why not just get it from the horse’s mouth?” Just ask our leaders how they actually behave during conversations. It turns out, that doesn’t work out quite so well either. Because extensive research demonstrates that such questions only access the part of the human brain that stores how we think we should behave, not how we actually behave. So no wonder why the research demonstrates that self-reporting is so unreliable.
Now, for those of you who are more psychometrically-minded, you might be thinking, “Why don’t you just give them a personality test?” And actually, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea because the right assessment will help your leaders understand what truly motivates them, but will tell them very little about how they actually behave in dynamic situations like conversations. So if filming your leaders, asking them, and testing them won’t work, what to do? And this is where our personal case study comes in. It’s a research tool that was developed at Harvard that we converted into a developmental tool for leaders. And it’s recognized in qualitative research circles for both its validity and its reliability. And what our personal case study tool does is it gives you and your leaders a systematic, foolproof way to get access to how they really behave under real-life pressure.
