Three Key Factors That Impact Your Leadership Development

There are many factors that will influence the programs you offer. Some of them are specific to your industry, your geographic location or your organisation and you may well have already considered them in your plans. However, there are also a number of more generic business trends impacting every organisation that you should take into account.

So what are these key factors that you need to be aware of as you prepare your development plans for the new year?

There are three that will emerge as critical in the field of frontline leadership development in the coming year.

Include these factors in your plans and you will greatly increase your return on investment in leadership development, putting your organisation in a position to lead the market in the new year and beyond.

1. The changing business landscape
   
   The business world has followed a fairly predictable path for most of the 20th century, apart from a few extreme periods. However, these were always followed by a return to 'business as usual'. All that is changing.
   
   We are now operating in the new world of the 21st century, one that is being described by some using the acronym 'V.U.C.A.'. Whilst the term has been around since the 1990s in military circles, it is a relative new one to the business vocabulary and is concerned with:
   
   
   • Volatility - The dynamics and speed of change
   • Uncertainty - A lack of predictability and the likelihood of surprise
   • Complexity - The chaos caused by multiple forces at play
   • Ambiguity - A hazy reality that sends mixed meanings
   
   The Association for Talent Development has released an article on 'The key to success in a V.U.C.A. world'. They believe that in order to succeed in this world, leaders must be able to:
   
   
   • Create an environment of openness that values discovery, diverse perspectives and experimentation
   • Detect weak signals that foretell shifts in customer loyalty or opportunities enabled by new technology
   • Conduct iterative dialogues that put new ideas into the context of the company's work and translate new information into differentiating capabilities
   • Unpack business challenges to reveal the learning gaps for individuals, teams and the organisation's practices, processes and systems
   • Strengthen thoughtful decision making in the organisation
   
   If this is the environment your next generation of frontline leaders will be operating, how well are your development programs preparing them? If you are still relying on outdated methods and content focused on 'business as usual' skill sets you will find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the best and the brightest.
   
   The beginning of a new year is the perfect opportunity to review your programs to see if they will meet the needs of this changing business landscape. What steps are you going to take so that you can capitalise on V.U.C.A. before your competitors do?
   
   
2. Stagnant growth of leadership development
   
   For any field to thrive it needs to be continually improving. A study by DDI and the Conference Board should give anyone who is responsible for developing leaders in their organisation cause for reflection on the subject of continuous improvement.
   
   In their report Global Leadership Forecast, Ready-Now Leaders: Meeting Tomorrow’s Business Challenges they revealed that only one in four HR professionals rated the quality of their leaders as high.
   
   In addition, only 15% of organisations thought that their supply of leaders ready to step in to fill vital leadership roles was strong, and just 37% of leaders rated the quality of their organisation’s development programs as high. The final figure was the same for DDI’s last two leadership forecasts, which means there appears to have been no improvement over the past seven years.
   
   It is a concerning to think that no recent advances have been made in the way we develop leaders. That is a long time to remain stagnant, especially when in that same timeframe we have seen many changes to the way businesses operate that directly impact on the role of frontline leaders.
   
   So what does your organisation have planned for the coming year to prevent another one going by without any discernable change to the way you develop your most important leadership assets? How are you going to move your leadership development from stagnant to thriving?
   
   
3. A new generation entering the workforce
   
   The issue of generational difference came to prominence when organisations struggled to understand the needs of Gen Y as they entered the workforce. There was a battle at first, with older generations not willing to adapt their ways to suit the newcomers. A lot of time, money and energy was put into running programs to understand this new generation.
   
   Since then most people have come to terms with this cohort and have settled back into a more comfortable routine. However, the lessons learnt from that experience are about to be revived as another new generation arrives on the scene.
   
   Australian demographer Mark McCrindle is a leading researcher in this field and his summation of this latest generation of workers, and potential leaders of the future, is that they are:
   
   
   • Globally focused as a result of technology that has linked the world
   • Visually engaged preferring video to text to cope with information overload
   • Educationally transformed via changing teaching paradigms
   • Socially defined with online relationships dominant in their lives
     
     
Whilst these factors will play a part in the adaptions required to integrate them into the workforce, the real challenge may in fact not be older generations having to yet again adjust for newcomers. It may actually be that for the first time Gen Y will need to learn how to cope with the demands of workers who have a different take on work. How are you preparing your young leaders to cope with the changing needs of their team members? What skills will they need to develop to create cohesive, productive teams that include this new cohort of workers?

The solution

To address these three key factors essential to successful frontline leadership development programs you need an approach that is simple and effective. Sometimes discovering how to do that can feel a bit like finding Jack’s magic beans but it doesn’t have to be according an article in Forbes by John Baldoni. He quotes a research report by Richard Wellins of DDI who found that:

“It is usually not the content or actual classroom training that is wrong. Our study points out that the best training is learning journeys of multiple events that tie together over time. Additionally management support is also crucial … the best thing senior leaders can do is serve as role models of good leadership skills.” It seems so simple doesn’t it? Offer a program over time rather than a one off hit of information that won’t sink in and give them positive examples to follow in the workplace. It turns out the answer doesn’t require magic as Jack’s beans did, but simple common sense."

Is your organisation taking a common sense approach to developing frontline leaders or have you fallen for the magic solution on offer by some training companies who try to tell you that their program is THE solution to your problem because of some
special content or proprietary assessment tool? Don’t be fooled. It is not the content, it is the process that matters.