Moving The Needle For Leadership Development In 2018

Top 7 trends

In a speech that he was to deliver on the fateful day of his assassination, US President, John F Kennedy was to have said, “Leadership and Learning are Indispensable to each other”. The public never got to hear the speech, but the quote has stayed on.
 

As companies wrestle to set their business goals for 2018, it's fitting more than ever now to look at the upcoming trends in leadership development (L&D). After all, organizations have to ensure that their business leaders are well-equipped to take decisions and think on their feet when unplanned situations arise.

In 2018, leadership development is likely to see some emerging trends that will stick around even beyond this year and go a long way, continuing to impact L&D. Here are the top 7 trends that will move the needle for leadership development in 2018.

Let’s face it. Leadership and development still experiences a leadership gender gap which needs to be addressed. Fast! Let's look at some stats.

In U.S. alone, while women make up 50.8 percent of the country's population, only 4 percent of the overall S&P 500 labor force and 36 percent of first- or mid-level officials and managers in those companies, they are only 25 percent of executive- and senior-level officials and managers, hold only 20 percent of board seats, and are only 6 percent of CEOs.^[1]

The numbers have become even more dire for women of color, with very few moving into these top-level opportunities and a number of very high-impact departures in recent years.^[2]

This leaves room for gender diversity in management and executive roles in the realm than there is now. It is up to the organizations to create a culture that helps women leaders thrive, and make their growth an innate and continuous aspect within the company. 2018 will be the year in which this movement will gain momentum. 

Employees are and will always remain an asset for a company, which makes their upskilling imperative to the company’s development and success. But Learning and Development objectives can actually percolate into an organization when members in senior leadership positions look at them as central to their function. As we are in 2018, the era of digital transformation, there will be a need to align learning priorities to business outcomes. To do this, organizations need to enable business leaders to take ownership in learning interventions.

By 2025, Millennials will comprise three-quarters of the global workforce.^[3] As the contribution of younger workers in workforces across the world continues to increase, Millennials are starting to have a bigger influence on the organizations employing them. This is especially true as they move into leadership roles. In fact, currently in most companies, Millennials are not just a part of the workforce, they are already in senior and influential positions. It is for organizations to leverage their expertise and help them develop their skills to the full extent so that they benefit the organization in turn. Millennials have a big role to play not just in the future, but even in the ‘present’ of the company with most people from this generation being not satisfied with a fat paycheck alone, but also craving work with a purpose or meaning. 2018 will serve as the testing ground for companies to focus upon engaging this lot and accelerating its professional development.

The success of most organizations depends entirely on how strong their leadership is. But it’s a struggle if they start looking for the right kind of leaders only when the need arises. Plus, the average cost per new hire is at an all time high of $4,000. ^[4] That is why leaders have to be developed right from the beginning, maintaining a steady pipeline of leaders. How can this be done? Simple: By hiring the right kind of people who have leadership capabilities and who can exercise them when needed. A good way to tackle this in the coming months of 2018 (and beyond too) will be to identify values, skills, and attributes that are a key part of the role and use them for screening employees during the hiring process. The latter part of the incumbent's journey can then be planned accordingly to hone these skills for leadership roles.    

While hiring right and hiring smart will set the tone of the times to come, developing leaders from existing employees is easier said than done. This requires proper strategic planning on the part of the organization. The whole idea has to be imbibed right from the very beginning and has to become an integral part of the way people are evaluated. This requires investing in the right ways and means (read 'tools') to create a strong pipeline of leaders as a proper ecosystem helps bring out leadership talent in its own unique way. 2018 will see companies investing in learning platforms that extend into performance support and talent management, through new-age learning tools like mobile learning, social (informal learning), etc.

According to LinkedIn's  ‘2017 Workplace Learning Report’ garnering insights from 500 L&D professionals across the U.S. and Canada and industry leaders, 'Leadership/People Management' formed the top-most skill to train for with 52% stating it as important.^[5]

Additionally, for winning organizations, a leader cannot focus only on his or her own expertise area. Instead, what is needed are leaders with a more collaborative approach, who are well-networked and bear cross-functional knowledge.

The leaders of 2018 thus are those that possess the dexterity to cope with complex situations and inspire their people to achieve results.

2018 will give way to organizations that have transformative cultures. According to Josh Bersin, the single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of an organization’s learning culture. Such a culture is where managers assess growth, not just performance. It is also where managers know how to coach effectively so as to help employees build their competence and confidence. This is also an environment that supports growth and improvement by making learning easily accessible.

At the beginning of 2018, these aforesaid trends reflect the challenge and opportunity for leadership development to create learning experiences that enable learners to reach great proficiency. While many of these have been rising trends for some time, most are becoming more and more critical to organizational success. On that note, here’s hoping these trends will provide some insight and direction when planning training strategies for the year. Happy Leadership Development! LE

References:

1. http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-sp-500-finance
2. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2017/05/21/432758/womens-leadership-gap/
3. https://www.officevibe.com/blog/12-recruiting-stats
4. EY, Global Generations: A Global Study on Work-Life Challenges Across Generations 
5. https://learning.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/learning/en-us/pdfs/lil-workplace-learning-report.pdf (page 8)

Amit Gautam is Founder & Director of Technology Solutions – UpsideLMS. Amit co-founded Upside Learning in 2004 with an aim to provide effective eLearning solutions to the global community. An aspiration that has won the company many awards and recognition as the number of clients. Amit has played a key role in bringing an innovative approach to the traditional Learning Management System (LMS) and has been instrumental in putting UpsideLMS on the global map. He leads the Technology Solutions team, orchestrates the Sales & Marketing operations while acting as a consultant to clients, enabling them to make the LMS initiative a grand success. Connect Amit Gautam Follow @Upside_LMS