Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen

Dr. David Day - Developing Leaders and Leadership

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 255

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Dr. David V. Day holds appointments as Professor of Psychological Science and Leadership and serves as the Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College in California (USA). He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development and is the author of the recent book titled “Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes.” David received the 2024 Eminent Scholar Award from the Network of Leadership Scholars at the Academy of Management and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association.

Quotes From Developing Leaders and Leadership

  • "Just because an activity is fun or enjoyable does not mean it is developmental. It perpetuates the predominant mindset that leadership development is a like a pass to an amusement park. You go on a bunch of rides, maybe play some games, have a laugh or two, and write it off as your developmental investment in leadership for the year."
  • "Attending a few workshops or programs spread out over time is not going to do much in terms of developing expert-level leadership. There needs to be
    an ongoing commitment to practicing one’s leadership to get the time
    and amount of deliberate practice to become that expert leader."
  • "The lack of evidence to support the effectiveness of leadership development in for-profit organizations and corporations is unsettling, to say the least."
  • "Sending a changed person back into an unchanged system tends to be an exercise in futility. A systems perspective incorporates environmental influence into the design and delivery of leader development interventions."


Resources Mentioned in This Episode


About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!


About  Scott J. Allen


My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00  

Okay, everybody, it is a special day on Phronesis. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Always love speaking with my guest who is with me today. I absolutely have admired his work since he really blew onto the scene in around 2000, and just, oh my gosh. I made a post the other day on LinkedIn, “I don't know that there's many people in the world that know more about this topic of leader development than David Day.” He holds appointments as Professor of Psychological Science & Leadership and serves as the Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College in California, USA. He's published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development. And is the author of the recent book titled ‘Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes.’ David received the 2024 Eminent Scholar Award from the Network of Leadership Scholars at the Academy of Management, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association. This has been a big year for awards, Sir. Congratulations. 

 

David Day  1:07 

Thank you, Scott. I'm flattered. I'm honored. I think the gods are telling me it's time to retire.

 

Scott Allen  1:14  

(Laughs) You're just going to go to a beach in Barbados or something.

 

David Day  1:17  

You know, you want to quit while you're ahead.

 

Scott Allen  1:21  

For George Costanza, I'm out.

 

David Day  1:22  

I like it. Personal role model. 

 

Scott Allen  1:28  

(Laughs) Well, I am so excited about this new book. And, as always, just really helping us think about leader development, leadership development in a new and different way, Dave. And so, you start off the book with something that I just absolutely love, which is kind of this notion of first principles around leader development. And so, I want to explore some of those because I think they're just foundational for listeners, and it's a nice entree into the work of this book because, for listeners, there's going to be links in the show notes, you'll know how exactly to access these materials and purchase the book. And if you are a leadership educator, if you do leader development, if you're a Chief Learning Officer, this is, I believe, foundational for your work. There are some incredible insights in this book, and it is based on science. So, can we go down that road, sir? Are you cool?

 

David Day  2:23 

Absolutely. Awesome.

 

Scott Allen  2:26  

So, first principles of leader development: You cannot make anyone develop as a leader. Principle number one. Okay. What do you think?

 

David Day  2:37  

Absolutely. Well, let me just kind of give you, first, a high-level overview of why first principles. I think first principles of thinking and design have been around for a long time in a lot of different places and forms and so forth, but not really in the leader development space. I think there's a reason for that because I think a lot of leader development is pretty much unprincipled and ad hoc, so there's no real underlying foundation about what are the core assumptions that you have about what you're delivering to help develop people as leaders and helping to develop collectives perfect their leadership or develop their leadership. And by the way, let me also say that these first principles are the guiding first principles at the Kravis Leadership Institute, where we have about 40 undergraduate emerging leaders working as student assistants, and part of their work is to develop themselves as leaders and to support others in their leader development journeys. So, these first principles are life principles. They're principles in action, at least in one venue. I'm not saying these first principles apply to everyone, or every organization, or every institute, but they're the ones that guide what we do at KLI, Kravis Leadership Institute. So, the first one is that you cannot make anyone develop as a leader. Seems kind of obvious, but how often do people get sent off to a leader development program or intervention or initiative, whether or not they really want to go? I've heard this in several other versions, which is, “Well, if someone doesn't want to develop as a leader, we'll just sit down with them and have a conversation and point out how important it is.” Well, that might get some short-term buy-in, but we know the leader development process is very lengthy, potentially over an entire career, an entire lifespan. How likely will that particular conversation actually motivate development over the longer term? And I think it won't. So, it's this notion of owning your development. You have to think of yourself as a leader; that's part of the identity development spiral that I talk about in the book and have written about elsewhere. And it's this notion of looking for opportunities to practice one's development in the so-called gym of life, everyday experience, as opposed to being sent off to develop in a program somewhere by people who think it would be good medicine for you to take. And it's usually something like the HR function as well. A side effect of that is a lot of people sit around waiting for HR to tell them to go off and develop, and my response is it's probably never a good idea to wait around for HR to tell you anything, let alone go out and develop. So, this notion is you've got to own your development. Whether or not you're designated as a high-potential employee in your organization, whether you have access to formal leadership development programs or not, you can do a lot in terms of using everyday experience to help develop yourself as a leader, but that motivation to learn has to be there within you. That's right, it's really an intrinsic motivation to become a better leader whether or not you have a leadership position, and that's something that we reinforce over and over again with our emerging leaders who are college students, many of which don't have formal leadership positions on campus. Some of the responses that I've heard from them are, “Well, how can I develop as a leader if I don't have a leadership position?” And that kind of fails the foundational assumption that leadership is a process, not a position. Some of the most powerful forms of leadership are informal leadership, and everyone can develop themselves to participate more effectively in informal leadership processes regardless of their formal positions. 

 

Scott Allen  7:08  

Yes. 100%. So, principle one, you cannot make anyone develop as a leader. Principle two, development requires dedicated work over a long period of time, And this just, I think, touches on, in many ways, the Achilles heel to… You kind of alluded to some programming that might come across as a little more snake oil than actual truth that will actually have a true impact on individuals. Because to think that we are going to develop any level of skill in anything in life, a three-hour workshop on a Thursday afternoon is not going to make Scott Allen a master carpenter. 

 

David Day  7:52  

Here, here. Here, here, indeed. And I think a lot of what we do in the name of leader development is just at odds with what we know about human development. And this is one of those issues which is you can't expect miracles. You send someone off for a short-term program, you can't really expect to have long-term change because it's really more the incremental progress people make by doing small things over a longer period of time that add up, rather than some big intervention that, ta-da, they emerge more fully formed as leaders. It rarely happens. And I think this is why there's widespread disappointment with the state of the field of leader development. We can talk about all of the money that's thrown at leader development, and estimates are in the billions with a ‘B’ globally, and yet, you don't find a lot of senior leaders satisfied with the investments that they're making in these leader development initiatives. Where else would they be so willing to put up with a lack of return on investment, or perceived return on investment and anything else that they invest in other than leader development? And I think it goes to the notion that it's a lot less tangible than some of the other investments that they make. You're really talking about transforming human potential into more skills, more capabilities, more ways to engage in effective leadership, and you're really talking about human behavior. And, as psychologists, we know that if we can explain 30% of human behavior, we're doing great, which drives economists nuts, by the way.

 

Scott Allen  9:38  

Yes. For me, this is principle number two: push back on this if you disagree, please, please, please. I know you will, but development requires dedicated work over a long period of time. Another thing I think that is an Achilles heel of ours as educators, as leader developers, is that oftentimes we don't scaffold that work well. I know you've done some work with Theo Dawson, and she goes granular as to if we want to develop someone's active listening skills. She defines skill as something you can practice. But, at times, it feels a little bit like a messed up Dojo where I'm walking in the door. I'm a white belt, yet some of the conversations are black belt-level conversations. None of it's been scaffolded; I'm literally put in a fight, getting my butt kicked, because we haven't scaffolded this work well. We haven't designed out what it is that we truly need to… Again, the simple analogy is just karate, but it's a beautiful analogy because it makes perfect sense. You don't start on a Boeing 737; you start on a Cessna. You don't start on the heart surgery; you start on a gallbladder. And I don't know that we have any sense of a clear, at least even theories. We don't even have the Suzuki method. It may not be correct or truth, but at least a school of ‘this is how we're going to go about that work,’ much less the long-term part of that work. Does that make sense? 

 

David Day  11:05  

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. This is an analogy that I've used before, and I think I might have used it on your show in a previous podcast about how people tend to think about leader development initiatives as a pass to an amusement park where you go off to someplace where you have a lot of fun, you're on some really cool rides, you're with people who you enjoy hanging out with. You have a fantastic time; you come away from the park and go, “Wow, that was a lot of fun. My leader development for the year is finished.” Well, it's not so much a pass to the amusement park where there's a lot of "leadertainment" going on. It's really more of a gym membership. And the gym membership is, one, we know that a lot of people have gym memberships who don't use them, and we know a lot of people who have gym memberships who do use them don't use them to really sweat and work out. They go to socialize. Fine, that's their choice. You can't make anyone develop as a leader. But back to your point about scaffolding. You go into the gym for the first time, and you don't try to bench press 300 pounds. That's not going to work, not very healthy, not very smart. So, you start small. And maybe you have a personal trainer, and that personal trainer is part of that scaffolding about ‘how do you approach this whole domain around building strength and building aerobic capacity if you've never done it before?’ So, you start, and you know, by scaffolding to higher and higher levels, you build the kind of strength and aerobic capacity that you didn't have before. But you don't just come out of the gym after one session and say, “Well, I'm there; I'm done for the year. So, voila.” It's got to be something where you do smaller things over a longer period of time, which is related to what James Clear talks about in ‘Atomic Habits.’ It's not really some big thing you do once or twice that really matters in terms of long-term change and development; it's doing smaller things that add up over a longer period of time that really are the things that contribute to change in development and in this particular domain of leader development that help you to become a more complex, more effective leader.

 

Scott Allen  13:29  

I'm literally listening right now to BJ Fogg's book, ‘Tiny Habits.’ He's at Stanford. For listeners, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It is a great book and an interesting way how to think about behavior change based on science. So, I love the work of Clear; I love the work of BJ Fogg. Dave, we need to write little, baby, tiny, subatomic habits, and we'll become millionaires. If you'd like, if you're interested, let me know.

 

(Laughter)

 

David Day  13:58  

Absolutely. You got me at ‘millionaires.’ So, one of the things that we do is we have a competency model at KLI that's around courage, creativity, and collaboration, and it's a way of focusing on the language of leadership or a particular context. But let me tell you how this competency model translates into some of the more kind of micro-level skills that Theo Dawson talks about, or the kinds of small-level changes, the atomic habits, that Clear talks about. So, we have these three meta-competencies: courage, creativity, and collaboration. Under each of those three, we have three capabilities that define the competency. Under each capability, there are five attributes. So, you can see we're drilling down. And under each of these attributes, we offer specific things that people, things, and behaviors that students can do in their everyday lives to work on a particular attribute that ramps up to a capability that defines a competency. So, we kind of give them a road map. No one can think in terms of this broad overarching scale of this competency model in terms of its depth; the three at the mega level are really kind of the tip of the iceberg. But one of the things that we also do with our students is to have them focus on just one competency to work on for the academic year. 

 

Scott Allen  15:33

Yep. Love it. 

 

David Day  15:33

Then, when you think about courage, how do you work on courage? Well, if they then have a roadmap or kind of a flow chart that they can go down to a very small level to see how to practice their courage that's tied to an attribute and a capability and a competency, then suddenly, it kind of demystifies this whole developmental process. It also addresses one of the biggest challenges we have of working with students, actually, working with anyone, how do you know you're developing? How do you know change is really happening? But if you focus on these small kinds of behaviors that are observable, and you match them with reflection and feedback, suddenly, it becomes a very powerful force for change.

 

Scott Allen  16:18  

Yes. And what I love also about that is that I don't have to have a position of authority, I don't even have to be president of the student body, I can be building those foundations and I can practice, which is awesome. Because that's another challenge - we don't often have a practice field for some of this. 

 

David Day  16:35 

Exactly. And sometimes, when you talk about practicing your leadership, you kind of get the ‘my eyes glaze over’ kind of response. “Practice, I just do. I'm just going to go be a leader. I'm just going to go…” Well, you should practice before you do it, like anything else. If you really want to do it well, you probably should practice. So, how do you practice your leadership? And that was one of the things that we wanted to kind of demystify. And how to make that something that's tangible and accessible and doable in everyday life and this so-called gym of life that is everybody's everyday, ongoing experience.

 

Scott Allen  17:14  

Yeah. So, now we're kind of dancing a little bit around number three. The extent of leadership is learned, it's learned through experience. So, we're learning through this activity of practicing, engaging in the work. Sometimes some of those elements that we could be practicing might not feel like we're practicing leadership, but we're building some of those foundational abilities. 

 

David Day  17:37 

 Absolutely. That third first principal owes a debt of gratitude, a tip of the cap to Morgan McCall, who's talked with some of his colleagues Lombardo and Eichinger and others about the lessons of experience and recasting leadership development around experience. But the point is what is not an experience sitting in a class listening to a lecture on Maslow's hierarchy of needs or Fiedler's contingency model of leadership is an experience, neither of which is probably very developmental. And that's kind of a segue into the fourth first principle which is what defines a developmental experience. What helps to define a developmental experience as one that has real developmental punch or potential is those experiences that combine aspects of assessment challenge and support. 

 

Scott Allen  18:36 

Yeah. This goes back to some of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), which then probably stems from Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development type. 

 

David Day  18:44 

Back to scaffolding. That's what scaffolding is based on. Zone of proximal development, or what both Theodos and James Clear called the Goldilocks zone, which has a little bit less of an academic ring to it but probably resonates with non-academics a little bit better. Which is you want to do things that are a little bit out of your comfort zone, but you don't want to jump off the deep end if you don't know how to swim. This notion of assessment provides data about where you are or what you are like. The challenge is something that can be designed by any individual that's tied to their ongoing experiences and takes them a little bit out of their comfort zone. That's really a challenge. Anything that takes you out of your comfort zone, a bit of a stretch assignment, is something that is a good indicator of a developmental experience, and then having the support around you to help codify that learning. Support comes a lot from feedback that you get from other people who, either through formal or informal processes, respond to how you behaved in ways that take you out of your comfort zone. And then, there's a feedback cycle, which goes back into forming assessment data that helps form the next challenge and gets more support. And so, there's this ongoing cycle of experience that is really at the core of open systems thinking, which is another reason why I think programs don't deliver the way that they should, that they're really based more on closed system thinking. You have the motivation to develop, ideally, when you come into some leadership development program. There are some activities that happen that transform that motivation into learning. That learning is then transformed into behavior that you’re taught and expected to take back into your job and back into your leadership context, but there's no feedback cycle in a program. It ends there, and it's kind of like a hope and a prayer that people are going to use this stuff, and the chances are they don't have the reasons for that. It's back to this notion: sending a changed person back to an unchanged system is an exercise in futility.

 

Scott Allen  21:01 

Yeah. And something my mind is always thinking about is, let's say it's a healthcare context, and I'm training you on how to use a piece of equipment, there's feedback occurring very quickly. Or back to that surgeon, there's feedback coming back very quickly. Or that pilot, there's feedback coming back very quickly. “Okay, we landed the plane. We're okay and we're safe.” They learned. We're good. (Laughs)

 

David Day  21:22  

Thank goodness they learned. 

 

Scott Allen  21:25 

So, how do we facilitate that in leader development? How do we? It's a beautiful puzzle. And again, you and I have talked with Jonathan Reams about the future of development. And maybe if I get to the holodeck and I get into the simulator then I can show that I'm skilled and I'm working at a certain level, and maybe that's in the future down the road. But yeah. Oof.

 

David Day  21:50  

Well, I think that there's a way forward, but it's just a very different way, and it's probably one that has less monetary potential. I think that's a big issue to get beyond the marketplace of leadership development, or leader development, where programs are commodities. These commodities tend to be very expensive, and there are people who make their careers in the marketplace of leader development, marketing, and delivering these commodities. But all of these, for the most part, Are things that you go to other people for. Can we flip the script and help people learn to be their own developmental designers? It starts with this notion of ‘you got to own your development.’ So, if you really want to develop, you need to own that development, which means then you need some help in terms of, “Where do I go now?” And, too often, we say, “Go to this program, go to that training, go to that or the other.” But what if we helped people learn to think in design principle ways such that they could design their curriculum for development in their gym of life, their ongoing experiences that built-in aspects of assessment, challenge, and support, and bought into this notion of its cycles of events that really matter over time that contribute to development? But it's all individualized. We're not sending everybody to the same program and engaging in the same things because developmental needs are individualized. Yet, we don't all need the same kinds of help in terms of developing different capabilities or competencies. Doing it this way also helps to address the other issue that has always been an obstacle in tailored individualized development, which is how do you scale it? However, in organizations, it means that people who are the historical owners of leader development have to give up some of that control.

 

Scott Allen  24:02 

Yeah. But this is also an area, theoretically, where, if we have some individualized learning plans, and we have the assistance of some technology, potentially, we can hone in on and better support individuals where they need to develop and grow. That's really, really cool. That's interesting.

 

David Day  24:21 

The notion of having personalized development plans is not new or particularly innovative. They've been around, but it's too often tied to, “Okay, you need to learn how to be a better communicator, so we're going to send you to this training program, and you're going to learn charismatic communication or something.” It's not. Developing a plan to take you to what other people have to offer is developing a plan so you can better leverage ongoing experience to help accelerate and be a catalyst for your development.

 

Scott Allen  24:56 

Yeah. Almost developing in place; yeah, I love this. I love it. 

 

David Day  25:02  

That's a different way of thinking about it, and I think there's been, historically, a lot of obstacles to that in organizations for some good reasons. One, it's an unfortunate fact that a lot of people who emerge into or are promoted into leadership positions don’t start thinking about leadership until their mid-career. They’re too focused on their technical capabilities. I'm hoping that as we push things down the pyramid a little bit and start working with college students and even high school students about the importance of becoming a leader and how you can own that over your entire lifespan, over your entire career, that this is now something that's already in place for a lot of these emerging leaders as they enter the workforce. So, this is already how they're starting to think about development and not waiting around for HR or another organizational function to develop them. Because we know the statistics on high-potential programs, we know how limited those opportunities are, and we also know how much potential we're possibly wasting massively in those initiatives. So, it's not really stated in the first principles explicitly, but in terms of you can't make anyone develop, you have to own your development, it’s the notion that everyone has leadership potential.

 

Scott Allen  26:31  

Sure. Well, okay, so there's evidence-based practices that support the development of leaders in leadership. Principle five, let's go there.

 

David Day  26:40 

Yeah. Well, you know, when you think about the subtitle to the book, my book, about principles, practices, and processes, we touched on principles and needing to have some principle-based developmental initiatives, but the practices and processes are really the things that provide the developmental pathways for people to build their leadership capabilities over time. And we noticed that there are some things out there that have some scientific value, some scientific rigor, some scientific backing, or you want to call it an evidence-based backing, to the fact that they work and a lot of things that don't. So, just thinking about two very basic things that are open to anyone in terms of developing… Two processes that are available to anyone to help them develop as a leader are reflection and feedback. So, these are not things that are mysterious or that are esoteric or rare, they're available to everyone if they just know how to develop them and practice them and make it a part of their everyday lives. But then, we know that there's a lot of rubbish out there as well, things that people pay a lot of money for, but we just don't have any evidence behind them whatsoever. And people pay a lot of money for these kinds of things in the name of, “Well, they're engaging.” “Well, they're fun.” “Well, they're entertaining.” This is especially the case in higher education. And it's what my friends at Rice University will call "leadertainment." So, it's not really evidence-based developmental practices or processes; it's all about having fun and having a good time. It's the amusement part of the approach to development. So, what are the things that have some evidence behind them, and how do we make them more accessible to people and readily accessible with little or no cost? Related to this is the notion of assessments. When you talk about assessments for development, it's a tried and true approach that a lot of organizations use and use well, but it's often the case that the assessments that form the backbone of assessment for development are very pricey and very proprietary. Behind a paywall, or they're owned by the provider. We know there are as good, if not better, assessments that are widely available for free. And here's one, and I use this in my classes because, one, it has evidence behind it, and two, it's free. We all know personality is important as part of self-awareness and understanding what you are like. How do you get to a better understanding of what you were like? Using structured personality assessments is a good way of getting some language to understand what you are like. And getting some data about what you are like. One of the ones that's widely available and free is the International Personality Item Pool, originally by Goldberg, and it's now free online. If you search for IPIP, which is an unfortunate anagram there, it will take you to an assessment that you can do online through short forms or long forms. The short form will take you maybe 15 minutes, and the long form may take twice as long. Both have valid evidence behind them. You get a really nice feedback report from that, again, for free. And the reason why it's free is because the people who have developed this platform are developing international norms around this particular assessment. So, it's not only just general norms, it's really tailored for your age, your sex, where your home country is, your region. So, these are high-quality norms that also make the feedback report much more relevant to you as an individual. And you get not only a feedback report on the Big 5 personality factors, but the sub-facets as well. It's a great way of opening up a discussion about what personality is, how personality is related to leadership, and then what you are like. This sounds pretty basic to people who have backgrounds in psychology. For those who don't, this whole notion of individual differences is like, “My God, you mean people aren't all just like me?” Here's a practice that I do when I do personality in early days of a leader development seminar that I teach at Claremont McKenna, the students complete... And these are small-group seminars, so 12 to 15 students. It gets a little bit unwieldy with really large classes, but it can be done. The students all take the IPIP, get a feedback report, and then send me their feedback report. What I do is compile it all into an Excel sheet with each student's identifying name on it, and, by the way, my own IPIP results as well, and I share them with the class. We use that as a way of talking about how this is valuable because knowing what people are like will give you a lot of good information about what they're likely to do in terms of their tendencies and also what it is that they like in terms of other people because we tend to like others who are like us. So, this offers a foundation because what I will do is then, at every class, put together small groups that deliberately manipulate different personality profiles, and they're aware of that. And so, they can get kind of a teaser, a taster, a realistic preview of what it's like to work in groups and teams where You know people are like you or different from you. Maybe this is a little bit too much background information, but it's a way of starting to tailor the developmental processes in ways that are accessible to people who don't have access to major providers. They're not given opportunities to develop in their organizations, how they can own this on their own. 

 

Scott Allen  33:22  

Yeah. And what I appreciate that also, it's how do we go to the evidence-based resources that can help us benefit and grow and develop, So, David, as we begin to wind down our time together, what I would love for you to kind of share is just anything else you want to highlight that you explore in the book that listeners might be interested in. What stands out for you?

 

David Day  33:47  

Well, I think we touched on this notion of thinking beyond programs. I think they reached their limits… We know their limitations, and I think that they reach their limits in terms of what can be delivered. That doesn't mean that we should get rid of programs because I think programs can serve a purpose, especially training programs. And there's a big meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology that shows that leadership training programs can work, but they're different from developmental programs, and part of it is this notion of tailoring the needs of the individual and also being able to use the ongoing experience as a source for development, whereas the training program kind of assumes everybody starts at the same place, changes in the same way, ends at the same spot. That's very different from developmental assumptions. So, how do we help create these kind of developmental systems? And how do we help individuals create their own developmental systems? Well, I think this is where there's the potential for the talent management function in organizations that think about development in different ways. Rather than sending people off to develop in different programs or different places, is how can we work with you to become your own designer of developmental systems? What would you need? What kind of assessments can we help you with? Maybe we can do some coaching around how to create challenges and how to get yourself out of a comfort zone in your everyday job that you can then reflect on, get support on, and also put that into play as input in the next cycle of development. Maybe it's coaching. Coaching is becoming a lot more accessible and a lot more affordable. And with AI, it's going to become even more accessible and affordable. So, there's that whole other support mechanism that I think has been under-leveraged or, let's just say, put on a pedestal for only certain people in senior-level positions. It's a very valuable component in the developmental process; it could be made more widely available. So, I think changing mindsets about what it is we need to deliver to people in organizations can enhance the developmental potential of individuals and the overall leadership capacity of an organization.

 

Scott Allen  36:21  

Well, you're thinking about it in very, very cool ways. Because I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think there's so much opportunity, and I know that you love this puzzle. How do we create a world with people who are better prepared to do this very, very difficult work? Because it's not easy, and I think it still feels like we are just in the very early days of understanding how to do this work well. And I don't know if you agree with that statement, but it's one thing I love about it because it feels like we're at base camp of Mount Everest. And there are some ways we can do the work better, more efficiently, and more effectively, and hopefully, that translate into an individual who is better prepared with the skill, with the knowledge, with the maturity to assume these very complex roles.

 

David Day  37:16 

Yeah, I think so. It was John Gardner, in his book on leadership published back in 1990, 30 plus years ago, who predicted that by the mid-21st century, we'll look back on our current practices on leadership development and realize how primitive they were. It's not a direct quote, but it's this notion of, “We'll look back on our leadership development from the 20th century and realize how primitive those practices and processes really are.” And I think the notion of giving control to the human operator of their own experiences and their owners of their own development is a good place to start.

 

Scott Allen  37:56 

Yeah. Well, you just reminded me, I'm bringing Nathan Eva -- he doesn't know this yet, but I'm bringing him six books. I think they're from the 70s, Dave; you probably own these books. Like leadership on the battlefield, Jerry Hunt, kind of. They were green, these green books that… (Laughs)

 

David Day 38:14  

I know them well. I know them well.

 

Scott Allen  38:16 

And so, I told Nate that I have these books. “I'm bringing you a present to the ILA.” So, I'm bringing them these six books that I have;  Schriesheim,and Hunt, and I forget some of the… Chester.

 

David Day  38:31  

Schriesheim. Yeah. All of those are really, really great. There's some good stuff in those books. 

 

Scott Allen  38:38 

There is, but it's also you look at them and you're like, “Oof, we've come a long way.”

 

David Day  38:43  

Sometimes it's why you study history to realize just how far you've come, or not.

 

Scott Allen  38:49  

Exactly. Well, as you know, I always end these conversations by asking what you've been reading, streaming, or listening to and what's caught your attention in recent times. And then we'll wind down, sir.

 

David Day  39:00  

Sure. Well, one of the things that I'm in the middle of is reading Robert Caro's ‘The Power Broker.’ About Robert Moses and the fall of New York City. It's a classic of political leadership and political influence. And I started reading it again. By the way, it's not to be taken lightly because it's like 1,300 pages. Yeah, it's massive. But it's celebrating its 50th anniversary, and it's really considered to be something that's a classic biography by this guy, Robert Caro, who still has the last volume to deliver on a five-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. So, he's a great researcher; for one, he's also a fantastic writer. So, I took this on because it was the 50th year. I started it at one time, and I got distracted by other things in other places. 1300 pages is a commitment, right?

 

Scott Allen  40:01

That is a commitment. That's next level.

 

David Day  40:02

But just let me tell you what I'm streaming. One of my favorite streaming platforms is the Criterion Channel. And so, there are so many interesting movies that you can't find elsewhere. What I like about the criterion channels is that they also group them by genre. So, I spent a few weeks, months in the whole noir genre, the dark things. And now, I'm on the other end of the continuum on screwball comedies. So, I've kind of gone from like Orson Welles and The Third Man to William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man. So, it's entertainment. I'm not finding any great leadership lessons and owners, but it's a way of decompressing.

 

Scott Allen  40:49  

Oh, that's awesome. I'll put links to that in the show notes, for sure. Sir, as always, so appreciate you, appreciate your work. Thank you so much for stopping by today. For listeners, you have all the links in the show notes, so click on those to access those. I will even have a link to the IPIP in there. And you know what? I look forward to seeing you in Chicago. 

 

David Day  41:13

Yes. See you at ILA in a few weeks. Wow. 

 

Scott Allen  41:15

Okay. Be well.

 

 

[End Of Recording]