Four Trends in Leadership Development
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 12 seconds.
Agile organizations will continue to have a competitive advantage
One of the important lessons of 2020 is that organizations that deliver effective changes quickly will continue to have a competitive advantage. I had the pleasure of hosting several virtual roundtable discussions throughout 2020 that focused on how organizations were adapting their Leadership Development strategy to address the immediate needs forced on them by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as social change driven by Black Lives Matter and the Me-Too movement. Several themes emerged from the discussions.
Trend One: Attention & Complexity
Many Learning & Development organizations reacted quickly to the challenge of a remote workforce by converting existing Leadership Development and Coaching workshops learning content to virtual seminars. They immediately discovered that the length of seminars had to be drastically reduced to be effective. The attention and retention of remote learners were challenged by the temptation to multitask; learners were not willing to sit through two-day virtual workshops. In redesigning, it was found that a large amount of the content was either unnecessary or too complex to be retained and implemented. In the words of one learning professional, “We found that we were talking to ourselves 80% of the time and adding content for the sake of including every possible contingency.” In the words of another Executive, “We knew we had an issue with learners retaining information and delivering a solid return on investment. Shortening the workshops by cutting out the fluff and complexity increased the ROI immediately.” Many roundtable participants agreed that learning content had become too bloated and overly complex which prevented their organization from implementing change and personal development quickly. Reducing complexity helped with retention and attention.
Trend Two: Focusing on Individuals
The urgency of shifting priorities in 2020 pushed leaders to coach to a variety of challenging situations remotely and with limited support. Many leaders needed a way to focus and improve on particular skills required to address a specific situation or to improve the quality of their leadership performance overall. One roundtable organization was implementing a short learning tutorial on how to use empathy, another focused on curiosity, listening, and asking quality open-ended questions.
Based on research and experience from 20,000 coaching conversations in 2019, Practica Learning found these two skills are most underused. Having leaders refresh the concepts and then immediately work with a professional to practice the skills of empathy and curiosity in situations they faced every day lifted their performance and confidence dramatically. Each Leader focused on two or three aspects of their development to increase their skills and confidence. The organization found this approach much more enticing than a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
Trend Three: Show Don’t Tell – Accelerate Experience
“The amount of Leadership Development content available to our leaders is amazing. We have a large library of tutorials on our LMS, book summaries, and article subscriptions, not to mention the vast amount of content on the internet. What we need is a way to put all that knowledge to use, to turn it into experience,” said one leader. Most roundtable discussions included a sense of frustration that learners understood the organization’s Leadership processes and intentions, such as coaching or ongoing talent development conversations, but according to their direct reports, lacked the skills to conduct these conversations or avoided them altogether.
It was generally agreed that a lack of confidence and no opportunity for realistic safe practice were contributing factors. Several contributing organizations are in the process of implementing a Deliberate Practice methodology to help build the confidence and skills of their leaders. “We need to shift our focus to include providing experience to our learners through practice. Demands on them change too quickly and are too critical to accumulate skills only through real-life situations.”
Trend Four: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging
The trend that came to light as one of the main driving forces for the need to implement Leadership strategy quickly was the increase in awareness of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging initiatives. “Our organization decided it was time to implement the DEI ideas and strategies we had been talking about for the last five years. Our Front-line Managers needed confidence and support to have DEI conversations. Telling them to do it was no longer an option.” Unconscious biases and fear are consistently identified as the challenge to effective change. Roundtable participants agreed that each Leader’s journey to DEI self-awareness is critical to have these crucial conversations. By delivering concise learning content that meets the learner where they are in their journey, allows them to practice the skills needed to overcome their fears, and increases their confidence, all delivered in a safe environment, organizations would finally move the needle on their DEI objectives.
Many roundtable participants felt that changes to Leadership Development accelerated by the challenges in 2020 have been long overdue. Many saw an opportunity presented by this crisis and social pressure that should not be wasted. Research and statistics around the lack of satisfaction in Leadership Development and lack of progress of DEI over the last five years is ample evidence for embracing these trends.
