What’s Wrong With Leadership Development (And 5 Ways To Fix It)

As an executive coach and founder of a leadership development learning platform, I thrive on seeing our clients achieve lasting change. Unfortunately, not all organizations see positive outcomes from their leadership development programs, despite the global market exceeding $81 billion a year.

Post-pandemic, it's clear that this investment often fails to deliver expected results. So what's the issue, and more importantly, how can we solve it?

Image by fahribaabdullah14 from Pixabay

Too Many Leaders Aren’t Prepared

One of the biggest red flags about leadership development I’ve seen recently comes from the Josh Bersin Company. Their two-year study of corporate leadership programs found that just one out of four companies believes their leadership training efforts are delivering high value. Additionally, only 24% of companies say their development model is relevant and up-to-date. This is alarming—and also not an outlier.

You don’t have to look far to find other indicators that leadership development programs are falling short. I’ve seen in my own work that far too many managers are promoted not because they’re ready to lead, but because there’s an operational need. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), an international HR association based in London, calls managers who have not had formal leadership training "accidental managers."

It gets worse. CIPD also found that these ill-prepared managers are driving employees away—specifically, one in three employees who quit. And 84% of respondents in a study by the Society for Human Resource Management said poorly trained managers create stress and extra work. Might this help explain why less than one-third of U.S. employees feel they are engaged at work?

I believe that a lack of training and preparation for leadership roles is also damaging managers’ mental health—to devastating effect regarding their performance. More than half of managers feel burned out. It’s time for this to change.

5 Key Steps For Change

Clearly, the leadership development industry as a whole needs a shakedown. We must rethink how we approach our work. That imperative has been top-of-mind for both me and my company as we have responded to pandemic-driven changes in the business environment while simultaneously developing our own leadership development platform. Here are five of our key learnings, based on both our own experiences and current research:

1. Mental health comes first.

Even before leadership development, prioritize enhancing your managers’ well-being. No training program can be truly effective if the participants are at their breaking point with stress, fatigue and burnout.

2. Expand access to leadership development.

As Josh Bersin puts it: "Leadership is now everyone’s job. The new employee or first-line manager who’s leading a project to save money or analyze the sales team is now a leader. What education, training and perspectives have you given this person?"

When only a few employees get access to leadership development, your organization misses out on what others could potentially contribute. Even small improvements across a larger number of employees can have a big impact.

3. Increase the relevance of training.

Leadership development is not "one size fits all." You can’t just throw a huge online content library at your employees and expect them to figure out what they need. Instead, look for programs you can customize according to both organizational goals and your employees’ needs.

4. Leverage the power of connection.

Your employees have so much wisdom to share with each other, but mentorship, sponsorship and peer learning are all underutilized tools when it comes to leadership development. As a bonus, such programs also strengthen connections that may have frayed during the shift to hybrid work.

5. Build learning into every day.

Most of us have had the experience of going to a development workshop or event, learning things we’re excited about—but then never putting that knowledge into action. Studies have found that if we don’t apply what we’ve learned within a day or two, then we’ll forget most of it. It’s more effective to take even a little time every day to learn and then start trying out that new knowledge right away.

Final Thoughts

I’ll end with a call to action. Think about the current state of leadership at your own organization. What’s happening with your leadership development programs? And how effective are your managers and leaders?

Now, more than ever, companies must invest wisely in their leaders and empower them to drive meaningful change in the ever-evolving business landscape. The future depends on it.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. To read more of my contributions to Forbes Coaches Council, click here.

Why Leadership Development Programs Must Teach Networking

During Newberry Solutions’ webinar this month, Yana Melnikova at PepsiCo and I talked about the importance of opening up leadership development to more people, beyond high potentials and high performers. 

But it’s not just about who you include; it’s also about the foundational leadership skills that you help them learn. This raises a vital question: To transform potential into performance, what skills should your leadership development program teach?

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This question was top of mind for us as we developed our New Lens® learning platform. Based on years of experience working with top companies, we identified the biggest levers of high performance. In other words, these are the skills that we have consistently seen have the biggest impact on business results and increasing employee readiness for roles at the next level. One of those skills that often gets discussed but not ineffectively integrated into leadership development programs is building a powerful network.

Results and Relationships 

Too many people put networking on the back burner or think of it as something to squeeze in outside of their “real work.” In fact, I would wager that there are employees at your organization who are talented and hardworking, but who are not considered future leaders because they keep their heads down and believe their work should speak for itself.

Of course, results are important. But leadership isn’t just about individual competencies; it’s also the ability to get things done with and through others. Especially as an employee moves up the leadership ranks, their effectiveness depends on their relationships — with their direct reports, with their boss, with higher-level leaders, with their peers and with colleagues in other departments. That’s why a great leadership development program must set the stage for relationship building.

Ways to Encourage Networking

So how can a leadership development program help your employees build a network that will help them both drive results and advance their careers? Here are a few ideas:

• Teach networking strategies. Many people mistakenly believe that only extroverts can be good at networking. The reality, though, is that anyone can learn best practices that can help them get better at building relationships. For example, I always show my coaching clients how to identify the most critical relationships to success in their role, specific business goals or projects.

• Incorporate mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors can serve as role models for leadership development program participants, providing advice and perspective to help them develop their skills and navigate challenging situations. Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give program participants critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on their behalf. While employees can establish these relationships on their own, mentorships and sponsorships are more effective when they’re part of a formal program.

• Utilize collaborative learning. One of the most overlooked but most impactful relationships are peer-to-peer. Integrate collaborative learning to foster employees sharing their knowledge and expertise, help each other navigate through challenging situations, and increase self-awareness.  Combining collaborative learning with high-quality content can even further accelerate results. We’ve already seen the power of this with New Lens, which takes the power of bite-sized lessons on foundational leadership skills and then enables deeper discussion and learning with a cohort. Not only does this accelerate learning; it strengthens workplace relationships that have become harder to build or maintain in this world of hybrid work.

How is your organization helping employees build the relationships they need for success? If you would like to learn more about how New Lens can help build networking skills (or critical leadership skills necessary for every level), check out a preview of sample content and schedule a demo.