You know that leadership competitive advantage is important, but effective leadership does not simply emerge and spread across an organization without focused and intentional effort.

Research shows that leadership development has the potential to grow individuals and transform an entire organization from being one that merely meets its objectives into one that excels. Scalable leadership development unlocks compounding effects — heightened employee engagement, stronger retention of top talent, greater diversity of thought, and elevated financial performance — that are essential in an era of perpetual transformation and change.

Join our experts as they discuss how effective leadership development programs invigorate an organization’s leadership competitive advantage, leading to an increase in leadership capacity and a strong, healthy talent pipeline.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• The value of creating leadership competitive advantage for your organization
• 4 compelling reasons for making leadership development more accessible
• Research findings on the benefits of investing in leadership development

The post How To Create Leadership Competitive Advantage appeared first on CCL.

• Case Study

RPM International Builds a Culture of Feedback

CLIENT:	RPM International Inc, a $7.3 billion, multinational company with subsidiaries that are world leaders in specialty coatings, sealants and building materials, is known for such market-leading consumer brands as DAP, Rust-Oleum and Kwik Seal.
LOCATION:	Headquartered in Medina, Ohio
SIZE:	17,300 employees

Client Profile & Challenge

Consumers and professionals around the world trust RPM International’s brands to protect and preserve homes, workplaces, and even iconic landmarks like the Statue of Liberty.

But company leaders know it’s the people behind those products who make the $7.3 billion multinational company the success it is today.

“Our CEO likes to say, ‘We don’t make anything at corporate headquarters. All the making happens at our respective companies,’ ” says Randy McShepard, Chief Talent Officer at RPM. “Let’s be clear about that.”

Once a small, family-owned business, today RPM’s respective companies comprise a complex network of 80 business units and four operating groups. And with 17,300 associates working in more than 120 global facilities and the corporate office, effective communication can be challenging.

So when communication cropped up as a top concern on employee surveys a few years ago, CEO Frank C. Sullivan took note. Sullivan, whose grandfather founded the company’s forerunner to RPM in 1947, believes success depends on valuing the worth of every associate and their combined contributions. RPM’s core values — transparency, trust and respect — are foundational to its culture of doing business the right way for the right reasons.

“With a company our size, he was becoming more concerned about whether he really understood the pulse of our employees. Did he really know what they care about?” McShepard notes. “Are they loving coming to work every day or are they flight risks just waiting for the next opportunity because they don’t necessarily have strong connections or communication with their leaders, their peers, and the corporate office? While this type of assessment had been done at the group level, it had not been done across the entire company in comprehensive fashion.”

Solution

RPM International turned to a trusted partner, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)®, to meet its communication challenges head-on. The two had worked together before with positive results.

And CCL had just the right fit: a highly immersive and practical program called Better Conversations Every Day that is designed to build a coaching culture of feedback within all levels of an organization. Participants learn core behaviors and practice the types of candid conversations that build stronger relationships, fuel collaboration, and enable better business outcomes.

“When we were introduced to the Better Conversations Every Day model, we thought, if CCL is offering it, it’s probably worth taking a close look at. And that ended up being exactly the case,” McShepard recalls. “CCL gave us all the support that we needed to be bold enough to try to build a program from the ground up.”

RPM launched the program in 2020, starting with senior officers at corporate headquarters and the four operating groups.  Their enthusiasm for the BCE experience quickly cascaded throughout the company, McShepard said.

“All of the leaders got excited about it. So it wasn’t a tough sell to then go to our operating companies to say, ‘OK, this is what we now want you to do.’ “

Early on, RPM worked with CCL to get its own people trained as facilitators so the program could be scaled company-wide. These associates participated in CCL’s train-the-trainer certification process consisting of a series of asynchronous study lessons and three group sessions – including practice sessions delivering program content, followed by coaching and feedback. The training is designed to help internal trainers improve their facilitation skills, become intimately familiar with the program content, and gain confidence to deliver it by hands-on practice.

Shelly Wilson served on the company’s Global Organizational Leadership Development (GOLD) Team at the time and volunteered to be the in-house coordinator of the initiative.

The 8-hour workshop, offered in-person or live online, takes place several times a year, with 24 to 36 employees taking part in each session. Participants are broken into groups of 4 that each work with an assigned coach. They are grouped with associates they do not work for or with to encourage openness and vulnerability. Everyone is asked to bring real-life work issues to the table for the practice sessions.

Associates learn the skills necessary to grapple with difficult issues candidly. One such tool is CCL’s research-backed Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) model, which is proven to reduce both the anxiety of delivering feedback during challenging conversations and the defensiveness of the recipient. The method is simple and direct: capture and clarify the situation, describe the specific behaviors observed, and explain the impact of those behaviors.

“SBI is such a powerful tool, and it ties so well with listening to understand and asking powerful questions. All three of those are just so important,” Wilson says. “We really push the vulnerability and trust aspect of it, and that has made a big difference because people share more. The model really works.”

Results

The Better Conversations Every Day training has become so popular at RPM that new hires are lining up to participate in the next workshops. And RPM now is offering a 2-hour, virtual “refresher” course for associates who want to brush up on the skills they learned in the original workshop.

“We have trained 1,267 people to date and I have surveys for every single one of those,” Wilson notes. “And not one — not one — thought it wasn’t impactful and that it should not be scaled throughout the company.”

Indeed, 99% of participants report they can apply the knowledge and skills learned in BCE sessions to their jobs.

“Educational and paradigm shifting,” one associate wrote.

 “Empowering” and “Eye-opening,” wrote others.

Learn More

BY THE NUMBERS
Additional survey results are overwhelmingly positive:
98%	of participants are better able to listen to understand.
98%	of participants are better able to ask powerful questions.
97%	of participants are better able to challenge and support.

These results check a lot of boxes for McShepard. “All of that tells me as the Chief Talent Officer that this is a product that our associates are pleased with, that they see clear value in participating in it and they want more of it.”

Harrison Sturdivant, Strategic Business Partner at CCL, says of the partnership, “We’ve been on amazing journey of impact in service of RPM’s vision for a better and stronger culture around the world.  Working collaboratively with the team has been an honor and continues to build on CCL’s commitment to results that matter.” 

Investing in a feedback culture has proven to be a wise decision for RPM, McShepard says. So, too, is partnering with CCL.

“There’s a lot of great leadership organizations out there that do this work, but the professionalism and the precision that we’ve experienced with CCL puts them at the top of the heap in our book,” he says.

“We’re proud of our partnership with CCL and proud of how far we’ve come with BCE and the impact that is making on our company.
What more can we ask for?”

Participants Say

“CCL gave us all the support that we needed to be bold enough to try to build a program from the ground up.”

Randy McShepard

“We really push the vulnerability and trust aspect of it, and that has made a big difference because people share more. The model really works.” 

Shelly Wilson

“Educational and paradigm shifting” 

Program Participant

Partner With Us

We can work with you to build a culture of feedback which is key to improved communication within your organization. It all begins with better conversations every day, from the front desk to the corner office.

Learn More

| What to Explore Next

Better Culture Starts With Better Conversations

How to Coach People

| Related Solutions

Conversational Skills Training

Better Conversations & Coaching

Better Conversations Every Day

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The post RPM International Builds a Culture of Feedback appeared first on CCL.

Our white paper explores what research suggests are the direct benefits of leadership development (i.e., program-specific outcomes) and the indirect benefits of development, including increased employee engagement and attractiveness to potential employees. It outlines 4 key leadership development benefits that have emerged from both our own and other research, noting that investments in leadership development:

1. Facilitate organizational alignment,
2. Enhance the organization’s change readiness,
3. Promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and
4. Strengthen leadership pipelines.

Creating Competitive Leadership Advantage

When implemented effectively and comprehensively, leadership development has the potential to grow individuals and transform an entire organization from being one that merely meets its objectives into one that excels.

That’s why we say that one of the key benefits of leadership development is also simply that it creates competitive leadership advantage. And having a competitive leadership advantage not only raises the organization’s level of leadership capacity, developing a healthy leadership pipeline for the future, but also enables organizational agility, which is essential in today’s era of constant disruption.

One of the most critical drivers of organizational success in adapting to change is effective leadership at all levels — not just at the top.

To create the engagement and productivity required for this level of performance, leaders need to inspire others, drive innovation, collaborate across boundaries, and create an environment of psychological safety and inclusion. But these leadership skills don’t simply emerge and spread throughout the organization on their own. It takes focused effort and intentional strategy to optimize the leadership talent organizations need today and in the future.

Building these needed skills, from the top to the bottom of your organization, can feel like an impossible task. How can you possibly get quality development into the hands of all employees to fully leverage the benefits of leadership development?

The answer is by implementing a leadership development initiative that can be scaled. A scalable leadership development program is one that can easily be adapted and executed across an organization, regardless of its size or structure. A scalable development program unlocks leadership development’s benefits and creates significant competitive leadership advantage.

Download our white paper today to learn the many benefits of leadership development and how to scale it to start building a stronger talent pipeline at your organization.

Download White Paper

The post 4 Ways That Scaling Leadership Development Powers Engagement, Retention, and ROI appeared first on CCL.

The post The Challenges of Scaling Leadership Training appeared first on CCL.

What Are “Soft Skills” and Why Are They Important?

“Soft skills” is a term often used to describe the characteristics needed to form strong connections with others — attributes like empathy, compassion, and authenticity.

With challenges like the global COVID pandemic, widespread political and economic uncertainty, and the recent rise of remote and hybrid workforce models, soft skill development has become even more critical than ever, as interpersonal relationship-building and effective virtual communication are both required to build high-performing, geographically dispersed teams.

At CCL, we’ve discovered that organizations and leaders who prioritize the development of soft skills nurture groups and help co-create cultures that are more adaptive, inclusive, and impactful. By developing their own soft skills, modeling them to others, and providing opportunities for their team members to develop, leaders are not only able to build more effective teams, they’re also better able to retain, engage, and motivate employees.

Soft skills are critical for all managers in supervisory roles, but each leader level benefits from specific, targeted soft skill development to maximize success. Read on for the essential skills your people need to drive engagement and performance across the organization.

The Soft Skills Required for All Leader Levels

Regardless of where a leader falls in your org chart, strong conversational and coaching skills are essential. Why? Because they lay the foundation upon which your organization can build a common leadership language. This fosters a coaching culture, where employees across the organization feel comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback, and supporting and stretching one another’s thinking.

When all of your employees master the following 4 skills, your organization is well-positioned for more personalized or specific development interventions:

• Listening to understand
• Asking powerful questions
• Challenging and supporting
• Establishing accountability

The good news is, you already have the resources within your organization to instill these skills and create a coaching culture. Learn more in our article, What It Takes to Coach Your People.

Leading Yourself: Soft Skills for Individual Contributors

Do individual contributors need leadership development? Yes. Even when people don’t have direct reports, they still need soft leadership skills. Individual contributors — and by extension, their organizations — benefit greatly from soft skill development.

Individual contributors are ultimately responsible for implementing new technologies and business processes, which drive organizations’ innovation efforts. Many are on the front lines in customer-facing roles or are bringing their expertise to cross-functional projects. It’s critical that these team players communicate simply and clearly and foster connections with other team members so that goals and objectives can be met.

The following 4 skills, which we call the core leadership skills that are always needed, regardless of leader level:

• Self-awareness
• Communication
• Influence
• Learning agility

Leading Others: Soft Skills for First-Time or Frontline Managers

In most organizations, frontline managers make up almost 40% of the population of leaders, but they’re not always prepared to lead. Having just come from an individual contributor role, many first-time managers struggle with leading projects and people effectively, and don’t realize how influential they are — or can be, with targeted soft skill development.

When employees are leading others for the first time, developing these soft skills can transform their leadership effectiveness:

• Self-awareness
• Learning agility
• Communication
• Political savvy
• Motivating others
• Influencing outcomes

Provide your first-time leaders with frontline leadership skills training, and you’ll develop leaders, not just bosses.

Leading Teams: Soft Skills for Middle Managers

Middle management often lands on employees’ laps at the most stressful point in their lives. Demands from work, family, and community are higher than ever, and many haven’t yet developed the leadership resilience required to juggle heavy loads coming from all fronts. Mid-level leaders must navigate organizational politics and often feel pressure coming from both above and below them in the hierarchy.

Learning the following soft skills will help managers lead from the middle:

• Thinking and acting systemically
• Resiliency
• Communication
• Influence
• Learning agility
• Self-awareness

Learn more about the leadership skills that managers in the middle need to advance.

Leading the Function: Soft Skills for Senior Leaders

Like frontline managers who were promoted into leadership because they were successful as individual contributors, senior leaders are often promoted to head entire business functions because they effectively led a specific area or team. But when they’re elevated into their new executive-level roles, they often find the demands are greater and different.

Soft skill development for more experienced leaders is often overlooked because there doesn’t seem to be time for personal goal-setting and self-reflection. If your organization can help your senior leaders hone the following soft skills, however, you can improve their capacity for strategic thinking and planning, which will have a positive impact on the bottom line of the business:

• Collaboration
• Influence
• Forward thinking
• Driving results
• Creating engagement
• Identifying innovation opportunities
• Leading globally

When senior leaders receive the soft skill development they need to succeed at this level, they are better able to collaborate across boundaries, form important alliances, and drive business results. Organization-wide goals are met.

Read more about the common challenges faced by senior executives and the senior leadership skills they need to excel.

Leading the Enterprise: Soft Skills for C-Suite Executives

At CCL, we’ve identified 4 keys for reaching the C-Suite: experience, personal readiness, network readiness, and relationship readiness. Achieving success in these high-pressure, big-picture roles requires several critical soft skills — and they aren’t always reflected on a resume.

Big-picture challenges require C-level leaders to develop these soft skills:

• Articulating a vision effectively
• Influencing
• Inspiring
• Agility
• Communication
• Integrity
• Self-regulation
• Openness to new ideas
• Executive presence

Soft Skill Development: Methods for Delivery

Perhaps you’re a team manager or an HR or talent leader looking to upskill your workforce. Or you’re an association or higher-education institute seeking to include soft skills training and a leadership development curriculum alongside your industry-specific certifications. Either way, be sure to match soft skills development to your unique needs.

6 Ways to Upskill Employees in Leadership Soft Skills

Consider these options:

1. In-person leadership development.

Many providers offer leadership programs specifically designed to tailor soft skill development according to the participant’s leader level.

2. Online leadership development courses.

Select courses that are human-centered, dynamic, and collaborative. The benefits of online training are expansive, and courses are typically available in a variety of virtual delivery formats, ranging from moderated online courses to self-paced learning.

3. Workshop kits.

With all-inclusive, prepackaged workshop kits, you can upskill employees with a scalable, modular leadership development plan, and facilitate your brief, targeted trainings for small groups either online or in-person.

4. Licensing leadership programs and solutions.

On an as-needed basis, you may want to supplement your in-house leadership development by licensing content from a trusted provider to get effective soft skill development targeted to address certain leader levels or specific needs.

5. Becoming an authorized reseller.

If you’re providing leadership development to association members, students, or clients, you may want to become a CCL Channel Partner, giving you access to proven solutions and content to easily expand your leadership offerings.

6. All-access solutions.

With comprehensive solutions such as a leadership subscription like CCL Passport, you can take advantage of a robust collection of research-based leadership course content, programs, and tools to customize and scale development for your leaders at every level.

Best Practices for Soft Skill Development

Regardless of the approach you take, start by defining the soft skills that are needed to foster your desired organizational culture, and hone in on those skills.

If your gap areas are unclear, 360-degree assessments are helpful in unlocking and prioritizing the soft skills employees need to work on. These assessments are highly personalized and ensure areas of strength and opportunity are addressed with relevant development.

In conjunction with soft skill development, take steps to strengthen your organization’s learning culture. While some skills will come easily to some people, soft skills can be developed by anyone over time, especially when you have a coaching culture that reinforces candor, trust, and soft skill development.

Finally, don’t overlook the importance of fostering empathy and an inclusive environment where all employees can experience psychological safety at work — feeling comfortable practicing new soft skills, making mistakes, sharing reservations, and being vulnerable with one another. These outcomes are especially important to develop for leaders working in today’s new hybrid workplace environment.

Use Soft Skill Development to Strengthen Your Workforce & Attract New Talent

Providing equitable access to development opportunities is no longer a “nice-to-have” employee perk. In today’s competitive talent economy, employees expect organizations to offer ample opportunities for them to learn and grow.

Soft skill development allows your organization to stay competitive on 2 fronts. By upskilling your current employee base with the tools they need to work closely and well with one another, your people are better able to navigate the increasingly complex challenges they face together. And by investing in the development of your leaders at every level, you are signaling that your company values the growth of each member of the organization, enabling you to attract and retain more talent.

Continue building a workforce of confident, capable, and empathetic employees who can collaborate effectively to help grow your company’s mission and future, by providing them with the support they need to excel — including soft skill development.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We have a number of leadership solutions to help you upskill your talent with soft skill development, in the format that’s best for your unique situation.

The post Soft Skill Development: The People Skills Needed for Success at Each Leader Level appeared first on CCL.

She feels overwhelmed when she thinks about the expanded role HR and L&D leaders have stepped into — as they function as strategic partners to the C-suite; creating new policies around in-person, remote, and hybrid work; developing the skillsets required for leading geographically dispersed teams effectively; advocating for employees with rapidly evolving needs and expectations; and retaining workers with the “Great Resignation” happening.

Sarah realizes these changes have created new rules not only for the business but also for the culture in the organization.

She understands that she needs to rethink her approach to training. Leadership is no longer just for individual leaders at the top. To attract, retain, and prepare talent for the future, organizations are expected to provide equitable access to opportunities for development. It’s no longer optional, but rather table stakes for employers to provide these avenues. There is a need for broader and quicker organizational alignment, and Sarah knows that traditional leadership development fails to support this kind of agile workplace.

But how to change the old paradigms? How does she find ways to support accelerating leadership development throughout the organization? How can the HR function meet the growing demands placed upon it, even if the department’s bandwidth hasn’t increased? Even more challenging, how can she and her HR team provide access to relevant, timely training for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of leaders who are spread out across multiple locations?

How do you accelerate leadership development?

Learn more about the three ways to accelerate leadership development for HR and L&D professionals when you follow our research-backed approach.

Rethink Your Approach to Training

Can you empathize with Sarah’s reality? If you’re like the clients we interact with regularly, then the answer is probably yes. In today’s business environment, every employee needs to be able to execute the strategy, placing a priority on scaling and accelerating leadership development and creating a common leadership language and practice.

As our white paper explains, such scaling is not a singular program, but rather a sweeping initiative that requires a whole-systems view. It requires a significant commitment across the organization. Your internal team may not be resourced to tackle the challenge, especially in a short timeframe.

3 Ways to Accelerate Leadership Development

Here are 3 steps we recommend to help HR and L&D professionals succeed at scaling and accelerating leadership development.

1. Start by planning your leadership strategy.

Organizations should start with their business strategy and then identify the related strategic leadership drivers (choices about how to be positioned to take advantage of strengths). From there, focus on the leadership implications of the strategy. For example, if your business strategy involves geographic expansion, your leaders will need to have learning agility, resilience, and the ability to lead dispersed and virtual teams.

Too often, leadership development scaling initiatives are rolled out without aligning with the business strategy. Avoid this mistake. As you think about scaling and accelerating leadership development, ask what business opportunities and challenges demand a leadership solution. Consider what organizational priorities you want your development efforts to support, and how you could evaluate the success of your investment in leadership development.

2. Provide access to relevant content for accelerating leadership development across the enterprise.

Once the strategy is in place, focus on building a learning architecture that will better support scaling development across your entire population of leaders. It’s important to have clarity about the varying needs and investments that will be required at different levels.

Remember that people learn in different ways, so you should provide a mix of formats and modalities that work for different people at different levels or with different learning styles — from highly personalized development over a longer period of time; to brief, internally led skill-building workshops; to self-directed, self-paced digital delivery. No matter the mode, it’s vital to create a common leadership language around the critical skills needed for successfully achieving your organization’s strategy.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that connecting with your employees from their homes or offices is easier than ever. The downside is that your employees are likely stressed, depleted, and under-resourced. Simply providing access to hours of content that has not been carefully curated or aligned with your employees’ day-to-day reality won’t benefit them, or your organization.

By partnering with a solution provider equipped with robust content that has proven impact, your organization can access high-quality leadership development experiences and scale them quickly across a large audience. When choosing a partner, look for one who is future-focused — capable of conducting cutting-edge research and turning it into programs and products that can be easily deployed, enabling you to create a common leadership language around the critical skills for success linked to your strategy.

3. Leverage the right internal and external talent.

Consider mixing outsourcing with insourcing for accelerating leadership development in your organization.

In today’s complex market, leaders often express concern that their internal resources may not be fully prepared for the challenge of championing an initiative and developing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of leaders in a short timeframe. HR and L&D teams don’t always have the tools to provide meaningful leadership development in a way that’s scalable — to ensure equitable access to all talent — and customizable — to align with organizational KPIs.

You may need to seek the support of an external partner, in which case it’s critical to gain alignment between your internal training talent and the external firm or organization providing support. The role of a leadership development partner should be to provide a comprehensive package of trusted, flexible, and actionable content that your team can roll out on the appropriate schedule — freeing up the bandwidth of your internal training talent to provide insight on tailoring the content to your organization’s unique needs.

Also, think about involving business leaders who can cascade down the key leadership messages to their teams. This helps organizations maximize internal leadership development while offering invaluable insights for team members.

Accelerating Leadership Development Through Licensing

For example, at CCL, we started working with one client organization at the top. After creating customized learning journeys for the senior team, we designed specific solutions for the levels below, emphasizing critical leadership skills for the rest of the organization. We then trained the internal facilitators in the organization, and they led the training in-house, scaling and disseminating key leadership skills across the enterprise, at their own pace.

Similarly, other clients have opted to license our content, often at key times to fulfill specific needs. For example, we partnered with one government agency during the pandemic to provide their burned-out employees with a library of content they could access asynchronously that was focused on providing their employees the tools and techniques to become more resilient and bring their best selves to work. We helped the client on a strategy to recruit cohorts of participants from across functions, leader levels, generations, and social identities to foster an open environment of sharing and rapport-building with colleagues they normally wouldn’t interact with. In just a few weeks, the organization was able to support hundreds of employees and scale best practices in resilience-building across the organization, building connections and trust during a difficult time.

With these examples in mind, your HR team can also effectively scale and accelerate leadership development at your organization, thereby increasing access to development and preparing your people — and your business — for the future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We would love to help you with accelerating leadership development initiatives. Partner with us to scale learning and build a common leadership language across your entire organization. Take advantage of CCL Passport, which gives you unlimited access to our world-renowned content and our most comprehensive package of proven, transformative leadership solutions. If you license our content, you can bring our proven research, programs, and tools in-house to leaders at all levels of your organization.

The post Accelerating Leadership Development & Scaling Learning appeared first on CCL.

So, what can organizations do about improving employee engagement? Understand the 4 areas of employee engagement, and work to address each one in turn.

Areas of Employee Engagement

4 Factors That Increase Retention & Improve Employee Engagement

At CCL, we developed a simple and intuitive framework to approach the various areas of employee engagement. These are the 4 key factors that drive employee engagement:

1. Leader engagement,
2. Job engagement,
3. Team engagement, and
4. Organizational engagement.

By focusing on these 4 key areas of employee engagement, leaders have the power to affect the people they lead and serve in a more targeted way.

Here are some specific steps that leaders at all levels of the organization can take to improve these 4 key areas of employee engagement.

1. Leader Engagement.

One major reason employee engagement is so low is that managers on the front lines of organizations are simply not equipped to lead. First-line or frontline managers typically lead the biggest population of workers at most organizations — yet many frontline leaders lack critical skills, and as a result, those they manage feel uninspired, unempowered, and unhappy. Our research supports this:

• Approximately 60% of employees report a loss of engagement, productivity, and turnover with poor frontline leadership, and
• 25% of organizations experience profit loss due to ineffective frontline leaders.

Highly engaged employees feel energized by, and connected to, their direct manager or supervisor. Highly effective first-level leaders can build greater trust and loyalty across your entire workforce.

Tips for managers: Here are some ways you can improve employee engagement through building a stronger relationship with your direct reports:

• Increase your self-awareness so you understand your own strengths and weaknesses.
• Coach your employees and provide the right types of feedback.
• Show empathy in the workplace and in all interactions you have with your direct reports.
• Be sensitive to how you come across to others with different backgrounds, identities, or lived experiences and understand how aspects of your identity can affect the way you lead.

Tips for HR leaders: Be sure you’re supporting your first-level managers and equipping them to succeed in their leadership roles. Investing in developing more effective managers on the front lines of your organization will cascade benefits across your entire workforce, improving employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Some specific suggestions for HR leaders tackling this area of employee engagement:

• Provide access to support such as coaching and mentoring programs for new leaders.
• Offer development opportunities, ideally specific frontline leadership development programs that are designed to prepare them for the unique challenges they face as they shift into a leadership role.
• Train all people leaders in the concepts of respect, allyship, and emotional intelligence (Empathy and inclusion are imperatives for organizational diversity initiatives to succeed).
• Equip everyone with the skills to give constructive feedback by holding coaching conversations.

2. Job Engagement.

Compensation and benefits are important for motivating employees, but they’re not the only things that matter when it comes to keeping employees productive and engaged. Employees are more engaged when they feel their job matters and can connect their daily responsibilities to the goals and outcomes of the business of the organization, and when they are given flexibility and autonomy — especially when they’re working remotely.

Tips for managers: For individual leaders, make sure you’re helping your direct reports see how their role connects to outcomes. Some tips:

• Avoid micromanaging; build trust on your team by delegating more.
• Consider bringing in internal or external stakeholders who’ve directly benefited from the work employees have done to share specific impacts; this helps increase your employees’ sense of value alignment.

Tips for HR leaders: To continue improving employee engagement in the area of job engagement:

• Help employees feel connected to, and passionate about, the business and its mission; keep a focus on purposeful leadership wherever possible.

3. Team Engagement.

Getting team members with different styles, experiences, and knowledge to align around a common goal isn’t easy — and it can be especially challenging when working with hybrid teams, which can require new mindsets and communication skills. The success of any team often depends upon how well team members work together and how much they trust each other. Teams work best when members feel safe expressing divergent opinions and know that they can count on each other. 

Tips for managers and HR leaders: Employees are more engaged when they’re motivated and excited by their coworkers. Here’s how to improve employee engagement in the area of team engagement:

• Create clear team norms and learn how to build trust, as it’s critical to team success.
• Strengthen direction, alignment, and commitment (DAC) to enhance team effectiveness (learn more about how to make good leadership happen with DAC).

4. Organizational Engagement.

Simply put, engaged employees feel supported by and connected to their organizations. The reverse is also true: the absence of support causes people to leave organizations. Increased organizational engagement is associated with lower employee turnover and better customer satisfaction.

One of the key things that improves employee engagement at the organizational level? Providing ample opportunities for growth and development. And if you don’t offer these opportunities, your employees will simply look to work somewhere else that will. In fact, a recent study found 58% of workers are likely to leave their company if they don’t receive professional development opportunities.

Tips for managers: Individual leaders can help strengthen this area of employee engagement with their direct reports in the following ways:

• Advocate for training opportunities for your direct reports, and recognize your responsibility in developing them; managers are key for employee talent development.
• Show sincere support for training, including before, after, and during it, which can make or break the effectiveness of the development opportunity; and if you’re not sure exactly how to do that, learn practical ways to show boss support for development.

Tips for HR leaders: To improve employee engagement at the organizational level:

• Build a common leadership language across your organization; offer development opportunities to employees and provide equitable access to those opportunities — don’t reserve growth and training only for those deemed “high-potentials.”
• Explore making targeted investments in your talent using people analytics as a foundation to pinpoint specific areas to focus your efforts on improving employee engagement.

Are You Using Your People Data for Increasing Employee Engagement?

Organizations are more likely to invest in improvement efforts that have a measurable business impact. By using predictive analytics data for leadership development, your organization can get a better understanding of where you stand in these 4 areas of employee engagement, and can more quickly and efficiently target interventions to increase engagement in low-scoring areas.

For example, if your organization’s people data shows workers are highly engaged with their jobs, organization, and teams, but less so with their managers, leadership development interventions should be directed specifically toward increasing leader engagement, and could include making sure leaders know what it takes to coach their people and provide effective feedback to others. Such an intervention would have the greatest possible return on investment because it’s targeted at the specific area of employee engagement that’s most needed.

At CCL, our leadership analytics experts developed a process that enables companies to identify what changes they can make to improve employee engagement — and reap the benefits that come with it — using their people data. Our process for designing leadership development provides a systematic, measurable way to improve employee engagement in a targeted, data-driven way.

It’s time to take a new, focused approach to improving employee engagement and retention by paying close attention to the 4 areas of employee engagement, and using that to strengthen the fabric of your entire organization.

We’re not suggesting that improving employee engagement is simple or even easy, but it is possible. And it can transform your organization’s ability to get results.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If you’re focused on improving employee engagement at your organization, you will want to increase the effectiveness of your largest population of leaders, your first tier of managers, with our frontline leadership program, Frontline Leader Impact. Or, partner with our team of leadership experts and data researchers for data-driven, customized leadership development that’s specifically targeted to the unique context and culture of your organization.

The post Focused on Improving Employee Engagement? Pay Attention to These 4 Factors appeared first on CCL.

As workforce, professional, and executive education programs focus on recruitment, they often face similar challenges: They need ways to diversify their revenue. They want to retain their students and activate their alumni. And they strive to position their graduates — undergrads, graduate students, and adult professionals — for success, both in their careers and as leaders in their communities.

Time and time again, research has shown that strong interpersonal skills allow leaders to take their newly developed “hard” skills back to their organizations and make an impact.

That’s why college and university administrators who design programs for adult learners aim to offer a well-rounded education that combines skill development and career-track training along with a leadership development curriculum that fosters growth in people skills at the same time.

Yet, institutions’ limited human and financial resources can often stand in the way of their ability to incorporate soft skills training into their larger existing programs. It’s not easy to design an engaging leadership development curriculum — especially when a school or institution has a multitude of other priorities, including marketing overall program offerings, expanding its reach within the community, retaining existing clients, and adopting and integrating new technologies to keep pace with student expectations for virtual delivery.

Based on decades of experience in the field, our experts in higher education leadership development recommend 4 best practices for incorporating a robust leadership development curriculum into workforce, professional, and executive education programs.

Whether colleges and universities are considering adding short courses in leadership, leadership certificate programs, workshops, digital learning or micro-credentialing opportunities, following these guidelines will help you quickly integrate a leadership development curriculum into your offerings and position your program (and its graduates) for future success.

How to Incorporate a Leadership Development Curriculum

4 Best Practices We Recommend for Workforce, Professional & Executive Education Programs

1. Develop research-backed leader level offerings.

Most higher education institutions offer programs targeted to a specific leader level. However, all too often the leadership development program curriculum doesn’t take into account the common challenges faced and different skills needed to succeed at each leader level. To be most effective, the leadership development curriculum should offer research-backed tools and resources tailored for each leader level — from leading self, to leading others, to leading a business function, all the way up to leading an entire organization.

For example, first-time managers face unique challenges, as they must learn how to transition from getting the work done themselves to getting work done through other people. Rather than focusing on their own performance, they have to consider how their team collaborates, whether their group is committed and engaged, and how individual motivations and needs are connected to the work and the organization.

The capabilities new managers need to develop are different from the senior leadership skills needed by experienced executives, who may need help developing clear action plans that address organizational challenges and priorities.

A leadership development curriculum that’s tailored to the leader-level needs of your particular program’s student body will be more effective, engaging, and impactful.

2. Leverage leadership competency assessments.

Workforce, professional, and executive education programs can use competency assessments to identify leadership skill gaps and opportunities for improvement. These competencies can assess the skills of individuals, teams, and/or organizations. This qualitative data is critically important for benchmarking and evaluating program success.

For example, a university with an executive education program focused on artificial intelligence may use a 360 degree assessment to determine which leadership competencies their adult learners already have, as well as where and how to target future development.

If the assessment shows that their cohort of AI engineers are largely lacking in the ability to be agile and flexible with change, the university could incorporate an off-the-shelf workshop that’s targeted for developing skill at leading people through change or increasing learning agility.

Colleges and universities should consider partnering with a leadership development curriculum provider who can help develop a customized competency assessment tailored to their organization’s unique context, student population, and course offerings, to understand adult learners’ strengths and areas for development, weighted by importance.

3. Create dynamic leadership journeys — both virtually and in person — that are scalable and stackable.

When colleges and universities shifted to everything being virtual, given the pandemic in 2020, many realized that in-person events and experiences weren’t always required. Learners and students no longer saw a need to be on campus for a specific number of hours in order to earn a certificate.

With this shift, colleges and universities began to shift their approach towards one of viewing development as a journey, rather than a one-time experience.

And when it comes to designing an effective leadership development program curriculum, this journey is critical for success because it gives learners an opportunity to combine real-world and classroom experience with multiple types of learning.

As with other classes, a leadership development curriculum is most successful when it incorporates asynchronous learning videos with live class discussions, small group activities, and office hours with the instructor — along with course reading, webinars, and discussion threads.

Not only do these experiences require participants to commit to fewer hours “out of the office,” but they also offer richer and more rewarding lessons that ensure sustainable leadership development.

Workforce development, continuing & professional, and executive education programs can leverage scalable options to offer learning opportunities across many different clients and student populations — reducing the bandwidth necessary to design from scratch, and diversify their offerings by bundling or “stacking” multiple solutions together. For example, they could use preassembled workshop kits — complete with PowerPoint presentations based on industry-leading research, classroom posters, facilitator discussion guides, and participant workbooks — to offer their learners short courses or targeted leadership workshops on different topics, including communication, influence, self-awareness, and leading people through change.

4. Build robust strategic partnerships.

Colleges and universities know that workforce-ready graduates not only have the technical skills to do the job, but also the leadership skills required to transform a culture. These workforce, professional, and executive education programs strive to prepare their learners to impact meaningful change by leading with integrity and agility.

As employers identify gaps in skills and abilities — both among current employees and applicants — they recognize a growing need to partner with neighboring colleges and universities to develop programs that fill those gaps.

At the same time, colleges and universities can work to identify and refine their target markets and then develop relationships with organizations that have strong connections with those same populations.

By partnering with neighboring employers and other organizations, universities are able to design opportunities that make an immediate impact, both on learners’ futures and on their local community’s economic health.

And by designing executive education programs that incorporate a leadership development curriculum, these universities produce more professionals who are equipped with the people skills needed to drive innovation and shape their organizations’ culture and strategy — a powerful combination that builds committed, engaged alumni and a deep and rich talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Evaluate your institution’s readiness for incorporating a leadership development curriculum or offerings into your program by downloading our free readiness checklist below.

Get direct access to our expertise in implementing a leadership development curriculum in your workforce, professional, or executive education program through our Channel Partner Network.

The post Incorporating & Scaling a Leadership Development Curriculum appeared first on CCL.

We’re living through complex times. Change moves fast, and organizations can struggle to keep up. Mergers and acquisitions lead to new, flatter managerial charts and the expectation to do more with less. Post-pandemic economic concerns require organizations to be able to quickly pivot to meet new challenges. Hybrid work environments require new ways of working together, and equity and diversity are becoming increasingly important in the workplace.

At the same time, talent retention has become increasingly difficult, as employees are leaving jobs in record numbers for positions that are better paid, more aligned with their values, or more flexible. Furthermore, providing personal and professional development opportunities at work is no longer optional — employees now expect ample training and growth opportunities.

Today’s chaotic work environment calls for collaboration, connection, and coordination, each rooted in a common leadership language and behaviors. There has never been a greater need for people to come together, work cohesively, pivot when colleagues leave, and work collaboratively with other teams to achieve business goals in a short period of time.

The optimal way to achieve this level of widespread alignment across the enterprise is by scaling leadership development to ensure access to learning is equitable and opportunities for skill-building are accessible to all. In fact, there has never been a greater need for high-impact leadership development that’s both expandable and equitable.

How to Scale Leadership Development Successfully

3 Keys to Remember

But how can you focus on scaling leadership development when staff levels are constantly shifting, resources are limited, and leaders are struggling just to keep up with the day-to-day challenges of their work and personal lives? HR and L&D professionals need tools and solutions for scaling leadership development opportunities that enable them to access and deliver research-based content and transformational development experiences across the enterprise.

As our white paper outlines, when organizations are looking at scaling leadership development as effectively as possible, it’s essential to focus on these 3 steps:

1. Plan Your Leadership Strategy.

Organizations don’t go to market without a sales or operations strategy. Likewise, there should be hesitance about going to market without a leadership strategy.

The key to scaling leadership development is devising a leadership approach at the outset. Think through how different levels of your organization are affected by culture shifts that require new goals and strategies, and view leadership as a lever to execute the business strategy and drive organizational performance. Organizations that are most effective at creating new leadership capabilities focus on linking talent development to business results.

2. Provide Access to Relevant Content.

Simply providing access to hours of content that isn’t necessarily aligned with your organizational priorities or your employees’ day-to-day realities won’t be very beneficial. Scaling leadership development requires a significant commitment across the organization. It’s not a program, but rather a sweeping initiative that requires a whole systems view.

Large-scale change requires that you create the right architecture to support your learning and development objectives for leaders at every level. To maximize success, focus on the skills, behaviors, and practices needed by individual leaders and on the organizational leadership capabilities needed to support the business strategy.

3. Leverage Internal and External Talent.

The role of HR and talent development professionals has become increasingly important, as they partner with the C-suite on strategy and advocate for ever-growing employee needs. Partnering with an external provider allows them to focus on providing high-value enterprise support.

Additionally, internal resources may not be fully prepared for the challenge of championing an initiative and developing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of leaders in a short timeframe. HR teams may not have access to the tools or infrastructure required to provide meaningful leadership development in a way that’s scalable (to ensure equitable access to all talent) and customizable (to align with organizational KPIs).

When internal capability doesn’t align with delivery need, strategically mix insourcing with outsourcing. Integrate business leaders and facilitators to increase alignment and buy-in, while leaning on trusted external providers for proven content and solutions.

Scaling Leadership Development to Unlock the Collective Potential of Your People

Imagine the impact that will result in your organization if there is shared leadership vision, language, and behaviors — all linked directly to critical business needs.

Scaling leadership development is the optimal way to create new capabilities across the enterprise, and to communicate to every member of your organization that they are valued and supported.

Flexible development options can help you broaden access to learning for every member of your organization, across leader levels, and through every stage of their career journeys. And with the right partner and solution, you can meet the increased demand for training and development, regardless of the bandwidth of your L&D or HR team.

The 3 steps for scaling leadership development that are outlined in this paper will help you to more quickly achieve concrete business results, improve retention and engagement, and drive a more inclusive organizational culture of learning and growth.

Download White Paper

The post Future-Proof Your Organization by Scaling Leadership Development appeared first on CCL.