If your organization isn’t offering help to grow your relationship skills, or personalized coaching and mentoring to support your development, then it’s time to look elsewhere.
This is one of the main warnings of new research, “Leveraging Coaching and Mentoring to Create More Effective Leaders,” looking at the problem organizations face when it comes to preparing their next generation of leaders. As Dani Johnson, co-founder and principal analyst for RedThread Research says, “Organizations are starting to realize that leadership development goes way beyond the leadership programs that used to be. We’ve heard all kinds of things we haven’t heard in the past, like how leadership development isn’t just a one-time two-week course and then you level up — and that leadership needs consistent support.”
For organizations that stick with leadership development programs that are exclusionary, generalized and insufficiently aligned with the goals of today, the study findings show that they will struggle to meet their goals for retention, performance and even revenue.
Successful leadership development programs must be closely aligned to business strategies
The Torch-sponsored research, conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, involved 665 respondents who were familiar with their organization’s leadership development initiatives. A third of respondents came from organizations with 10,000 or more staff, and a majority (59 percent) were either working at executive or senior management level or on their firm’s boards. There was representation from a range of sectors, including technology, manufacturing and financial services.
The research revealed that a key attribute of successful leadership development programs is that they closely align to their organization’s overall business strategies. Successful leadership programs are also consciously aligned to diversity, equity and inclusion goals, equip participants to lead in today’s hybrid workplaces and make greater and more effective use of mentoring and leadership coaching.
Personalized, relationship-based coaching is more effective than one-size-fits-all training
The research found that use of leadership coaching is increasing. In fact, 58 percent of respondents currently using leadership coaching say use of coaching at their organization is higher today than it was five years ago.
The main driver behind this rise can be attributed to relationships. Organizations are placing more emphasis on leadership development that facilitates strong relationships, particularly when it comes to leadership coaching — such as the use of external professional advisors to guide employee development — and mentoring, where a seasoned individual provides personalized guidance to a less experienced employee.
Another factor contributing to the rise in more personalized and relationship-based methods is that one size-fits-all leadership “training” is just not enough. Leadership skills training remains the most widely used (534 of the 665 respondents) method in leadership development programs, but it ranked relatively low in terms of effectiveness by our HR leaders, with 55 percent of respondents calling it merely “somewhat” effective.
Beyond that deficiency, respondents told the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services team that coaching and mentoring are also becoming more prominent parts of the leadership development picture because of the unique value these methods bring to the task. For example, a very high 86 percent agree that the changing nature of work requires “a more personalized approach to leadership skills development.” Of those currently using a relationship-based method, an even higher proportion, 88 percent believe there’s a unique value in a more personalized approach to leadership skills development.
According to the data, coaching and mentoring are increasingly seen as fulfilling a growing corporate need for greater personalization. In fact, 86 percent of respondents agreed that relationship-based leadership development makes the participants feel better supported on their individual leadership journeys. In parallel, coaching is evolving — and fast.
In 2021, RedThread Research found coaching is moving from exclusive to inclusive, from narrow to broader in scope, and becoming more diverse in how it’s offered, from traditional six month runs of one-on-one sessions from an external coach to much more use of group coaching, varied-length engagements and other variations. Another feature of today’s approach to coaching and mentoring as vectors for a relationship-based form of leadership development is that it’s now more commonly implemented as a continuing form of development, not a one-off training.
Coaching and mentoring as part of the employee development cycle
Developmental assignments or job rotation programs are another form of relationship-based leadership development, and they need to play a role too. The formula that is increasingly appearing: Some use of traditional training to teach basic skills, followed by coaching to ensure these new skills, are truly infused into participants’ daily work lives. The research records that leadership skills training (61 percent), mentoring (55 percent) and leadership coaching (50 percent) are the top methods respondents intend to increase their use of over the next two years.
It’s clear that a new paradigm of leadership development culture and practice is emerging — one that is personalized to individual needs and built on relationships more than static training–and HR is increasingly looking at coaching and mentoring to get there.
