How Styles Affect Promotion Potential

From Gary Salton's Organizational Research Blog

"I Opt" research has revealed a statistically significant connection between "I Opt" strategic styles and organizational rank (e.g., manager, VP, CEO). The research is also able to reveal why this condition exists. The connection between style and rank is not a mere association. It is causal in the sense that X causes Y.

The only way the relationships will change is if information flows change.The implications for Leadership Development are clear. The current stress on skill sets and techniques is necessary but not sufficient. Prospective leaders must master a sequence of processing patterns suitable to the level to which they aspire. What works at one level will be suboptimal for another. There is no "one" leadership strategy suited to all levels.

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The findings reported in this blog expose a gap in current leadership development programs. A focus on techniques, methods and practices is valuable but insufficient. Candidates for leadership must be taught how to adjust their information processing profile to match the level that they are targeting."

Read the rest of the article ...

Learning & Motivation

I received this e-mail from Gary Salton at iOpt, and the research he cites is compelling.

"The research uses data from 184 learners participating in 5 classes conducted in Texas, Arizona and North Carolina. The research revealed two different kinds of motivation. One is between 3 and 6 times more powerful than the other and they respond to totally different kinds of initiatives and interventions.

[We] also applied the above motivation research to the Kolb Learning Model.

It shows a way of calculating the optimal allocation of learning strategies for any particular class. It shows that strategies that ignore motivation and those that incorporate it will yield significantly different results both practically and statistically."

You can read the full study on Gary's Google blog at http://garysalton.blogspot.com/2007/08/adding-motivation-to-kolb-learning.html . You can also see it at his website at http://www.oeinstitute.org/ under Recent Publications.