"The radical departure from the arena of short-duration seminars" (by Jean-Pierre Bal)

  (this 2002-document was updated in June 2007)

  "It was in 1991 that a group of MBA students in Paris, France, participated in what were then my first courses in leadership (in leading). A major conclusion of that experience is that in short-length learning modes and trimester-based course environments it is not possible to address the wealth of aspects the learning of leadership entails. During the ensuing five years, and while I was renewing the scope and contents of the 1960s "4 Dimensions of Leadership" seminar-program, I developed a series of satellite-modules supplementing the key-program. Therein were embedded many of the "other" issues found in the vast realm of leadership development --in the domain of how to become a more effective leader. From the surveys I conducted eighteen months after a given 4 Dimensions program-seminar, an unsurprising confirmation emerged: only 12% of the participants applied at least 35% of their key-learning in the given seminars. That information accelerated the radical change I was bringing into the development of executive leaders. Statistics from other sources worldwide reported similar findings. It became obvious that thirty hours worth of seminars, and some form of post-program coaching, would not suffice. Eventually, the key-program plus the satellite-modules I had developed represented more than three hundred and fifty hours in total, or twelve times more than a "classical" seminar. The new cluster of courses would become the Graduate School's Rootstock programs. These are still being offered today, and were also the basis for launching a group of sister-programs leading to a recognised degree.

For the degree-programs it was in 1998 that I completed the sketching and design of a comprehensive new framework, encompassing all of the previous elements, and based on a progressive, systemic, person-and-environments focused, and relatively boundary-free mode of learning leadership. That is how the Thierry Graduate School's Masters in Leadership degree-program saw the light. As a corollary outcome the Masters program would also fill the void left by MBA programs, and by many short-term executive seminars. When viewed from the angle of the history of civilisations around the world, it also made a lot more sense. Indeed, when one looks at the earliest records of leader-development, written more than 2500 years ago, it boils that there are several trigger-events or waves of circumstances in the life of leaders;  that there is a singular or leader-individual set of growth-elements; and that the whole process of becoming a  leader, whether for better or for worse, never happens overnight. In our present-day society we have lots of  "overnights": these are the  "now!", the "by tomorrow morning", or "by next month is not possible" That attitude must be relinquished in, among others, leadership education and training --who is able to learn overnight, let be in a few days or weeks ? 

In my role as a leader-educator, in the grooming of leaders, l obviously also travelled full circle. On the hand I  benefited from a type of childhood education that groomed me for a leader-role, and, on the another hand, it took me some years to decipher the developmental "leader-mechanics" in a back-forward-back type of personal life-track analysis. Eventually the self-rooted intuition reconciles with the external-world reality: it takes many-many years to become a better leader, and to remain one. 

Finally, the Graduate School's  practice-oriented programs include a series of steppingstones and other tools allowing leaders to progress through the dense forest of leadership, and more comprehensively than through "ropes-only" courses. That is why the Graduate School, as a leadership training center, is not active in the "arena" of short-duration and open-type of executive seminars in leadership and change management. It is our long-haul type of learning and development track that has meanwhile proven to be very successful. "

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