Transformation is inevitable in today’s fast-paced, digital world and no business or industry is safe from it.

In Harvard Business Publishing’s 2018 State of Leadership Development report, more than half of the employers surveyed said they were undergoing transformations right now, with another 32% reporting that they had completed a transformation in the past three years.

No change happens without challenges, and according to the Harvard report, the most successful organisations will have transformational leaders at the helm to navigate those obstacles – the challenge is in finding and developing said leaders.

Organisations that understand this need place high priority on learning and development and, in turn, have greater revenue growth, market position and future growth potential than organisations that don’t leverage training as an avenue for success, the report found.

Unfortunately, over the past two years, researchers have found that Learning and Development programmes for leadership development have been missing the mark.

In the 2016 State of Leadership Development report, 75% of respondents said greater innovation was needed in learning techniques used in development programmes. By the time of the 2018 report, that figure had increased to 80%.

This increase surprised Diane Belcher, senior director of product management at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, who expected to see a decrease in the latest report.

Innovation is key to transformational learning programmes, she says, and ignoring it by keeping static programmes is one reason for dissatisfaction among leaders, especially millennials.

Younger generations live in a world of real-time, digital interactions, and training leaders should leverage those learning styles.

According to the latest report, millennials (aged 36 and younger) were the most likely to agree that leadership-development programmes needed an innovative overhaul.

Some of the biggest barriers to programme effectiveness cited by this population were: poor content, insufficient expertise from outside sources, and failure to make a compelling case for return on investment.

Fewer than half of the millennial respondents (40%) rated their leadership development programmes as “excellent”, compared to 67% of the Baby Boomer respondents.

Stacey Philpot, head of the Leadership practice at Deloitte Consulting, says the findings about millennials’ overall dissatisfaction with leadership development programmes aren’t surprising.

Younger generations live in a world of real-time, digital interactions, and training leaders should leverage those learning styles.

Philpot suggests that learning content should be offered digitally, on demand and in small chunks. It should be designed with digital interactions between learners at the core.

But technology isn’t the only enhancement to make. To satisfy and retain millennial leaders, development programmes also need to be introduced sooner in an employee’s career.

“As the traditional leadership pipeline approach continues to fade into oblivion, Learning and Development organisations need to stop focusing their development initiatives on ‘levels’, but rather on development by strategic talent groups,” says Philpot.

“Younger generations have less patience and a more short-term career perspective than their predecessors. As such, Learning and Development teams must get them into the development process earlier, and let them know that their talents are recognised and that their ongoing development is the fastest way for them to move throughout the organisation.”

Learning and Development leaders who don’t leverage millennials’ unique skillsets properly are missing out on true innovation, Belcher adds.

“One huge opportunity is recognising the role that these younger leaders can play in making sure the organisation is transformation-ready,” she says.

“Transformation isn’t new for them—they’re used to working through change. They’re resourceful and continually seeking out new knowledge, so training leaders should use this to their advantage and tap into the innate organisational and individual agility that millennials have.”

source: HRM Asia