The corporate leadership training market is expected to grow by USD 15.78 billion between 2021-2025. Greatness can only be achieved if companies will embrace science-based methodologies in helping drive self-awareness, emotional intelligence, inclusivity, and psychological safety that solve organizational challenges.
Alex Draper has been at the forefront advocating for change. He has been using brain-based techniques to create lasting habits that leaders will take with them outside of the classroom and into their daily lives. This transfer of knowledge is what has been lacking in our industry.
Who Exactly Is Alex Draper?
Alex Draper is the CEO OF DX Learning Solutions, a partner in progressive leadership training that taps into the powerful combination of behavioral psychology and experimental learning to expose and eliminate bad leadership and prepare leaders to put people first.
Alex’s company designs deliver and license its products to enhance its leadership development efforts. For smaller organizations, DX helps build, shift and sustain human-centric cultures.
It starts by having a strong culture to build from. One person can’t do anything alone, and DX possesses a strong culture that any organization can borrow and thrive. How can you teach others what you don’t do yourself? In their culture, they ask themselves specific questions that are in Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Advantage:
- Why do we exist?
- How do we behave?
- What do we do?
- How do we succeed?
- What is important?
- Who does what?
Every Monday morning, Alex and his team start by reminding themselves of the answers to those six questions, which is how they have managed to establish a strong culture. They give feedback and are also dedicated to creating psychological safety.
Not only do they have a strong culture, but they also have a strong six-step process for how they go about designing leadership training programs that work.
- Growth Mindset
Alex leverages Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset by putting participants at the start of their programs into a perspective where their brains are excited to learn and try new things. They ensure they used growth language throughout.
Carol Dweck writes, “In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail-or if you’re not the best- it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows individuals to value what they are doing regardless of the outcome. They are tackling problems, working on essential issues, and charting new courses. “
To do this Alex embraces vulnerability, one of the biggest stimulants to adopting the growth mindset.
- Self-Awareness
Do you know what self-awareness means? Self-awareness involves being aware of thyself, including traits, behaviors, and feelings.
Self-awareness will improve your skills by recognizing what you do well and what you need to improve. It will help you understand how employees perceive your behavior. It will also strengthen your relationships at work and at home.
- Acceptance
When you make someone aware of something they weren’t aware of before, it’s hard on the brain. The brain is designed to be right! So we use science to show people it’s ok, what they are lacking is actually what every human lacks due to the way their brains trick them every day. This lowers the threat to the learner.
- Best Practices
Now you have participants in the right frame of mind and awareness, They want to improve. You can start showing them what great looks like. Many training programs, especially self-paced learning that is the fad right now, go straight to teaching, without getting the learner’s brain both ready to learn and believing it needs to learn.
- Application
To form a new habit, someone needs to see how that habit would work out their reality to answer the question, “what’s in it for me”. . People won’t change unless they know the change is better than the status quo. So we show them.
- Reinforcement
The hard work begins with reinforcement to ensure you don’t go back to your old ways. Easy to learn something new, harder to actually make sure it becomes a habit. Humans don’t like change. So DX has a way to reinforce the learning and improve the chances of transfer and habit formation.
Wrapping Up
The science-based methodologies include a growth mindset, self-awareness, acceptance, best practices, application, and reinforcement.
Are you looking to become a great leader or build a great leadership training experience for your team or company? You can join Alex’s leadership training revolution. You can also visit his website for more information.
