Leadership – The Challenges of Training

At Brath, we’re constantly working to improve our leadership — just like we do with every other area of the business. But it’s not easy.

On a personal level, a large part of my work involves our leadership team at Brath. When I’m not involved with our other companies in the small group, that’s where I focus my attention. I think we’ve come a long way — we work in a fairly structured way to improve what we do. Still, there’s one thing that keeps bothering me: it’s incredibly hard to set a clear standard for how we develop our managers.

I’m looking for advice — but good advice

For the most part, we do the work ourselves at Brath. We try to find a model that fits us, stick with it until we find something better. At the moment, we’re loosely following The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and we’re relatively happy with that framework — it seems to work well in our teams.

But this spring, we’ve started looking for resources and training programs specifically for our managers. The leadership team works well together, but we lack experience, and we know it’s time to level up.

The problem with leadership training is that there are hundreds of thousands of programs out there — and as a critical thinker, I can’t help but conclude that if they truly worked, there would be fewer of them by now, simply because the demand would decline. Just like motivational talks, many of them seem designed to make you feel inspired while you’re there, but leave little lasting value.

I’m looking for something more solid, something sustainable — and I haven’t yet found anything I really believe in.
So I’m asking for your recommendations.
Tell me: what model, training, or book has actually worked for you?

Thanks in advance!