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Leadership
As business evolves, so must the way leaders are developed
CHROs must ensure that their leadership development programs remain fit for purpose, says IMD’s Paul Hunter
The business environment is evolving at an unprecedented pace, to the point where the buzzword of the day is “transformation.” Naturally, in such a demanding environment, organizations, in turn, demand more from their leaders. To support their leaders in delivering what they are asking of them, they must ramp up their investment in leadership development.
Managing simultaneous corporate and individual development represents a substantial challenge for CHROs and learning and development (L&D) leaders. While the CHRO should design every leadership development program to meet the organization’s unique business needs, there can be a tendency to default to a one-size-fits-all approach.
So, which factors should CHROs and L&D leaders consider?
Three priorities for organizations
For organizations seeking to move the needle on culture change, upskill employees, or democratize learning, leadership development increasingly revolves around a three-pronged dilemma encompassing scale, speed, and impact.
Speed and scale are relatively easy for CHROs to deliver; distributing licenses for a new suite of training videos or access to a new e-learning unit is the work of just a few clicks, even for the largest multinational. However, that approach defaults to a compliance-like experience and lacks the impact that will galvanize leaders to meet transformational challenges.
In contrast, a full-year, full-time MBA, for example, delivers a huge impact. However, there is a limit to how far such a program can be scaled and how quickly organizations will see the results.
Fortunately, there are more flexible options available to L&D leaders today. Nevertheless, as they assess the different approaches on offer, they should bear in mind the pressures on prospective participants.
Pressure on leaders
In a turbulent business environment, executives’ time is spread more thinly than ever. They might be managing 15 projects in parallel rather than “just” the 10 or 12 of a few years ago. Leaders have no option but to prioritize, sometimes brutally.
Therefore, the first challenge is convincing leaders to engage with learning. The second is keeping them engaged. The chances that ultra-busy leaders will walk (or be pulled), physically or virtually, out are high. Given what their organizations ask of them, leaders will feel justified in disconnecting if they don’t believe they are getting value from the program.
After all, with continual demands on their time and attention, it’s not exactly difficult for leaders to find a distraction. Moreover, in a virtual learning environment, it’s simple to turn off the camera and check e-mail, keeping half an ear on the program, with the intention of tuning back in with full attention once the relevant segment begins. In practice, however, it’s hard to recover once attention has been broken.
Relevance and personalization
Against such a testing backdrop, how can L&D leaders attract and retain executives’ attention?
Part of the answer is that all leadership development must be hyper-relevant. If CHROs are to persuade executives to invest their time, they need to ensure leaders understand the purpose and potential impact of the program in question. That also means the program should be personalized.
Seven principles for effective leadership development
Here are seven key ideas to help L&D leaders maximize relevance and personalization while delivering against the organizational priorities of scale, speed, and impact:
1: Be clear about purpose
L&D leaders cannot expect executives to commit their time to a program with murky parameters. There should be clarity from the outset on the following points:
- The program’s significance for the organization
- Its relevance to the leader’s personal development journey
- Learning objectives
- The program “road map”
- Expectations around time commitment
- The personnel involved, including program delivery partners and fellow participants
2: Develop a realistic program structure
L&D leaders should find a balance between duration and intensity based on the intended learning outcomes. A six-month program structured as an easy 15 minutes a day might get a positive initial reaction from leaders, but they are likely to perceive it as trivial, with their engagement suffering after a couple of weeks. By the same token, leaders will dismiss out of hand the idea of a three-week program that demands four hours a day. Find the sweet spot that allows for a meaningful learning outcome, such as delivering impact, without it becoming a slog. You should aim to deliver substantial but manageable chunks.
3: Tailor content and medium to the audience
It is easier than ever to provide content that satisfies the different learning styles of individual executives. Some will prefer video, some written material. Some want real-world examples, and others look for theoretical frameworks. The best programs combine elements of all these without using any to an unnecessary (and potentially overwhelming) depth. Leaders’ attention spans are typically so short nowadays that even a four- or five-minute video could be too long.
CHROs can integrate checkpoints to ensure that learners understand the content. These can also be used as pass gates to determine what each learner sees next. A leader who has grasped the content of one unit particularly quickly might be able to skip the next couple of steps, while another would benefit from a slower, more thorough progression.
4: Produce quality video
Videos should usually be just a few minutes long, focusing on only one idea or learning point, delivered in an engaging way. Without being overly formulaic, there are key principles that can be used where appropriate:
- Telling learners at the start what will be covered
- Providing a conceptual background/context
- Offering a real-world example
- Inviting constructive reflection on the part of the learner, such as thinking about the relevance of the idea to their function or the organization as a whole and how it could be applied in practice
On-screen text can be used to maximize the volume and impact of the information provided. In some IMD videos, key takeaways might be summarized on the right-hand side of the screen, with the pros and cons of a particular approach summarized on the left. Over the course of a program, a consistent format helps leaders productively anticipate the direction of learning and remain engaged.
5: Use micro-assignments to embed learning applications
While content might be delivered in bite-sized pieces, it is important not to present it as trivial. L&D leaders need to ensure that leaders absorb learnings fully and deploy them in their work. Micro-assignments encourage that application. For instance, a unit on psychological safety might close with an assignment that requires leaders to discuss the key ideas with their teams and develop action points. The next coaching session then hones a response to each of those action points.
6: Experiment with technology, including VR
Technologies such as VR hold the potential to open up new ways of learning. VR developers may sell their products based on technical specifications, but L&D leaders should be agnostic about technology and use criteria that consider the learner’s perspective, such as: “Will this enhance learning impact?”
By reproducing certain aspects of experiential learning, such as team exercises, in a virtual environment, VR can create a truly shared space. A sense of collaboration nurtured during a team challenge in a VR space can facilitate discussion on team dynamics, for example. One key benefit of VR-based exercises is that they are accessible to learners anywhere in the world.
Generative AI can generate educational content at a pace that meets evolving requirements, such as drafting unit content tailored to deliver particular learning outcomes. L&D specialists will have a crucial role in maintaining quality standards, but AI can help CHROs meet organizational demands for speed.
7: Keep real-world experiential learning in the mix
Despite the progress made with VR and other technologies, there is no true substitute for real-world experiential learning. Taking a group of leaders into a mountain wilderness, for example, doesn’t just provide a liberating context for a teamwork exercise; it also offers them a vivid experience that can support bonding in ways that VR can hardly recreate. A mix of approaches tailored to context remains highly relevant.
Evaluating impact
Of course, the challenge for L&D leaders does not end with program delivery. Evaluation is always critical to assessing return on investment (ROI) and identifying improvements for subsequent cohorts.
A definitive approach to measuring ROI remains the holy grail of leadership development. The most useful approach may be to build up a composite picture, drawing on multiple inputs. Tracking learners’ career progression can offer an indicator of impact over time, for instance. Employee engagement and retention are also useful metrics against the current background of a technical skills shortage, alongside broader measures of business performance.
New technologies can also be harnessed to enhance this assessment process. L&D leaders can use Generative AI, for instance, to question program participants in a naturalistic way about, for example, the benefits of a particular presentation’s content versus the inspirational influence of a talented educator.
Even with such tools, there is still a strong case for L&D leaders to be “in the room,” whether in a virtual classroom or on-site. There is no substitute for witnessing firsthand the dynamics of a learning experience as it unfolds.
The demand for high-impact leadership development delivered at scale and speed, is challenging CHROs and L&D leaders, and their learning delivery partners, to enhance the learning experience across all its dimensions. By understanding and respecting leaders’ needs and blending traditional learning models with powerful new technologies, they are more than capable of rising to the challenge.
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