The last 20 months have held no shortage of disruption. In a business landscape that was already altered by digital transformation and rapid change, the COVID-19 pandemic overturned assumptions and fast-tracked new practices.
As some workers fled offices and found new ways to work remotely and others faced unimagined challenges to show up in person, leaders had to learn on the fly. Experienced leaders and newcomers alike had to adapt fast and keep adapting: How to lead virtually? How to navigate changing regulations and broken supply chains? How to manage talent and teams? How to keep people safe and maintain the business? At the same time, leaders faced ongoing personal disruptions and stressors.
With the pandemic continuing unevenly and unpredictably, leaders at all levels are confronted with burnout (their own and others), “The Great Resignation,” and how to orchestrate, motivate and lead a hybrid workforce.
As you look to support and develop your leadership talent pool for the future, the strategies and experiences that you previously planned cannot simply be reinstated or revived. Instead, leaders must reimagine developmental experiences to reach people where they are, and prepare them to succeed in these ever-evolving dynamics. Seize this moment to make leadership development an opportunity for all.
Expand access with intentional design — a Center for Creative Leadership case study
At CCL, we’ve been leaning into this challenge. Before the global COVID pandemic, virtual and blended learning were growing aspects of our work, yet every year thousands of leaders traveled to us, and we traveled to them. Like most other organizations, we had to quickly innovate and adapt in the initial phases of the pandemic.
Since then, as our face-to-face programs have resumed in some areas, we’ve noticed very few leaders traveling outside of their geographical regions for development, creating unequal opportunities. For example, pre-pandemic, women represented approximately 30-50 percent of participants in our global Leadership Development Program™ in-person cohorts. But during COVID, this dropped to around 10-15 percent, a signal that travel restrictions, work-life demands and school closures seemed to be disproportionately impacting the accessibility of in-person learning for women. This is consistent with other research showing large percentages of women seriously rethinking their role or leaving the workplace in recent months.
In response, we resolved to improve the accessibility of quality, all-virtual leadership development that was as engaging and powerful as any in-person experience. We reimagined our flagship LDP in a way that would democratize leadership development, with the following goals in mind:
- Create a human-centered, transformational leadership development experience without any in-person interaction required.
- Help leaders and their organizations respond to continuous disruption with agility, resilience and a renewed commitment to the opportunities of the future.
- Reach a new generation of leaders across the world and connect them to each other in this powerful moment of global transition, reset and continuous disruption.
- Help all leaders — whether from “traditional” leader populations, or those historically less represented in the leadership ranks—to develop as whole, unique individuals equipped to lead inclusively in a diverse and changing world.
The result is LDP Live Online, an intensive, five-day virtual learning experience that includes micro-lessons, peer sessions and executive coaching over 12 weeks. Our first few runs of this reimagined program already tell us that we are onto something good, with average participant satisfaction ratings from our online pilot program matching our typical face-to-face ratings. Ninety-eight percent of participants rated CCL live online solutions as equally or more engaging than other online programs they have experienced. Participants expressed pleasant surprise at the richness of the virtual experience, with fully 99 percent saying they would recommend it to others. And — one notable data point — 88 percent of our June 2021 online cohort were women, suggesting the new format option is reaching an audience that is eager for leadership development but needs the right opportunity. Since then, we’ve been pleased to see ongoing gender balance in our LDP Live Online enrollment.
As your organization seeks to quickly develop more leaders and prepare them for the work of tomorrow, we hope our early success can be helpful to you. Here are some things to consider:
No. 1. Design for all. Learning opportunities that are all-virtual reduce geographic barriers, allowing equal participation from anywhere with a stable internet connection. But it is more difficult to bring down other barriers to inclusion. In every aspect of program design and outreach, be intentional to involve and include leaders from all backgrounds and social identities, especially those from historically underrepresented groups.
Recognize that many current and emerging leaders are surrounded and impacted by the leadership practices of a demographic majority that is different from their own. For more inclusive and equitable leadership development, it is critical to establish a shared leadership language and common practices that enable connection across difference, interpersonal trust, psychological safety and feelings of belonging. Use multiple and varied strategies to ensure all leaders build robust connections, hear each other and develop diverse networks.
No. 2. Make it relevant. Build development around the challenges your leaders are facing now and those that are likely in their future. As we designed LDP Live Online, we leveraged CCL’s latest analysis of over 100,000 challenges leaders have described to us over the last eight years. We found that leaders at all levels report three broad types of challenges: personal growth, people and task demands and working within a larger system. We built the virtual five-day intensive around these areas and mapped each module to the specific challenges faced by mid- to senior-level leaders. And we’ve designed a program based on holistic leader development and adaptability to help leaders succeed in a future of ongoing change.
Factor in the pandemic as a “heat”-producing moment — a powerful challenge that has the potential for extraordinary development of both skillsets and mindsets. Ask leaders to think deeply about what is happening in their leadership world, what is working, what is not and what they can do to make things better.
No. 3. Leverage the live online format. Hosting learning live online through Zoom, Teams or the platform of your choice is not just a “good enough” fallback when face-to-face is not possible. It can be a critical lifeline to leaders who have excelled in face-to-face settings and now need your help to create a safe space for them to learn how to lead virtually and on hybrid teams. They need to practice and get feedback on how they are showing up so that they can continue to develop the critical skills needed to connect, build commitment, align work across complex projects and create the future in the new hybrid workforce they lead.
Be sure to make live online development sessions distinct from the many Zoom meetings they have had in recent months. Use synchronous portions to do things you can only do live and together, such as experiencing and debriefing activities or discussing the application of what they learned offline. Build in time for dialogue and offer strategic moments to ignite deep reflection; they won’t do it on their own — their lives are too hectic right now!
No. 4. Be intentional about every touchpoint. Select every element to drive learning outcomes in the digital space, not to align to a face-to-face design. Each modality, concept, tool and virtual interaction must be chosen with care to add value immediately and build increasing value incrementally over time.
Intentionality is not only about the content of the learning experience; it’s also about the time and pace. Spread learning and support out and create enough consolidated time for real change and development to happen. For example, after much testing, we made an intentional decision to hold the Live Online intensive portion of the program over five consecutive, full days (with plenty of scheduled breaks). While we know that leaders right now are starved for time, they are even more starved for focus.
With our design, participants Zooming from their homes and offices still get the “time away” to really think, learn, practice and set intentions for their behaviors.
No. 5. Leverage formal, social and experience-based learning. Use formal leadership development to help leaders derive learning from their real-world leadership experiences and connect to others to create sustainable social learning networks. In other words, build in every aspect of the 70-20-10 model.
The ratio comes from CCL’s groundbreaking Lessons of Experience research and refers to the general findings that leadership development happens mostly from workplace challenges (70 percent), significantly from learning with and from others (20 percent) and a small but critical part from formal coursework (10 percent). While the exact percentages vary across time and leader populations, we know that leadership development is human development — lessons come from all parts of life when we take time to notice, reflect, connect and learn. The LDP Live Online design uses the 10 percent formal learning opportunity to ignite the remaining 90 percent, encouraging participants to reflect on their professional and life experiences and connect with peers in the program to prepare for, engage in and apply all they are learning. And, we help them plan for intentional learning as they seek out future challenges.
Develop all leaders for greater success
While the pandemic drove the necessity for the move toward online leadership development, the format holds the potential to democratize access and create important new opportunities. Providing cost-effective and geographically accessible leadership development to leaders across the globe — particularly groups that have been historically underrepresented in positions of influence — helps retain critical talent and creates outcomes that would not be possible with only face-to-face L&D. By providing all leaders with high-value connections, skill-building and mindset-growing experiences, they gain what they need to lead in a diverse and changing world and drive the long-term success of your organization.
