Playing By the New Rules of Leadership Development

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

Shift focus from keeping up to getting ahead of change

In some ways, HR and L&D professionals are at the forefront of a lot of organizational change. Not only are we dealing with how the world around us changes, we are tasked with making sure the leaders of our organization can keep up and lead in that world.

The most important part of this role is shifting from being reactionary to being systemic with our solutions. Instead of crafting a program to fix one aspect of a leader’s development, it’s important to think about crafting a cradle-to-grave, systematic method of developing whole leaders.

The new rules of leadership development are focused on the here-and-now as well as the future. If you are still following the old rules of leadership, it will be hard to fully prepare leaders for the challenging times in which they will lead.

To keep up, leadership development needs to embrace these 5 new rules:

1. Systems must be adapted to new technology and ways of thinking: Change happens at ever-quicker paces in organizations, which requires new methods of decision-making and supporting employees.
2. Continued learning is of the utmost importance: Your leaders should be learning regularly and continually to be prepared with the skills and knowledge they need.
3. Focus on your company culture and development opportunities just as much as the job description: Job seekers will seek out organizations where they can grow and match their values with the organization, not just perform the tasks they are capable of.
4. Regular conversations replace yearly performance reviews: Employees today don’t want to wait until an annual review to check in on their performance and develop a relationship with their managers.
5. Leadership is for every employee: Leadership development opportunities should focus on being preventative, instead of having a “fix it” mentality, teaching employees skills long before problems or promotions come along.

These new rules of leadership development have been in effect in our organizations for a while now, thanks to the changing business environments we are surrounded by. It’s time for HR and L&D departments to take charge and get creative in how we meet the complexity and rapid change coming our way.

What does all of this mean for you? Get the big picture by downloading our leadership development playbook, Old vs. New Rules of Leadership Development.