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.

A podcast interview with Kyle West, the CEO of K.West Partners, a bespoke recruitment service tailored to enable employers to secure the top performing sales talent.

The events of the past months have us all questioning our business models, from where and how we work, to how we help our leaders, managers and employees adapt to change while they continue to run the business. One of the lessons that has become apparent is that many of our old learning and development paradigms have been broken and it’s time to question whether we bring them back.

The most important things that happen at any organization are conversations. They are the reason we innovate, collaborate, sell, lead, coach, change, succeed, or fail. Given its significance to success, why is it that most organizations and individuals take their ability to execute a great conversation for granted?

Today, our attention is demanded by the screens that we work and play on, advertising designed to prey on our deepest fears and dreams, and of course, the important things like family, friends, walking the dog – you know, reality. Combine this well-crafted assault on our attention and our obligations to reality it’s no wonder that when you see the data on the meager effectiveness of traditional L&D programs, they are typically the first to have their budgets questioned.

Return on Investment (ROI) for customer-facing or coaching training programs has always been elusive. Ninety-four per cent of CEOs are looking to their L&D teams to drive results, but only 8% are satisfied that they are getting what they need. The big disconnect is measurement.

For over 17 years, we’ve tracked the performance of every salesperson in every one of hundreds of thousands of conversations. With all this qualitative and quantitative data we can say that the two most important skills (and the two that are often performed worst) are curiosity and empathy.

Applying deliberate practice as the skill development component in support of the change process is critical to the success of the initiative. Now, there is next to no investment made by organizations to develop deliberate practice solutions although the payoff seems self-evident. Applying deliberate practice to change initiatives comes with a simple truth.