What Companies Still Get Wrong About Leadership Development

I get it: Choosing a leadership development program isn’t easy. On one hand, you know that leadership training is important to employees—more than half of them want this kind of development. On the other hand, though, it can come with a hefty price: Companies spend more than $60 billion on leadership development annually. 

Over more than 15 years of running a leadership development company, I’ve identified some mistakes that executives and HR leaders consistently make when faced with this high-stakes decision. Why do these mistakes keep happening? I believe it’s because these decision-makers assume that the same kinds of leadership development that worked in the past will work today.

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But as the demands on leaders keep increasing, organizations can’t simply fall back on “the way we’ve always done it.” If you are involved in choosing leadership development for your company, here are five missteps to avoid. 

Focusing Only on the Content

A successful leadership development program doesn’t just require a solid curriculum. It must also include plenty of connection and collaboration. Participants need the time and space to discuss the program’s material and the specific challenges and opportunities of applying it within your organization. These discussions also enable participants to form new relationships or deepen old ones. Relationship-building has always been important, of course, but it’s even more crucial today as the complex challenges organizations face require more collaborative leadership. 

Limiting Development to Your Stars

Many people assume that leadership development programs should target an elite group. But that approach limits a program’s effectiveness. My company’s goal is overcoming what Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call the “leadership development paradox.” As organizations keep providing more development for the very people who need it the least, other employees get left by the wayside. While companies might think that they can afford to develop only a select few high performers or high potentials, I believe that developing more leaders is actually more cost-efficient in the long run because it strengthens your leadership pipeline, a major concern for many organizations. 

Getting Distracted by What’s Shiny and New

I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. I’ve also seen too many companies obsess over having the “latest and greatest” program. Of course, leadership development should incorporate emerging knowledge and research and adapt to our changing work environment. At the same time, though, don’t assume you have to toss out your current program and start from scratch. Instead, think about what’s already working for you in leadership and development and consider whether you can build on that. 

Assuming Everyone Has to Be in the Same Place 

When you think about leadership development, do you picture participants all gathered in the same conference room or at an offsite? At many organizations, bringing people physically together for training has gotten a lot trickier. According to surveys by Gallup, only 20% of employees who can perform their jobs remotely are working entirely onsite.

The good news is that leadership development doesn’t have to be in person to be effective. At my company, we discovered this firsthand during the pandemic. Organizations realized they couldn’t delay important training until things got “back to normal” because we simply didn’t know when that would be. As a result, learning technology took a huge leap forward. Today, I’m seeing companies conduct successful leadership development programs in person, remotely, and in hybrid formats. 

Forgetting About the ‘Real World’

Have you ever received training that seemed transformative in the moment, but that you never ended up using on the job? This is all too common. Some leadership development programs have awesome content but not enough emphasis on everyday application. I’ve embraced what analyst Josh Bersin calls “growth in the flow of work.” In other words, learning doesn’t have to happen just at designated events or classes.

Instead, it can be a part of every single day. Yana Melnikova, talent management & organizational development leader at PepsiCo, made a similar point when I interviewed her for a recent webinar.  “Everybody knows that 70% of development happens on the job,” Yana said. “At the same time, this is where the majority of companies fail the most.” Don’t be one of those companies! Ensure that any leadership training program you choose takes learning beyond theory and into practice. 

By avoiding these common missteps, you can implement leadership development programs that empower your organization and your people to navigate challenges and seize opportunities for the future.

This article was originally published by Fast Company.

Are You Developing Enough Leaders?

One of the biggest things we’ve learned from the pandemic and the other challenges of the past few years, is that we all need to lead today. Leadership skills are critical at every level. But, in too many organizations, leadership development programs are still reserved primarily for employees already identified as “HiPo’s” – high-potential and high-performing employees. In other words, the employees who receive the most leadership development are the very ones who need it the least because there performance is already strong. In an influential article for Harvard Business Review, professors Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call this phenomenon “the leadership development paradox.” In the long-term, this approach affects the quality, diversity, and size of an organization’s pipeline of leaders. But we can address it by providing leadership training opportunities to a wider array of employees.

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How Strong Is Your Leadership Pipeline?

When a company decides whether to invest in leadership development for an employee, they directly shape that employee’s career path. Employees who receive leadership development are more likely to be promoted to senior level, high-exposure roles. Meanwhile, employees outside of that high-potential group are more likely to stay at their current performance level or even get worse — because they’re getting less access to the leadership development programs that could help them improve as well as opportunities for career advancement.                       

When only a select group of employees gets greater access to leadership development, organizations miss out on what others could potentially contribute. Although budget is a key consideration, can we afford to do this? Even small improvements across a broader population can have a big impact on overall company performance and cultivate a sustainable culture of growth and innovation.

According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023, CEOs are already worried about how to develop the next generation of leaders — and only 12% of companies are confident that they have a strong bench of leaders who are prepared to step into key roles.

As a firm with a niche focused on developing women leaders, we’re also concerned about how the leadership development paradox may disproportionately affect women. Ambition has increased, as shown in the McKinsey/LeanIn.org Women in the Workplace 2023 report, which  found that eight out of 10 women want to get promoted. The numbers are even higher for women younger than 30 and women of color (93% and 88%, respectively).

However, the report also found that women are still under-represented at every level of leadership. They’re less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

How to Develop More Leaders

To fix the leadership pipeline, we must offer leadership development more broadly — but in a way that satisfies each individual’s needs while addressing tight schedules and company budgets. 

We embedded those principles into our New Lens® learning platform, added the same expertise we’ve used to help 75% of our clients get promoted, and packaged it all into bite-sized lessons and collaborative learning that employees can easily fit into their days.

Beyond considering something like New Lens, use these strategies to strengthen your leadership pipeline:

• Rethink how you identify potential leaders. DDI recommends using digital assessments to identify hidden talent.  They explain that “leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like in the organization,” adding that in remote or hybrid environments, some leadership skills may be overlooked.

• Tap into your internal expertise. How are you making the most of the vast knowledge your people can share with each other? Mentorship and sponsorship are surprisingly underused tools for cultivating future leaders. Also look for opportunities to use peer-to-peer cross-training to build relationships and leadership skills.

• Make key experiences more accessible. It’s common for organizations to have roles that are seen as a springboard to higher leadership positions. Is your organization inadvertently funneling only certain groups to these jobs? For example, are women pushed toward marketing and HR vs. operations?

Your organization can unlock limitless potential by investing in more leadership development opportunities for your employees. We live and breathe these issues with our Fortune 500 clients. So, as you consider your company’s short and long-term development needs, schedule a call with us. We would be happy to discuss how you can strengthen your pipeline of talent by unleashing more employees’ potential.