In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Jeff Mitchell, head of Proteus’s leadership development practice, about the core philosophy that leadership development should focus on building durable, multi‑use skills rather than delivering information. Jeff argues that skill‑centric development is the most efficient investment for both individuals and organizations because skills are adaptable, authentic, and transferable across contexts. He outlines the Engage‑Tell‑Show‑Do framework, which starts with the end‑state (the skill in action), works backward through demonstration, concise content delivery, and engaging activities that surface personal habits. The conversation highlights the trade‑offs of this approach: it requires smaller group sizes, higher facilitator competence, and more feedback loops, making it harder to scale compared to traditional lecture‑style training. Jeff explains the pitfalls of non‑skill‑focused programs—shallow learning, lack of sustained behavior change, and no feedback for real‑world application. He offers a practical starting point for leaders: identify moments where learners can practice a skill and receive immediate feedback, often through post‑training manager involvement. The episode closes with a brief nod to future possibilities, suggesting AI could create new practice opportunities that were unavailable a decade ago.
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Welcome to the Proteus Leader Show, a podcast for forward-looking leaders driving transformation in their organizations, within their teams, or for themselves. Your host today is a senior leader at Proteus International, a firm that partners with companies around the world to make true transformation easier through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching. If you're looking for fresh perspectives and practical insights, can take back to work today, you're in the right place. Enjoy the episode.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Jeff Mitchell, my longtime friend and partner at Proteus and head of our leadership development practice. Before joining Proteus, Jeff had his own consultancy, Foreman Green, and before that, he was the president of Ridge Associates, a training and development organization. His focus has always been on making leadership development both more human and more impactful. So welcome to the show, Jeff.
Oh, it's very joyful to be with you. Glad to be here.
I've loved being your friend and partner over the decades, and I believe our listeners will really appreciate hearing your point of view about how to develop leaders and how we incorporate that at Proteus. So Let's explore.
What's interesting is that if we had this conversation 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 40 years ago, I think it would be pretty similar, even though the world is different in so many ways.
Oh, I think that's right. Yes, I think that's exactly right. We could go down a whole nother path about this, but I like to think that a lot of what we do And what we help people with is pretty timeless.
Yeah, there's an evergreen quality to it.
Yeah.
So let's dig in.
Okay. So as you just pointed out, we've always focused on building skills in our leadership development programs. So can you share why that's critical from your point of view and how to do it?
Leadership development at any level needs to be impactful. Leadership ability, capability is actually stronger and an efficient use of people's time and the organization's money. And I think teaching skills is the most impactful, efficient investment you can make, because instead of learning information or learning one-note techniques, you have more utility. That they can be used in more situations. They're more adaptable and they're more authentic to the person who's using them. Like throwing a ball or farming in a field, anything you teach someone, the more it can be replicated in an authentic way, the more effective and lasting it's likely to be.
Oh, I love that. You and I are very aligned about this. I really agree. A, a dear friend of mine is the person who started Proteus with me even before we were working together, used to call the kinds of skills that we teach in our courses core multi-use skills, which I think really goes to what you're saying. It's not just a one-trick pony. If you learn how to, for instance, listen well, there are literally hundreds of situations where that's going to benefit you.
And it's more valuable to learn how to do it than to hear it's important. Yeah, that leaders are expected to do it. That information is relevant, necessary, but not sufficient.
Share with our listeners, what's our approach? How do we do that? How do we make it skill-building and not just informational?
The simple secret ingredient that really isn't a secret is you start with the end in mind. You envision what is the leader doing in a particular context or the topic that we want to teach? Let's use listening as an example. What are they doing? And then let's design the learning experience so that doing can happen in the learning experience versus assume that it will happen if the learner has some new information. So what is the practice? Make sure it can happen as close to real life in the session and have direct feedback available to that person. So they try it and they get instant feedback and assistance integrating both the new skill and the feedback. So that's the end. Let's make sure that they're doing it and getting feedback on it. Then the next step is to work backwards and say, okay, for them to be successful in that practice, what do they have to see demonstrated? What kind of example do they need to have a 3-dimensional understanding of what they heard earlier? So that's the demonstration, the show before the do. And then you back up again. And then the part that tends to get the most attention in a training, what is the content of the training? What's the material, the topic? We look at how to make that as short as possible, give just enough for them to understand the demonstration, be able to draw the necessary insights, and then do what is demonstrated. So we keep it quite limited, and I can share a little bit more about what's in that tell portion. But then we back up one more step, and we think about how to engage learners. In that tell portion. So they enter into it curious about what they might do differently. So one of the things we teach people is about working styles. And when we introduce it, we ask people to cross their arms. And when they cross their arms, they go, okay, now cross it the other way. I'm sure many facilitators listening have done this. And when they switch their arms, they realize how uncomfortable it is. And how automatic it was to cross their arms The right way, right in quotes. So yeah, and engage stuff like that gets them curious about, okay, well, how might my habits be something to consider? And then you get into the tell.
Oh, I love that. So engage, tell, show, do. And we've talked about this a lot, this is nothing new, but if you were going to learn how to build cabinets or dance ballet, you'd use those same steps.
Yes, if you wanted to help someone actually be a better cabinetmaker or ballet dancer. If it was just passive curiosity, you could just explain something or tell a story, and that would be enough. But it's not enough. Now, I think one of the reasons why skill-building designs are not the only designs for learning is because there are trade-offs. You can't cover as many topics if one of the disciplines is people will practice and get feedback.
Yeah.
You can't have 100 people experience the same thing as 20 people in a particular training design. It's harder to find ways for authentic practice and feedback with greater numbers of people.
Yeah.
And our designs take a higher skill level from the facilitator, the trainer leading the session, to hit those different steps from the engage Through the interactive telling where it's collaborative, a clear demonstration, and then the practice with the feedback. That's a taller order than subject matter expert presenting PowerPoint slides.
Oh, 100%. As I'm listening to you, one of the things that implies is that the facilitator has to have a pretty high degree of capability, him or herself, to actually demonstrate The skill. They have to be good at it. They can't just be talking about it. Yeah.
Now they don't have to be perfect at it. This is a skill that's developed, but they have to be good enough for people to see it in action. Yes.
Yeah. Get a positive demonstration. I love this balanced view. So you've talked about some of the downsides of skill building, some of the trade-offs. So let's talk about the pros by talking about what happens when you don't do it. What happens in your experience when leadership development doesn't support skill building?
Then it's quite a shallow experience, both in terms of what changes. You know, this is a surface-level experience. People went to something, they're no different after it. If there are small changes, that's a tip I can use, or I like that idea, it's unlikely to be sustained because they haven't exercised those muscles. And even if they have, when they go back to the real world, they're They're not getting any feedback and they're thinking, that didn't work. If it doesn't work and they don't know why it didn't work because they didn't get feedback on it. So if you want to have actual change in what people can do, then you're going to have to invest in more of those steps that we discussed than less.
That's a great answer. And I already knew this, but it reinforced this, that it's about the ability to behave differently consistently.
Yeah, think about anything. If you're going to change your behavior, how much effort that takes. So the way we do this is we first give people reasons to make that effort. That's that engage, build both awareness and motivation to make a shift.
Yeah.
And then the sharing of the information, the telling, we make sure it's interactive so we can hear back. How is it landing? What questions do people have? In a one-way lecture, don't get a window into their readiness for trying this out or what you should emphasize in the demonstration. Yeah. And then when you get to the demonstration, that's usually when the phrase, the penny drops, the aha moment. They go, oh, I see that. And we'll often add a negative demonstration where we do the opposite of the skill we're recommending, and they can see life with or without the skill. And that gets people energized enough, seeing the benefit enough, that they'll take that vulnerable risk and practice something they're unfamiliar with, or it's in a different sequence than they might normally do.
Yeah.
And work or not work in that initial attempt— and if you think about your first time driving a car, or your first time trying to sing, or your first time trying to give a talk, you're not going to be great at first. But you get enough insight into what could happen or what to do differently with that feedback that you're motivated to keep going. And then the learning becomes a little more self-sustaining. You've taught someone to fish, and now they can go out and try fishing and learn themselves.
Yeah, we always try and practice what we preach, but we also promise practical takeaways. So what can our listeners do starting today, if they're leaders, to make sure that they and their team develop the needed leadership skills to succeed?
The simplest thing to do is consider where are the opportunities for the leaders that need development to practice and get feedback. If you look in your training and it's not there, is this something that happens after the training with the manager? Just look for where can people try it and get feedback on it. That to me would be the place to start.
Very simple, wonderful answer. Oh, thank you so much. We're so aligned in this area, but I love hearing that.
It's easy to talk about, but it's hard to do. It's hard to do this and to sustain this kind of discipline. It's back to your comment earlier. This is an evergreen principle that this is how humans learn and get better, but It's hard to do. So maybe in a future conversation we can talk about how to use new things like AI to give people new opportunities to practice that they might not have had 10 years ago.
Oh, that's great. And to continue and sustain whatever changes that they're able to make. Yeah. Okay. Next one. Oh, you're so welcome. And listeners, you can find out more about the work we do and how Proteus supports leaders to grow and evolve. You can just go to proteus-international.com. And click on What We Do. So, thank you, Jeff.
Thank you, Erika.
And thank you all for listening. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.
Thanks for listening to the Proteus Leader Show. We hope you're leaving with ideas you can put to use on your team, in your organization, or in your own career. To learn more about how we support true transformation through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching, visit us at Proteus-International.com. Until next time.
