9 Top Trends Shaping Leadership Training & Development

While most senior executives recognize the importance of developing leadership talent, their leadership development efforts often are not connected to their strategy process.  This disconnect prevents organizations from identifying and enacting prudent strategies. A leadership strategy is needed to unleash the potential of individuals and groups throughout the organization if they are to achieve success.

As one of the key decision makers in evaluating your organization's training programs and to provide recommendations for improvement, it is critical to create such a strategy. To assist you, here are the latest trends affecting leadership training and development. What trends should you be aware of in crafting your strategy?

According to the American Management Association Enterprise, a division of the American Management Association, ten important trends are helping to shape the landscape of company training and development. Here they are:

• Definition of a 'leader' is broadening. Organizations now consider individuals to be leaders based on their impact, not on their authority or title. Increasingly, a leader is viewed as 'anyone' whether they manage others or not, who is a top performer in their specific role.
• Core skills are a renewed focus. Programs devoted to basic skills often suffered during the recession are now in greater demand to develop communications skills, collaboration and creativity ~ all aimed at improving employee productivity and engagement.
• Top competencies for leadership development are: change management, ability to build trust and influence others and build teams/coalitions, problem solving and critical thinking.
• More and more employees seeking entry into leadership programs. Organizations realize they must find ways to meet this growing demand.
• Many organizations find themselves ill-prepared for rising turnover. Many factors influence turnover (job dissatisfaction, lack of engagement, job market, company policies, immediate manager relationship, benefits, etc.) How are you ready to meet this challenge with suitable solutions?
• Learning is multi-modular. In today's world of dispersed work forces, make sure any training you chose can extend delivery from instructor-led training to Elearning, Virtual learning to Mobile learning.
• More organizations avoid the term "high potential." There is a growing reluctance to call candidates for accelerated career development "high potential." The terms suggests that other employees do not have much potential, which is not a healthy message to convey ~ either to them, the organization or the marketplace.
• Selection for high potential programs is becoming more impartial. Companies now seek to make the application process for such programs more systematic and impartial. Anticipate greater transparency on performance criteria, changes in organizational strategy and more flexible career opportunities.
• There is a growing focus on developing individual contributions. More than one in three organizations have stepped up efforts to develop individual contributors. So called, high potential candidates from the management ranks often get all the attention and training, while individual contributors hardly figure in development programs. Yet these are key people within every organization - core players who get things done despite having no management title or authority. They are a leader without a title!

What do you think of these conclusions on trends impacting leadership T & D? How would you begin to break through your thoughts, emotions and actions to becoming a better leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic style via a sharp focus on who they are at their core.