One of the hallmarks of highly effective executives is their willingness and ability to act proactively regarding their own and their employee’s professional development. I am constantly amazed, however, about the frequency in which we (I refer to my colleagues in the Society of Consulting Psychology of the American Psychological Association) encounter organizations that only begin to provide developmental help (training) for their employees when they get in trouble.
My first entrée into most organizations is to be called on to help save a derailed executive; to help that executive get back on track before he or she loses their job. Occasionally, I have turned down executive coaching gigs after conducting my initial assessment because I’ve determined that it’s simply too late to help the executive. Unfortunately, the executive has burned too many bridges and even if they made a 180 turnaround, their colleagues simply hated them too much to give the executive another chance. What a waste of talent and money.
So, the big question is, why do organizations wait so long and why aren’t they more proactive? The most obvious answer is…the executives who control the purse strings don’t want to spend the money for whatever reason…and they have plenty of reasons. Never mind that the replacement cost for a single derailed senior executive can easily be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (according to TRW and…
