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, there is no greater leadership asset than the drive to keep learning. And there is much to learn. Today’s leaders have a broader scope of priorities than ever before. They must manage volatility in the short term while maintaining a vision for the long term. They must be silo-bridgers, thoughtful innovators, and stewards of company culture. Companies that prioritize continuous learning can realize extraordinary potential; those that don’t will stagnate.
Learning at this scale doesn’t happen without a plan. It’s great to set development goals for leaders during yearly evaluations, but without a solid leadership development plan that directly connects to business outcomes, other priorities and distractions will take over.
At Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, we partner with companies to create curated learning experiences for leaders at every level. Though each partnership is unique, there is a proven process for designing and developing impactful learning initiatives. This guide shows you how to use that process to shape, implement, and optimize a leadership development program for your organization.
A generic leadership development program will yield generic results, so your plan should be grounded in a firm understanding of your organization’s unique values, challenges, and priorities. The process begins with alignment on one foundational question: What is the business priority driving leadership development? In the most general terms, most business priorities fall into a few broad buckets: Companies want to increase profits, cut costs, and mitigate risks .
Once you’ve established the key business priority, identify how employees can support it. What do you want leaders (and by extension, their teams) to do differently as a result of the program? Do leaders need to be more agile? More innovative? More inclusive? These performance outcomes will shape the structure, content, and measurement of the learning experience.
Concentrate on the most critical needs. It’s tempting to try to improve everywhere, but learning experiences are most effective when they focus on a few key outcomes. If your goal is to inspire leaders to innovate more, ask yourself: What is preventing them? Skills gaps might include digital competency, navigating complexity, cross-functional collaboration, or even talent development. Identifying these gaps will ensure your learning objectives have the greatest impact on the business’s most important priorities.
The process begins with alignment on one foundational question: What is the business priority driving leadership development?
When we partnered with the global theater chain Cinépolis, their key business priority was growth through innovation. Their primary performance outcome was developing innovative leaders from the C-suite to the frontline. Cinépolis had total alignment on what they wanted, so their leadership development program could be highly focused. Their program used a cascade approach, beginning with intensive training for senior leaders and extending all the way to individual theater employees. The culminating exercise asked employees to propose one-page solutions to identified problems, which resulted in innovative new projects that increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
Now that you’ve identified your business priorities and performance outcomes, you can set leadership development goals. Your program should deliver impact in three areas: learner experience, on-the-job performance, and impact on the business. Success indicators might include strong engagement in the program, more confident decision-making, and improved retention, respectively.
Whether success indicators are qualitative or quantitative, each will need corresponding metrics to measure at the beginning and the end of the program, and each metric should have clear methods and sources for measurement. Success indicators should be specific to your organization and the unique ways you measure performance.
| Business Priority | Performance Outcomes | Success Indicators | Metrics | Methods |
| Increase revenue via expansion into new markets and differentiated offerings | Collaborate effectively across the organization to deliver world-class innovations | i. Increase in revenue | i. Percentage increase in revenue | i. Financial statements |
| ii. Robust pipeline of innovation projects | ii. Percentage increase in the number of new projects implemented or in development | ii. Product/project performance data | ||
| iii. Increase in number of and participation in cross-functional teams | iii. Increase in engagement scores for access to career opportunities | iii. HR performance reports/engagement survey results |
With detailed goals in hand, leadership skills assessment can begin. Start with an honest assessment of your business’s organizational systems and norms. Can they support the changes you’re advocating for? If entrenched company culture or processes will disincentivize leaders from applying new skills and approaches, the investment in training will be wasted. If you expect leaders to evolve, the broader organizational culture must welcome and support it.
The clarity you established in the previous phases will be helpful here. Ensure that senior leaders understand the leadership behaviors you’re targeting and the business priorities they serve. Encourage executives to raise awareness of why certain leadership behaviors are needed and reinforce those behaviors by highlighting success. Celebrating early wins by sharing success stories—the “what,” “the why,” and most importantly, “the how”—will link those behaviors to desirable outcomes and encourage other leaders to practice these new habits.
If you expect leaders to evolve, the broader organizational culture must welcome and support it.
Now you’re ready to segment leaders by senior, mid-level, and frontline (or whatever distinctions make sense for your organization) and assess their baseline. You may already have a strong anecdotal sense of what each level needs, but data will always surface fresh insights. You may be able to leverage yearly evaluations or previous survey results, but you’ll probably want to do a new survey to capture more targeted data that you can track through the end of the program.
Make sure you’re hearing from individuals as well as supervisors. We’ve found that employees clearly understand their own needs. In our survey, 85% of respondents recognized the skills needed to improve their current performance. It’s worth understanding what leaders want to learn, because employees are most engaged when learning is linked to individual goals and aspirations, not just company performance.
With data in hand, consider the gaps between the current state and the ideal one. Where are the gaps most significant? This will help you prioritize who and what to focus on.
If your business is at an inflection point, your program should target leaders at all levels. The learning experiences will vary in content or method, but they’ll all be driving towards organizational transformation. You’ll want to decide if learning will be segmented, conducted in parallel with tailored learning experience for each level, or cascaded, where leader-teachers train their staff.
If you’re working towards a narrower goal, focus your effort on the learner levels that will be most impactful. For example, in our work with Fortune 2000 global companies who want to innovate, a common goal is getting leaders to foster group norms of innovation on their teams. To that end, we’ve found that starting with mid-level leaders is most impactful.
Leadership development programs are a significant investment. Not only do they cost time and money, but they also connect to individual emotions about workplace performance and worth. Employees feel valued, engaged, and empowered if the program is worthwhile. If it isn’t, it can be a powerful drag on morale.
Because the stakes are high, organizations often partner with learning experts like Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning to guarantee that their investment has value and impact. Through decades of research and continuous focus on improvement, we’ve found that clarity, thoughtful design, and quality content yield the most successful programs.
The right experience will consider what leaders at each level need and how much time and focus they can devote. Self-guided programs are consistent and low-maintenance; immersive group experiences allow for more nuance and depth.
Different leadership levels have distinct responsibilities, needs, and expectations. The architecture of the learning experience should consider these factors. Frontline leaders who are new to management may feel isolated and can benefit from an experience that connects them with mentors and peers. Mid-level leaders, managing both up and down, are highly leveraged and can benefit from micro-learning and skill practice that is directly applicable to their work. Executives benefit from depth and high-touch interactions with peers and experts that provide an outside-in perspective.
Most enterprise leadership development programs leverage a combination of experiences. Our partnership with Capital Group, designed to reinforce leadership standards and priorities across locations, included a mix of in-person and virtual learning with curated content, facilitated discussions, executive sponsorship, and structured assignments that pushed participants to apply learning on the job.
Content is another critical factor. There’s no shortage of leadership development resources, and a coming wave of low-quality AI-generated content will only exacerbate that. Resources should be vetted, relevant, and applicable to learning goals. This is essential to building trust in the program.
With learning content, less is more: too many choices will overwhelm the learner; too many priorities distract from the key goals. Keep the program focused, even in the face of pressure from senior leaders to add new things to the mix. Generally, what is highly relevant is much more important than what is “interesting.” Make learner relevance your touchstone.
The behaviors that are reinforced and rewarded by senior leaders greatly influence how employees act. If time and structure allow it, consider how you can integrate senior leadership in your leadership development program, beyond simply seeking buy-in.
Our learning solutions often include a “leader as teacher” element. Leaders might share a personal story at the program’s kick-off, host a discussion, participate on a panel, or sponsor an action learning project. Some of our clients also use formal mentorship programs to reinforce learning. Whatever the method, the payoff is significant: the presence of leaders as teachers significantly increases relevance and engagement.
Even if leaders aren’t directly involved, they should be very aware of the context of your learning initiative so they can identify teachable moments in the day-to-day work. Regular updates from you will keep the program content top-of-mind for them.
When American Express wanted to strengthen close to 16,000 mid-level leaders, we co-created a virtual, blended cohort program customized for relevancy and immediate application. Over 100 senior leaders acted as sponsors, sharing career stories and contextualizing learnings to American Express’ business environment. Frontline, mid-level, and upper-level leaders got to explore how important topics like collaboration really worked at American Express. For sponsors, it was a good opportunity to connect authentically with a large number of leaders in a psychologically safe space to discuss topics they were passionate about, which helped build these senior leaders’ personal brands in the company.
Successful implementation requires clarity, ease, and support. Leaders’ time is precious, so program delivery should be relatively seamless. Experiences can be integrated into an existing environment to minimize learning curves and platform fatigue or delivered on a separate, all-in-one platform. The right choice will vary by organization, but the most critical factor is ease. It should be easy to access lessons, content, schedules, cohort information, and progress indicators. Make sure there’s a responsive support contact to provide platform training and field questions.
Before you launch a leadership development program, make sure everyone understands how the program aligns with your learning development strategy and the organization’s broader business strategy. Drawing clear connections between desired behaviors and business outcomes will encourage employees to prioritize learning. If it’s one of multiple learning initiatives, help employees understand the unique part this program plays.
Drawing clear connections between desired behaviors and the ultimate business priority will encourage employees to prioritize learning.
Beyond serving company goals, leadership development has a lot of value for individuals. Defining “What’s in it for me?” for employees is a powerful motivator, especially at the beginning of the program. Share the scope of the learning development plan with participants so they understand that it will be relevant and practical, with clear outcomes that align with what leaders believe will make them even more successful.
Leaders can read a thousand articles, but if they’re not putting learning into practice, the effort is wasted. Managers and leadership development teams must cultivate a safe space for application and experimentation. Digital simulations and peer discussion groups can help, but it’s just as critical for senior leaders to encourage and support applications of learning throughout the workday and to provide regular feedback.
You shouldn’t wait until the end of your learning experience to find out if it worked. Some digital platforms, including Harvard ManageMentor® and ManageMentor Spark®, can provide real-time reporting in aggregate, in groups, or at the individual level, including real-time polling on behaviors. With this data, managers and learning partners can adjust lessons and content to address gaps and areas of challenge. Over time, trends can be identified, helping organizations deepen their understanding of organizational strengths and weaknesses. This also provides useful information on how leaders learn best, to guide future programming.
Once a leadership development program ends, you can analyze its business impact and learner engagement and satisfaction. Depending on your program timeframe and goals, it may be months before some quantitative business metrics like increased revenue or retention are proven out, but others—like program engagement and application of learning on the job—can be assessed immediately.
Engagement data might include participation by team and level; hits and return visits for specific content; and social and sharing metrics. Application data can be quantitative (number of learners who used new behaviors on the job) and qualitative (self-reported ratings of success, confidence, and desire for more practice).
An end-of-session satisfaction survey for participants provides feedback on many points, including perceived value, program strengths and drawbacks, logistical and platform feedback, success stories, and more. A survey aimed at supervisors can determine if the program influenced behavior change. We typically recommend conducting a follow-up survey two or three months after the learning experience to assess the program’s impact on behavior.
Change requires effort and risk—make sure participants know their efforts are appreciated.
Evaluating satisfaction, engagement, and impact data will provide valuable information about the levers you can pull to improve future learning experiences. But no matter what the outcome is, be sure to celebrate employees for their commitment to learning. A third of employees don’t think their companies provide enough recognition or reward for the learning they’re doing. Change requires effort and risk—make sure participants know their efforts are appreciated.
Analyzing your learning experiences will yield important information about the structure, content, and concepts that work. You can bring that information into the next learning initiative, which might tackle a new business priority or scale the program for a different leadership level or geography.
Between formal learning experiences, learning and development teams can offer self-guided options and resource libraries to help employees maintain a continuous learning cadence. We’ve found that companies with strong learning cultures share a few key strategies.
The leadership development journey is ongoing. Critical skill sets are rapidly evolving, and there will always be new leaders entering the field who need to learn the evergreen skills of management. Developing a culture of continuous learning is one of the most forward-looking investments a company can make in an era marked by uncertainty and disruptive shifts.
Ready to level up your leaders? Use our checklist to help your organization develop a leadership development program that delivers results.
If you have a question about leadership development programs, get in touch with one of our learning design specialists.
Deanna Foster
Dr. Gregg Kober
https://www.harvardbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CRE4687_CL_Blog_Leadership-Development_social_1.png 630 1200 Deanna Foster /wp-content/uploads/2018/12/HBPubCorpLearn_wide_crimson.svg Deanna Foster 2024-02-23 04:38:12 2024-08-29 07:19:26 How to Create a Successful Leadership Development Program
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