IN BRIEF: When designing a leadership development program, your audience should feel seen and heard in the assessment process. Their insights and feedback improve program relevance, engagement, and trust. Assessment isn’t just for learners. Examining the organizational capacity for change can help remove obstacles to individual success. Mid-program assessment during a pilot allows L&D teams to course correct and monitor the path to realizing goals and impact. Employers predict that 44% of workplace skills will be disrupted in the next five years, and the rapid rise of AI this year alone mi ..read more

IN BRIEF: The most significant barrier to human-centered leadership—and to effective leadership in general—is that leaders may lack certain underlying capacities required to operate in this new environment. We identified four capacities leaders must develop—what we call the four dimensions of Leadership Fitness: Balance, Strength, Flexibility, and Endurance. Each dimension has an aspect of seeing differently, making sense of what is happening all around, as well as leading differently, and taking purposeful action. Even those of us who don’t watch much (or any) college basketball have probably ..read more

  IN BRIEF: Leadership development initiatives are most effective when they focus on performance outcomes that support a key business priority, like revenue increase. Leadership development program content and design should be tailored to different leadership levels for maximum relevance and engagement. Data should be collected before, during, and after the program to measure progress and optimize for impact. As organizations evolve in response to technological advancement, external events, and generational paradigm shifts, it can feel like the only constant for leaders is change. If so ..read more

IN BRIEF: Research shows that organizations with leaders who achieve high character scores have an average return on assets five times higher than those with low character scores. Leadership character extends beyond just ethics and includes traits like compassion, willingness to serve others, and forgiveness. Character plays a significant role in decision making and performance, and it’s important for leaders at all levels, not just those in senior roles. When we think of leaders who possess character, we typically envision ethical behaviors such as telling the truth, standing up for what’s ri ..read more

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  IN BRIEF: The stress and negative emotions people experience resulting from change initiatives and transformations create stress and burnout. By increasing employees’ confidence, sense of well-being, and resilience to stress, human-centered leadership has the potential to help people adapt more easily to ongoing change and disruption. Human-centered leadership means finding the right balance between leadership behaviors that may even seem contradictory and then effectively demonstrating those behaviors to making people feel valued, connected, and confident in their professional growth ..read more

IN BRIEF: Empathy in the Workplace: Empathy is recognized as a crucial element for building trust and supporting mental health in the workplace. However, research suggests that many leaders struggle to consistently display empathy toward their teams, indicating a need for improvement. Challenges in Demonstrating Empathy: While 78% of senior leaders acknowledge the importance of empathy, only 47% believe their companies are effectively practicing it. A gap exists between leaders’ perceptions of their empathy and employees’ experiences, highlighting an opportunity for leadership development. The ..read more

IN BRIEF: Hybrid work in the post-pandemic world represents a dramatic shift, and it will require significant ongoing commitment and focus to get it right. Design thinking provides leaders with a process framework to inspire and guide them on the journey. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for successful hybrid work. Individual managers should be empowered to do what’s right for each member of their team. As leaders craft new hybrid work models that fit people, they can draw inspiration from design thinking processes to build empathy, iterate, and refine over time. By forcing knowledge wor ..read more

IN BRIEF: The talent pool available to companies is shrinking due to factors like an aging workforce and declining birthrates, creating a need for stronger engagement and retention practices. Investing in leadership development is a strategic move that benefits both individual employees and the organization, leading to increased retention and higher employee engagement. Three best practices for effective leadership development include rethinking career development for the contemporary workforce, elevating the senior leader’s role in learning and development, and training leaders around critica ..read more

  IN BRIEF: Investing in L&D throughout the enterprise can unlock deeper employee engagement and commitment. Personalized learning paths tailored to skills and needs gaps foster a sense of value and support for employees. Leveraging technology and offering contextualized and social learning experiences boosts engagement and improves learning outcomes. Despite how often we in the talent management world talk about employee engagement, very few members of the global workforce report a high level of involvement and enthusiasm in both their work and workplace. In fact, not even one in fou ..read more