5 Leadership Behaviors That Drive Employee Engagement and Retention

How can we improve employee engagement and retention? I don’t know a leader who isn’t focused on that question. There are good reasons for that: Every year, employees who aren’t engaged cause $8.8 trillion in lost productivity globally. In the U.S., voluntary turnover costs companies $1 trillion annually. As a company focused on leadership development, we think about engagement and retention in terms of the effect that leaders and managers can have. We’ve identified five leadership behaviors that have a big impact: 

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1. Promoting wellbeing. When employees are physically and emotionally spent, they can’t fully engage in their work, and they’re more likely to leave.

2. Encouraging flexibility. Employees want to work in a way that fits the rest of their lives.

3. Enabling growth and development. Helping an employee learn shows them that they are valued.

4. Delivering clear expectations. If employees don’t know what success looks like, they have a harder time engaging with their work.

5. Showing respect — always. Demonstrating care for employees is an essential, not a “soft skill.”

Let’s explore each of those behaviors, and how they affect engagement and retention, in more depth.

1. Wellness: The Foundation for Engagement and Retention

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, more organizations are recognizing the importance of employee wellbeing and making it a priority for leaders and managers. And with good reason: Gallup reports that wellbeing is top of mind for employees when they consider whether to look for a new job.

Employee wellbeing isn’t the sole responsibility of managers, of course. In the U.S., 80% of companies with more than 50 employees have wellness programs. But leaders and managers still have a huge impact on employees’ physical and mental health. They set the tone for so much — including how long employees work, whether they take enough breaks, and whether they feel the psychological safety to express themselves, take risks and make decisions with confidence.

Promoting wellbeing can take many forms. Teams can open their meetings by doing a wellness activity together, like a quick mindful breathing exercise. During one-on-ones, managers can encourage employees to talk openly about the employee’s stress levels and what steps to take (like reducing their workload) if their stress is getting out of hand.

2. Flexibility: Leadership Is Different in a Hybrid Environment

It’s no secret how much employees value flexibility, especially after the pandemic showed that many professionals don’t have to be in the office to work successfully. But flexibility can also be a flashpoint between leaders and employees, as we’ve seen most recently with Amazon’s return-to-office mandates.

Managers in companies that allow remote or hybrid work should get up-to-date on the best practices for leading remote teams. For example, employees who take advantage of these flexible schedules should be evaluated the same way as their in-office counterparts, and must be kept in the loop on communications. This isn’t instinctive. Even if managers went through extensive leadership training before the pandemic, they need a new set of skills for our new work environment. According to Gallup, however, 70% of managers have not been trained on how to lead a hybrid team.

Even if a team has fully returned to the office, there are still opportunities to grant flexibility. For example, allow employees who pick up their kids from school to leave early and then catch up later that evening.

3. Development: Learning Opportunities Dramatically Affect Retention

Employees want to work at companies where their leaders and managers care about their growth and development. In one survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn.

Companies can make this investment in their employees’ development even when training budgets are tight. Giving more regular, and more useful, feedback is a great start. Employees want to know how they are doing and expect their leaders to tell them. Even if it might be hard to hear in the moment, most people value getting practical, actionable feedback.

Delegating with growth in mind is another underutilized tool for growth and development. I’m a big fan of this strategy because it leads to learning in the flow of work, which is more likely to stick. I’ve also found that connection strengthens learning, whether it happens through mentorship, cohort learning or ERGs.

At Newberry Solutions, we’re especially excited about the potential for high-tech options, like our New Lens® platform, to make learning and development more affordable and more accessible. As I’ve written before, opening up leadership development to more employees helps companies identify more potential leaders and keeps ambitious, growth-minded employees from jumping ship.

4. Clarity: Communicate Clear Expectations

I frequently hear from the professionals I work with that they get frustrated because their bosses don’t set clear expectations for their work or define what success looks like for their roles. I also hear from employees who get frustrated because their bosses send conflicting messages: They say one thing, but their actions seem to  indicate something completely different.

What I’ve observed is part of a larger issue. A survey by Gallup found that only 44% of respondents strongly agreed that they know what’s expected of them at work. Even worse? That figure is a 15% drop from 10 years ago.

So why are leaders seemingly getting less clear? I believe factors include heavier workloads, more distractions (there are more than four times as many smart-phone users as there were 10 years ago) and managers and leaders who aren’t skilled communicators, especially when working with remote employees.

To give employees the clarity they want, managers and leaders should “connect the dots” between an employee’s work and the big-picture goals of the organization, as well as between the manager’s own goals and actions. It also helps to slow and be a little more thoughtful and deliberate when communicating expectations. 

5. Respect: Engage Employees by Showing Authentic Care

Respect is the theme that unites everything on this list. While so much has changed in our workplaces over the past several years, one thing remains the same as ever: People want to be treated like people. They want to work for leaders who care about them and honor their humanity. In fact, the Center for Creative Leadership has found that “treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most helpful things an individual leader can do.”

Unfortunately, though, employees feel less cared for at work than they did four years ago. With all of us so busy, even the best-intentioned leaders can overlook the important behaviors that demonstrate their respect to employees. However, this is a pattern that leaders can start turning around quickly. Just one meaningful conversation per week with their manager makes a difference in an employee’s performance. That conversation can be a chance to do some of the other things on this list: Check in on the employee’s wellbeing; clarify any questions they have about expectations; ask them about their goals and the development opportunities they need to achieve those goals.

Another way to show respect is balancing results and relationships. “In most situations, this only requires making small exceptions for people (when kids get sick, accidents happen, or someone needs a mental health break), but the impact on satisfaction and engagement will be significant,” leadership development consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman write in Harvard Business Review.

An anecdote that Zenger and Folkman shared in their article has really stayed with me, and I want to leave it with you as an example of how leaders can demonstrate respect. In explaining why he appreciates his boss so much, an employee said, “He calls me when he doesn’t need anything.” 

Isn’t that the kind of leader we all want to be?

Next Steps

If you’re ready to improve engagement and retention at your organization, there are a couple of ways that our New Lens platform can help:

1.  Delivering the learning opportunities that employees crave. New Lens is a Capability Academy built on decades of leadership success and in-the-field learning from proven business leaders. It's designed to be affordable, scalable and customizable, allowing you to expand access to leadership development training, personalize learning, enable growth in the flow of work and even build relationships

2.  Developing leaders that employees love working for. New Lens emphasizes the skills, such as communicating with impact and developing a high-performing team, that managers need to really move the needle on engagement and retention.

Schedule a demo today to see what New Lens can do for your organization. Visit www.newlensleadership.com or contact us at info@newlensleadership.com to learn more and get started.

Four Factors That Make Or Break A Learning Platform

We’re in the midst of a technological revolution that’s transforming leadership development. As you probably know, though, the array of high-tech options for leadership training can be overwhelming. So how can you make the best choice for your organization?

Based on user feedback from when we created our leadership development platform, my company identified four factors that make all the difference in whether a high-tech learning solution succeeds or fails at an organization:

Image by Ghasoub Alaeddin from Pixabay

1. Usability: Can employees get up and running quickly?

There’s a simple truth about learning platforms that often gets overlooked: It doesn’t matter how great the platform’s content is if your employees struggle to use it. Remember, your people are already squeezed for time and distracted. A learning platform that feels like too much work is a platform that will eventually be ignored. So as you are selecting a learning platform, keep these usability questions in mind:

• How easy is it to navigate the platform? Does using it feel intuitive?

• What kind of training—and how much training—will your employees need to use the platform? Keep in mind that they have different experiences and comfort levels with using technology. They will also have different learning styles.

• Is the platform usable on different devices? According to Deloitte, mobile-only work will rise even more over the next several years—which means that platforms that only work on computers may soon be obsolete.

2. Engagement: Do employees want to keep learning?

After ensuring that your employees can use a platform, there’s another big question to consider: Will they want to use it? To keep employees engaged in learning, a platform must be relevant to their needs. If it doesn’t teach them skills they can apply, their interest will wane quickly. Effective platforms allow for customized learning paths, and they’re designed to help learners take what they’ve learned out of the platform and into their jobs. I’m sure you already know from your own experiences that you learn the most when you turn theory into practice. That’s why my company built our learning platform on the framework of learning, reflecting and then taking action.

3. Connection: Does the platform bring employees together?

When you imagine your employees using a learning platform, do you picture them interacting individually with their computers or phones? If so, it’s time to update that mental image. Leveraging the power of high-tech learning does not mean removing the human touch from leadership development. Connection is simply too important for both helping employees learn and setting them up for success in your organization. As you select and implement a learning platform, consider how it will help you bring employees together. A few ideas:

Utilize collaborative learning.

For example, you could form cohorts of employees who work through a leadership development program at the same time and meet regularly to talk about how to apply what they’re learning in the specific context of your organization.

Incorporate sponsorship and mentorship.

Consider assigning more experienced employees to meet regularly with employees using your platform to talk with them about how what they’re learning applies in your organization.

Involve managers.

The most effective platforms enlist managers to help amplify learning and make sure that the material being taught aligns with organizational goals

4. Practicality: Can you build on what’s already working?

My company has been helping develop leaders since 2008. That means we’ve seen a lot of learning and development trends come and go. We’ve also seen too many companies obsess over having the “latest and greatest” program. Yes, your leadership development solution should incorporate up-to-date information and be relevant to today’s work environment. At the same time, though, don’t assume you have to toss out your current program and start from scratch with a high-tech solution. Instead, consider what already works for you when it comes to developing leaders and how you can build on that. Any learning platform you choose will get better results if its content aligns with your organization’s goals and values.

Technology has huge potential to address the increasing need to develop more leaders. But implementing the right solution isn’t as simple as just giving everyone a login to your new platform. By considering the four factors we’ve talked about here as you choose your learning solution, you’ll help ensure a strong return on your organization’s investment in learning technology.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Forbes.

5 Factors That Weaken Your Leadership Pipeline

Have you had a chance to download our new white paper, “Transforming Leadership Development Through Technology: A Strategic Imperative”?

We created this report when we saw that today’s change-filled business environment is making it increasingly difficult to cultivate the leaders that organizations need. Only 12% of companies report confidence in their bench of prepared future leaders, according to DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2023. 

What’s behind this crisis? Here are a few factors we’ve identified. Each is covered in more depth in the white paper. 

1.   Training Budgets Are Stretched Thin

There’s no question that leadership is valuable. But that value can come at a hefty cost. Executive coaching can run from $200 to $3,500 an hour, and the average length of a coaching engagement is nine months. Bringing a leadership trainer in for a class of 15-20 people also has a daily price tag in the thousands of dollars.

2.   Potential Leaders Get Overlooked

Because of those budget realities, organizations tend to limit leadership development to high performers and high potentials. That means we’re missing out on the skills and talents of countless other potential leaders.

3.   Employees Say They’re Too Busy

Time also gets in the way of leadership development. For busy professionals, finding room for training in their packed schedules is a tall order. In one survey, employees said they have only about 24 minutes for learning during a 40-hour week. That’s no surprise when we consider that 55% of workers say their jobs have gotten more intense and demanding.

4.   Distractions Take a Toll

But a lack of time isn’t the full story. Even if an employee manages to set aside an hour to take an online course, they may have trouble focusing on it for long. The average amount of time that people spend on any single event before being interrupted or task switching is about three minutes. Our attention spans are taking a beating: The average time we can pay attention to one screen is 47 seconds.

5.   The Forgetting Curve Is Real

Leadership development isn’t just about what employees learn. It’s about what they retain. You’ve probably heard about the “forgetting curve”: A week after training, those busy, distracted employees we’ve been talking about will remember only about 10% of what they learned. Why does this happen? Info just doesn’t stick in our minds if it’s not relevant to us or we can’t use it immediately.

Transform Your Approach to Leadership Development

If these problems are affecting leadership development at your organization, our white paper can be your roadmap to solving them and building a stronger leadership pipeline. In it, you’ll learn how technology now enables to do some pretty cool things:

• Create training that makes a real difference in just a few minutes.

• Make learning and development happen every day.

• Expand access to leadership development.

To learn more, get your free copy of “Transforming Leadership Development Through Technology: A Strategic Imperative.” We’re excited about all the possibilities that the tech revolution in L&D creates. And we think you will be, too. Check out our white paper, and then join the conversation about it on LinkedIn.

Bite-size learning can fill employees' craving for development

As someone in the leadership development space for over 15 years, I’ve seen a big gap emerge between how much employees want (and need) to learn on the job and how much they’re able. I believe the solution to this problem will come from thinking small—at least in leadership development content—to bite-size learning.

Image by reallywellmadedesks from Pixabay

The desire to learn isn’t the problem 

One reason I love my work is that I get to fulfill employees’ desires to learn and evolve professionally. In one survey, more than nine of 10 respondents said learning opportunities would motivate them to stay with their employers longer. About the same number believe that learning and development increase engagement. Meanwhile, HR executives say they are feeling the pressure to provide more training 

That pressure isn’t just coming from employees, though.  Executives are losing sleep over whether their employees have the skills and potential to become their organization’s future leaders. 

So if executives believe employees need more development, and employees want to learn more themselves, what’s the problem? 

Too little time, too many distractions 

First, we’re all squeezed for time these days. More than half of workers say their jobs have gotten more intense and demanding. We already recognize that overstuffed schedules lead to burnout. But they also take a toll on learning and development. Over 40% of employees lack time for training and education. Another study found that employees have an average of 24 minutes to spend learning during an average workweek. 

And those minutes probably don’t all come at the same time. We’re only able to spend an average of three minutes on any task before being interrupted or switching to do something else. 

While we joke about our goldfish-like attention spans these days, the reality isn’t funny. Typically, we can only pay attention to one screen for 47 seconds at a time. 

It’s hard to think about taking even a half-day away from work for leadership development in this kind of work environment.

Teach in the way people learn 

When my company was developing New Lens, our own learning platform, we knew we had to design it for busy, distracted users. Our embrace of micro-learning content is part of a larger trend.    

“We have to teach in the way people learn,” leading analyst Josh Bersin says. “People want engaging, bite-size learning that is integrated into everyday work. Twenty minutes feels too long in this day and age. Focus on content that is two to seven minutes long.” 

Priyanka Mitra of the research firm Everest Group is another advocate for “bite-size” learning: “This less-is-more approach often aligns well with the modern learner, who grapples with shorter attention spans and limited time availability.” 

Today’s technology makes it possible for training and development to be available wherever and whenever we can engage with it. Imagine a busy professional who wants to build her leadership skills, but who can’t find room on her calendar for a full-day, offsite development class. However, the same professional has a few minutes between meetings each week she can use to complete lessons on her phone. 

When bite-size learning is better 

It’s important to note that bite-size development content isn’t just a response to our harried schedules. In some situations, shorter, more accessible material is actually a more effective way to learn. 

As you’ve probably experienced yourself, knowledge is easier to retain when you can put it into practice. Let’s imagine two employees, Carmen and Vanessa, who want to get better at leading productive meetings. 

Carmen attends a daylong offsite event that’s packed with information. Vanessa uses a learning platform that delivers five- to seven-minute lessons and that she can access from any of her devices. While the offsite event provides useful advice on meetings, the pace of the training makes it hard for Carmen to remember every point. Back on the job, it’s a pain to dig through the materials to find the relevant information when she needs it. 

But with the learning platform on her phone, Vanessa can easily access relevant information when she needs it—for example, when she’s creating a meeting agenda—and view the material as many times as she needs to for retention. 

“Where bite-size learning excels is that it recreates the ‘spacing’ that learners need because it’s designed to be returned to again and again,” says Ryan Chynces, senior manager of online education at Hootsuite. “(T)he learner’s effort of going back and retrieving that material makes it easier for them to recall it later down the line.” 

Longer-format forms of leadership development are not going away. And, as an experienced executive, consultant, and leadership development expert, I don’t want them to. But I’m also excited about the different forms that learning can take today. By embracing bite-size learning alongside traditional methods, we can create a more flexible, accessible, and effective approach that better serves both organizations and employees. 

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

Don’t just spend big bucks on training. This is how leadership development can happen every day

Take a moment to think about the last leadership development experience you or your team had. How much really changed afterward? 

All too often, the answer to that question is “Not much.” 

Photo by Bakr Magrabi from Pexels

Companies spend a lot on leadership development—more than $80 billion annually. But they’re feeling some doubts about the ROI. Just 15% of L&D professionals rate their organization’s programs as highly effective. And only about a quarter of companies say their leadership development training is valuable and up-to-date. 

As someone who’s worked in this space a long time, I hate hearing figures like these, because they represent missed opportunities. I can tell you firsthand that when leadership development training does work, it delivers payoffs in employee engagement, retention, productivity, performance, and well-being. 

But amid all the options, how do you choose one that will create real change in your organization? Here are a few things to keep in mind. 

Look beyond the surface 

When researchers interviewed HR executives about how they select leadership development programs, most said they were influenced by factors that ultimately are superficial, such as a snazzy website or charismatic instructors. 

Both of those things are great to have, of course. But they shouldn’t be the main influences on your decision. All the bells and whistles in the world won’t make much of a difference if the program doesn’t address the needs of your organization’s leaders with relevant content that’s delivered effectively.

Expand access to development 

For a long time, we’ve thought that the ROI of leadership development depends on choosing the “right” people (high performers and high potentials) to take part. But that thinking is now dated. As companies flatten their hierarchies and worry over the state of their leadership pipelines, it’s clear that we need more leaders, not fewer. And providing leadership development to more of your people can help identify more of those future leaders. Another way to think about this is to consider what an employee has the potential to do—not just what they’ve already done—when deciding who gets leadership development. 

Right now, you may think all of this sounds good, but what about your (probably shrinking) training budget? I don’t want to minimize this concern, but I am also heartened by the rapid innovation in L&D technology that can help make leadership development more affordable and scalable. 

Bring learning into everyday work 

Think about the important lessons that have really stuck with you in your own life. I’m betting you learned those lessons through experiences, not just reading a textbook, listening to a talk, or watching a video. Leadership development works the same way. Choose programs that provide practical experience in using new skills. If you already have a leadership development program, look for ways to integrate the content into employees’ daily experiences. For example, managers and reports could talk about topics from the program in their one-on-ones. 

Promoting “growth in the flow of work” is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your leadership development programs make a real impact. Companies that take this approach are four times more likely to be successful innovators and more than five times more likely to engage and retain employees. 

Combine learning with connection 

One of my favorite ways to magnify the impact of leadership development training is by making learning a group pursuit instead of a solo one. During my experiences facilitating and coaching employee groups, I’ve seen participants feel more accountability around implementing what they are learning. 

A group approach can also increase the relevance of training. For example, a newer employee might not know how to apply a lesson from the program in your organization. A more experienced colleague can help that employee understand the connection between what they’re learning and your company’s business goals. 

I hope these ideas will take some of the overwhelm out of choosing leadership development programs and help you obtain a stronger return on your investment. As you explore the options, look beyond the surface to find a solution that aligns with your culture, challenges, and goals. Your leaders—and your company’s future—are worth the effort. 

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

A Surprising Secret To Leadership Development

When my company recently hosted a webinar on leadership development, I asked several polling questions to make sure I was addressing attendees' key concerns. One question asked attendees to choose their current top priority in their development programs: content, coaching, connection or something else. The big winner? Connection.

Photo by Anna Shvets

Connection Is Key

Surprised? That response actually tracks with what I’m seeing as I work with corporate clients. Leadership today requires a greater focus on collaboration and relationships. Positive connections at work have been shown to make employees happier and more engaged. (With employee engagement at an 11-year low, that’s a pretty big deal.) At the same time, though, the rise of remote and hybrid work is adding an extra level of challenge to creating strong workplace cultures and a sense of community.

While connection is definitely on the radar of most leaders, the potential of leadership development programs to create that connection often is not. But I've found that bringing employees together doesn’t just enhance learning; it also helps them build lasting relationships that support their success and the organization’s.

If you’re involved in selecting a new leadership development program for your company, or even updating your current one, consider how the program fosters the types of connections I've listed below. As my own company developed our digital platform, this was a key consideration in the design, and it has made a big difference in its adoption and employee engagement.

Employee-Peer Relationships

I’m starting here because the value of healthy peer relationships often gets overlooked. If members of a team rarely work in person, or if everyone tends to keep their head down when they are together, leadership development might be one of the rare chances they have to get to know each other outside of their daily routines.

A good training program can help your employees better appreciate each other’s value and understand each other’s perspectives. It can also help employees feel invested in each other’s success, which increases accountability. You could even build peer-to-peer learning into your leadership development program, which helps disseminate best practices, break down silos and stretch your training budget.

Employee-Manager Relationships

When an employee takes part in a leadership training program, that doesn’t mean their development is off their manager's plate. Look for training options that involve managers in their team members’ growth. For example, the employee could have regular check-ins with their manager about goals they set in their leadership development program. Or the manager could help ensure employees get real-world opportunities to use the new skills they’re learning.

Any leadership development program you implement should also align with your organization’s approach to helping employees grow. In other words, don’t select a program that’s at odds with how you train managers to coach employees.

Employee-Executive Relationships

With the rise of hybrid work, there’s a risk of employees’ worlds becoming too small. We all have a lot fewer chances to strike up impromptu conversations in the hallway. Employees may lose sight of the bigger picture beyond their own team. On top of that, they may be missing out on opportunities to interact with the higher-level leaders who make decisions about their advancement.

Effective leadership development programs can restore some of those opportunities. For example, as part of the program, participants could be assigned a special project that they present to higher-ranking leaders. Even better? Build mentorship and sponsorship into your development programs. These key relationships can make all the difference in whether an employee achieves their career goals—and whether your organization will benefit from all they can bring to the table.

Employee-Company Relationships

This is another kind of relationship that often gets overlooked, but employees want to feel a connection with their organizations. Just as they do in their interactions with other people, they want to sense that their company values them, hears them and treats them with respect.

Investing in leadership development can deepen the loyalty your employees feel to your organization, which, in turn, affects engagement and retention. Research by LinkedIn has found that almost all employees would stay longer at an organization that cares about helping them learn and grow.

Ultimately, the secret to effective leadership development lies in its ability to strengthen the bonds that drive organizational success. By selecting programs that prioritize connection, companies can unlock the full potential of their workforce.

This article was originally published by Forbes.

What Companies Still Get Wrong About Leadership Development

I get it: Choosing a leadership development program isn’t easy. On one hand, you know that leadership training is important to employees—more than half of them want this kind of development. On the other hand, though, it can come with a hefty price: Companies spend more than $60 billion on leadership development annually. 

Over more than 15 years of running a leadership development company, I’ve identified some mistakes that executives and HR leaders consistently make when faced with this high-stakes decision. Why do these mistakes keep happening? I believe it’s because these decision-makers assume that the same kinds of leadership development that worked in the past will work today.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

But as the demands on leaders keep increasing, organizations can’t simply fall back on “the way we’ve always done it.” If you are involved in choosing leadership development for your company, here are five missteps to avoid. 

Focusing Only on the Content

A successful leadership development program doesn’t just require a solid curriculum. It must also include plenty of connection and collaboration. Participants need the time and space to discuss the program’s material and the specific challenges and opportunities of applying it within your organization. These discussions also enable participants to form new relationships or deepen old ones. Relationship-building has always been important, of course, but it’s even more crucial today as the complex challenges organizations face require more collaborative leadership. 

Limiting Development to Your Stars

Many people assume that leadership development programs should target an elite group. But that approach limits a program’s effectiveness. My company’s goal is overcoming what Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call the “leadership development paradox.” As organizations keep providing more development for the very people who need it the least, other employees get left by the wayside. While companies might think that they can afford to develop only a select few high performers or high potentials, I believe that developing more leaders is actually more cost-efficient in the long run because it strengthens your leadership pipeline, a major concern for many organizations. 

Getting Distracted by What’s Shiny and New

I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. I’ve also seen too many companies obsess over having the “latest and greatest” program. Of course, leadership development should incorporate emerging knowledge and research and adapt to our changing work environment. At the same time, though, don’t assume you have to toss out your current program and start from scratch. Instead, think about what’s already working for you in leadership and development and consider whether you can build on that. 

Assuming Everyone Has to Be in the Same Place 

When you think about leadership development, do you picture participants all gathered in the same conference room or at an offsite? At many organizations, bringing people physically together for training has gotten a lot trickier. According to surveys by Gallup, only 20% of employees who can perform their jobs remotely are working entirely onsite.

The good news is that leadership development doesn’t have to be in person to be effective. At my company, we discovered this firsthand during the pandemic. Organizations realized they couldn’t delay important training until things got “back to normal” because we simply didn’t know when that would be. As a result, learning technology took a huge leap forward. Today, I’m seeing companies conduct successful leadership development programs in person, remotely, and in hybrid formats. 

Forgetting About the ‘Real World’

Have you ever received training that seemed transformative in the moment, but that you never ended up using on the job? This is all too common. Some leadership development programs have awesome content but not enough emphasis on everyday application. I’ve embraced what analyst Josh Bersin calls “growth in the flow of work.” In other words, learning doesn’t have to happen just at designated events or classes.

Instead, it can be a part of every single day. Yana Melnikova, talent management & organizational development leader at PepsiCo, made a similar point when I interviewed her for a recent webinar.  “Everybody knows that 70% of development happens on the job,” Yana said. “At the same time, this is where the majority of companies fail the most.” Don’t be one of those companies! Ensure that any leadership training program you choose takes learning beyond theory and into practice. 

By avoiding these common missteps, you can implement leadership development programs that empower your organization and your people to navigate challenges and seize opportunities for the future.

This article was originally published by Fast Company.

Onboarding New Hires? Don’t Forget These 3 Key Things

For your new employees, the first days on the job are some of the most critical. As a leadership coach and creator of a leadership development platform, I've seen firsthand how crucial onboarding is in helping employees quickly become productive. Effective onboarding also pays off over the long run, with improvements in employee engagement and retention.

Photo by fauxels

Despite its importance, though, many companies are still falling short with their onboarding process. According to a Gallup analysis, "only 12% of U.S. employees say their company does a good job of onboarding" and "nearly one in five employees either report that their most recent onboarding was poor—or that they received no onboarding at all."

So why do onboarding programs so frequently miss the mark? Based on what I’ve observed, there are three key areas that onboarding frequently overlooks; addressing them can make a real difference in the success of your new hires.

1. Help new hires build connections, not just gain knowledge.

Beyond just imparting knowledge, onboarding should help new employees start building relationships with their team and throughout your organization. In today’s hybrid work environment, it's particularly crucial that onboarding includes relationship-building because it's less likely to happen spontaneously, the way it does when people are in the same office.

2. Have proactive conversations about goals and preferences.

Besides introducing new hires to different aspects of your company, onboarding can also be a time for you to learn about them. When I worked in leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting before starting my own business, I made a habit of sitting down with new team members so that each of us could talk about our goals and work styles. This conversation helped me achieve alignment between what they wanted to gain from their experience on the team and how I could leverage their strengths to advance business goals.

Learning about each other's preferences also helped us work together more smoothly and avoid misunderstandings. For example, we would establish what we'd communicate about via email and what needed to be discussed face to face.

3. Connect new hires with learning opportunities early.

Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in onboarding is connecting new hires with training opportunities early, especially if they express interest in leadership training. Development is crucial for retention and engagement, and younger generations crave development opportunities. Don't wait until you see signs that they're a high performer or have high potential to consider them for leadership development. There's a lot of leadership potential at lower levels, and providing training helps strengthen your leadership pipeline, which is a big concern for many companies.

Investing early in new hires also signals your commitment to their success. And it can alleviate some of the pressure on managers, who are likely already too stretched to onboard their new hires effectively. Finally, going through a shared learning experience early on can help new hires form relationships that will give them much-needed support.

Final Thoughts

By focusing on these three often-overlooked aspects of onboarding—building connections, having proactive conversations about goals and preferences and connecting new hires with learning opportunities early—you can set your new employees up for success and create a more engaged, productive workforce.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. To read more of my contributions to Forbes Coaches Council, click here.

Why Every Employee Deserves to Get Leadership Development

There’s a lot of talk in business today about the importance of demonstrating leadership at every level. Yet, many organizations still play it safe, earmarking far more leadership development opportunities for designated “high potentials.” This strategy might seem efficient, but if you want your team to win a race, wouldn’t you want every runner to have a shot at being first? Let’s talk about why opening up leadership development is a must-have for businesses that are in it to win it for the long haul. 

Photo by Christina Morillo

The Leadership Development Gap Is More Common Than You Think

Imagine this: A company invests heavily in developing a select group of employees deemed leadership material. This approach has its merits but also a glaring flaw—it overlooks a wealth of potential among the ranks. Like finding hidden gems in your backyard, broadening the scope of leadership development can uncover talent that can drive your business forward. 

Have you heard of the leadership development paradox? As identified by Navio Kwok and Winny Shen in the Harvard Business Review, it’s when those who are already excelling get all the development attention, while the rest, potentially equally capable, wait on the sidelines. This selective investment is a missed opportunity, limiting individual growth and narrowing the organization’s vision of what leadership looks like. 

Diversity in leadership is a business imperative

Think back to the last time you were surprised by an employee’s insight or problem-solving ability. These moments are golden, but we often fail to turn them into bigger opportunities for the business and the individual. By making leadership development more widely accessible, we’re giving more employees the chance to have a bigger impact and shine. And we’re also providing our businesses with a robust, diverse leadership pipeline ready to tackle future challenges. 

Diversity in leadership isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a business imperative. Different perspectives lead to better decisions, more innovation, and a stronger connection with a diverse customer base. And yet, despite knowing this, many companies haven’t changed their leadership development model. It’s time to break the cycle. 

Strategies to Make Leadership Development Work on a Tight Budget

So, how do we shift gears? How do we think more broadly about leadership development and who gets access to it and make this work on a tight budget? First, by recognizing that leadership potential isn’t confined to traditional markers like seniority or current job title. It’s about the ability to inspire, innovate, and navigate challenges—qualities that can be found across the organizational chart. 

Thanks to technology, tools now exist that can be immensely helpful for strengthening leadership pipelines. When evaluating them, make sure they offer the following key strategies: 

• Accessibility: To strengthen the leadership pipeline, we must open leadership development up to more people—while both satisfying individual needs and addressing tight schedules and company budgets. The number of leaders who have retired or switched companies has created more urgency than ever around this. Another contributor to the growing leadership gap is the changing nature of work and the different skill sets it demands. It’s high time that companies fill the pipeline. 

• Mentorship and sponsorship: These are not just tools for individual growth but powerful strategies for organizational development. They create a culture where knowledge and experience are shared freely, opening doors for many to step into leadership roles. 

• Real-world learning: Lastly, let’s ensure that leadership experiences are part of the job, not just an occasional retreat, workshop, or training class. When employees at all levels are given the chance to lead projects, tackle real-world problems, and learn from the outcomes, they’re being trained—and also transformed. 

Yes, expanding access to leadership development creates more fairness and equity—but it’s also about ensuring our organizations are as dynamic, innovative, and resilient as the markets in which we operate. By embracing a broader vision of leadership, we can unlock a world of potential that’s been waiting in the wings, ready to take our companies into the future. 

As we look ahead, let’s challenge ourselves to rethink what leadership development looks like. It’s not just about selecting a few for the fast track; it’s about recognizing and nurturing the leadership potential in everyone. After all, in the unpredictable race of business, your organization has a better chance of winning when everyone is set up to reach the finish line. 

This article was originally published by Fast Company

What’s Wrong With Leadership Development (And 5 Ways To Fix It)

As an executive coach and founder of a leadership development learning platform, I thrive on seeing our clients achieve lasting change. Unfortunately, not all organizations see positive outcomes from their leadership development programs, despite the global market exceeding $81 billion a year.

Post-pandemic, it's clear that this investment often fails to deliver expected results. So what's the issue, and more importantly, how can we solve it?

Image by fahribaabdullah14 from Pixabay

Too Many Leaders Aren’t Prepared

One of the biggest red flags about leadership development I’ve seen recently comes from the Josh Bersin Company. Their two-year study of corporate leadership programs found that just one out of four companies believes their leadership training efforts are delivering high value. Additionally, only 24% of companies say their development model is relevant and up-to-date. This is alarming—and also not an outlier.

You don’t have to look far to find other indicators that leadership development programs are falling short. I’ve seen in my own work that far too many managers are promoted not because they’re ready to lead, but because there’s an operational need. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), an international HR association based in London, calls managers who have not had formal leadership training "accidental managers."

It gets worse. CIPD also found that these ill-prepared managers are driving employees away—specifically, one in three employees who quit. And 84% of respondents in a study by the Society for Human Resource Management said poorly trained managers create stress and extra work. Might this help explain why less than one-third of U.S. employees feel they are engaged at work?

I believe that a lack of training and preparation for leadership roles is also damaging managers’ mental health—to devastating effect regarding their performance. More than half of managers feel burned out. It’s time for this to change.

5 Key Steps For Change

Clearly, the leadership development industry as a whole needs a shakedown. We must rethink how we approach our work. That imperative has been top-of-mind for both me and my company as we have responded to pandemic-driven changes in the business environment while simultaneously developing our own leadership development platform. Here are five of our key learnings, based on both our own experiences and current research:

1. Mental health comes first.

Even before leadership development, prioritize enhancing your managers’ well-being. No training program can be truly effective if the participants are at their breaking point with stress, fatigue and burnout.

2. Expand access to leadership development.

As Josh Bersin puts it: "Leadership is now everyone’s job. The new employee or first-line manager who’s leading a project to save money or analyze the sales team is now a leader. What education, training and perspectives have you given this person?"

When only a few employees get access to leadership development, your organization misses out on what others could potentially contribute. Even small improvements across a larger number of employees can have a big impact.

3. Increase the relevance of training.

Leadership development is not "one size fits all." You can’t just throw a huge online content library at your employees and expect them to figure out what they need. Instead, look for programs you can customize according to both organizational goals and your employees’ needs.

4. Leverage the power of connection.

Your employees have so much wisdom to share with each other, but mentorship, sponsorship and peer learning are all underutilized tools when it comes to leadership development. As a bonus, such programs also strengthen connections that may have frayed during the shift to hybrid work.

5. Build learning into every day.

Most of us have had the experience of going to a development workshop or event, learning things we’re excited about—but then never putting that knowledge into action. Studies have found that if we don’t apply what we’ve learned within a day or two, then we’ll forget most of it. It’s more effective to take even a little time every day to learn and then start trying out that new knowledge right away.

Final Thoughts

I’ll end with a call to action. Think about the current state of leadership at your own organization. What’s happening with your leadership development programs? And how effective are your managers and leaders?

Now, more than ever, companies must invest wisely in their leaders and empower them to drive meaningful change in the ever-evolving business landscape. The future depends on it.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. To read more of my contributions to Forbes Coaches Council, click here.

4 ways to develop your team on a tight budget

Everywhere I look, I see restructuring and streamlining—even in companies where growth is strong. In the current business climate, many companies are playing it safe. This may mean freezing budgets or deferring spending by a quarter or two to see how things play out.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

If you’re a leader working with a lean team, you know that you can’t afford to wait to develop your team, especially if you have recently lost more experienced members or if some are close to retirement. 

During the pandemic, we saw the impact of pressing pause on training. It affected employee engagement and retention and slowed their readiness for bigger roles. The Great Resignation may be over, but its aftermath isn’t. Leaders (and employees) still haven’t recovered from the fatigue.

So, what can you do on a tight budget? Here are four key strategies to develop your team.

Leverage Existing Resources

This strategy is always a powerful one because it leverages the talent already available in your company. One option is to do strengths-based peer-to-peer cross training. Start by identifying the strengths of each of your team members (and perhaps for some of the direct reports of your peers).

Once you’ve done this, what valuable experiences or expertise should be shared across the group, whether that’s one-on-one or in an informal virtual or in-person lunch and learn? Think about technical knowledge and leadership skills. The key is to make it relevant to the audience and as easy as possible for people to teach what they know.

Another option is to invite business leaders to speak to your team, even if it’s for just 15 to 30 minutes. This is far less about doing a formal PowerPoint presentation and more about arming the group with critical lessons learned or providing valuable business perspectives.

Give People Experience

People don’t learn by just reading, listening, or observing. They need opportunities to practice by applying what they are getting exposed to. For example, if you’re already using job shadowing as a strategy, take it one step further. Don’t just have people attend and observe in meetings they wouldn’t normally get to participate in. Have them play a role, whether that’s doing the preparation (defining the objectives and how to meet them), presenting content to the audience, and/or debriefing what worked well and what they would do differently.

You can also hold problem-solving sessions where you bring a business issue to the group and facilitate a conversation around it. The goal is to get people to think critically.

Coach Your Team

As leaders, sometimes we get too focused on problem solving for our teams, especially when we have deep expertise. The next time an employee escalates an issue to you, pause. Is this a situation where you should coach or provide a solution?

Remember that you can empower your direct reports to think through the issues themselves. This means asking thought-provoking open-ended questions, not leading them down a path of yes-or-no questions to your preferred solution. If you do this consistently, you will quickly learn more about your team’s critical-thinking skills and you will accelerate their development.

Use Tech       

The pandemic did wonders to accelerate the advancement of technology, especially as employees worked remotely. However, far too many companies continue to rely on approaches that either overwhelm their employees with content or don’t make it easy to apply the learning.

There are new breeds of learning platforms that integrate the power of the other approaches outlined in this article. As we developed ours, New Lens, we knew it would be critical to combine individual and collaborative learning and make it as easy as possible for participants to gain insight and take action.

Regardless of the approach you take, remember that there are always opportunities to maximize learning in the context of what you are already doing. Look for that low-hanging fruit.

This article was originally published by Fast Company.

Why Leadership Development Programs Must Teach Networking

During Newberry Solutions’ webinar this month, Yana Melnikova at PepsiCo and I talked about the importance of opening up leadership development to more people, beyond high potentials and high performers. 

But it’s not just about who you include; it’s also about the foundational leadership skills that you help them learn. This raises a vital question: To transform potential into performance, what skills should your leadership development program teach?

Photo by fauxels

This question was top of mind for us as we developed our New Lens® learning platform. Based on years of experience working with top companies, we identified the biggest levers of high performance. In other words, these are the skills that we have consistently seen have the biggest impact on business results and increasing employee readiness for roles at the next level. One of those skills that often gets discussed but not ineffectively integrated into leadership development programs is building a powerful network.

Results and Relationships 

Too many people put networking on the back burner or think of it as something to squeeze in outside of their “real work.” In fact, I would wager that there are employees at your organization who are talented and hardworking, but who are not considered future leaders because they keep their heads down and believe their work should speak for itself.

Of course, results are important. But leadership isn’t just about individual competencies; it’s also the ability to get things done with and through others. Especially as an employee moves up the leadership ranks, their effectiveness depends on their relationships — with their direct reports, with their boss, with higher-level leaders, with their peers and with colleagues in other departments. That’s why a great leadership development program must set the stage for relationship building.

Ways to Encourage Networking

So how can a leadership development program help your employees build a network that will help them both drive results and advance their careers? Here are a few ideas:

• Teach networking strategies. Many people mistakenly believe that only extroverts can be good at networking. The reality, though, is that anyone can learn best practices that can help them get better at building relationships. For example, I always show my coaching clients how to identify the most critical relationships to success in their role, specific business goals or projects.

• Incorporate mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors can serve as role models for leadership development program participants, providing advice and perspective to help them develop their skills and navigate challenging situations. Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give program participants critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on their behalf. While employees can establish these relationships on their own, mentorships and sponsorships are more effective when they’re part of a formal program.

• Utilize collaborative learning. One of the most overlooked but most impactful relationships are peer-to-peer. Integrate collaborative learning to foster employees sharing their knowledge and expertise, help each other navigate through challenging situations, and increase self-awareness.  Combining collaborative learning with high-quality content can even further accelerate results. We’ve already seen the power of this with New Lens, which takes the power of bite-sized lessons on foundational leadership skills and then enables deeper discussion and learning with a cohort. Not only does this accelerate learning; it strengthens workplace relationships that have become harder to build or maintain in this world of hybrid work.

How is your organization helping employees build the relationships they need for success? If you would like to learn more about how New Lens can help build networking skills (or critical leadership skills necessary for every level), check out a preview of sample content and schedule a demo.

Webinar Recap: The 5 Barriers to Leadership Development (& How to Overcome Them)

What a great webinar we had this week! Big thanks to our guest, Yana Melnikova of PepsiCo, and to all of you who attended and asked such thoughtful questions. If you watched the webinar, you know that we shared a lot of valuable, actionable insights about leadership development. This article captures the highlights, so you can keep it handy as a reference. And make sure you don’t miss our next webinar for senior HR leaders – secure your spot here. 

Leadership ‘Bench Strength’ Is Suffering

The topic of this webinar was “The 5 Barriers to Leadership Development (And What Companies Can Do About Them).” Before discussing those barriers, though, we set the stage by talking about how confident companies are in their leaders and future leaders. According to DDI’s Global Leadership Trends Report 2023:

● Only 12% of companies report confidence in the strength of their bench.

● Compared to companies with weak benches, companies that report strong benches are:

o   10 times more likely to have employees rate their leader quality as “very good” or “excellent.”

o   6 times more likely to be capable of engaging and retaining top talent.

o   5 times more likely to be able to prevent employee burnout.

o   3 times more likely to be among financially top-performing organizations.

Clearly, many companies need to build their leadership bench strength. We believe this is because of those “5 Barriers” in our webinar title. So what are those barriers? And how can we address them?

Barrier 1: Unclear or Inconsistent Strategy

I don’t have to tell you that there’s been a lot going on in the world and in the business environment over the past few years. Amid all of this, HR departments have had to pivot again and again. As a result, many organizations have been left with unclear or inconsistent leadership development strategies, and they haven’t had the bandwidth to take a step back and re-evaluate them.

As someone who is transforming talent management and organizational development globally at PepsiCo, Yana was the perfect discussion partner for this topic. She shared insights into the key components of a successful leadership development strategy. One of the most important is taking a holistic approach that gives employees “meaningful, critical experiences to practice and master their leadership capabilities.

Yana put it like this: “Everybody knows that 70% of development happens on the job. At the same time, this is where the majority of companies fail the most.”

She also stressed that any leadership development strategy should include clear expectations: “The simpler, the better.” Employees should be able to quickly understand what’s expected from them, but they should also be inspired by your leadership development framework. Yana and I both believe that leadership development should be thoroughly integrated into employees’ work, not something extra added on top. 

Barrier 2: The Audience Is Too Narrow

Everyone who is involved in leadership development at their organization should read the HBR article “Leadership Training Shouldn’t Just Be for Top Performers.” This article defines the “leadership development paradox”: Organizations keep investing in development for the employees who need it the least. High performers and high-potentials get opportunities, but others miss out.

Over time, the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” in leadership development keeps getting wider. This is a big problem because, according to DDI, the greatest source of untapped leadership potential is at the lowest levels of an organization. However, leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like where they work.

The leadership development paradox is one of the biggest reasons Newberry Solutions developed our New Lens® learning platform. Access to leadership development depends on budgets, so we wanted to create a solution that is affordable and scalable. Yana shared that PepsiCo addresses this issue by having a “wide variety of leadership development programs that will address different cohorts or different target audiences.”

Barrier 3: Training vs. Development

These two things are not the same. True leadership development enables employees to use new insights and tools to keep growing their skills and contribute in a different way within the organization.

I recommend that organizations look closely at any leadership development program they are considering to make sure the content is relevant to employees. I would also caution companies about getting lured by whatever is “shiny and new” in leadership development instead of reinforcing through application what employees have already learned. In New Lens, we leverage “micro-learning” so that employees can make development an effortless part of their day.

Another factor that drives long-term development is collective learning. Is your organization driving connections between employees that help them share knowledge? PepsiCo even works to build relationships on the global level, Yana shared.

Barrier 4: Focusing on the Wrong Narrative

In your organization, does the discussion of leadership development revolve mostly around the cost or the benefits? The framing really makes a difference in how effective any leadership development program is.

“The more you involve current leaders and executives in the leadership development, the more they will see the value and the impact,” Yana said. And I agree! Leaders need to see the connection between the investment in leadership development and the results that investment delivers. Yes, having these conversations takes time when everyone is busy. But they’re so important to your organization’s long-term health.

Barrier 5: Underutilizing Technology

Technology continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, giving us access to more and more data. Leadership development programs should take advantage of these advances. For example, how are you measuring the impact of development programs?

As I touched on earlier, technology also enables us to make leadership development available to more people — anytime, anywhere. And it empowers us to deliver customized development experiences at scale. For the first time, having a leadership development program tailored to your unique needs does not necessarily involve working one one-on-one with a coach. With New Lens, each user gets their own unique development plan.

Based on her experiences, Yana sees great potential for technology, including AI, to take us to the next level of leadership development.

Next Steps for HR Leaders

Thanks again to everyone who made our event this week a success. I’m already looking forward to our next webinar. It’s scheduled for 9 a.m. CDT on Friday, June 7, so save a spot on your calendar and stay tuned here for more details. In the meantime, I invite you to check out our New Lens platform and how it has helped other companies. You can explore sample content here.

Stay in the conversation by joining our next webinar for senior HR leaders – register here to make sure you don’t miss out.

Questions about how to strengthen your company’s leadership development pipeline? Let’s talk.

Are You Developing Enough Leaders?

One of the biggest things we’ve learned from the pandemic and the other challenges of the past few years, is that we all need to lead today. Leadership skills are critical at every level. But, in too many organizations, leadership development programs are still reserved primarily for employees already identified as “HiPo’s” – high-potential and high-performing employees. In other words, the employees who receive the most leadership development are the very ones who need it the least because there performance is already strong. In an influential article for Harvard Business Review, professors Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call this phenomenon “the leadership development paradox.” In the long-term, this approach affects the quality, diversity, and size of an organization’s pipeline of leaders. But we can address it by providing leadership training opportunities to a wider array of employees.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

How Strong Is Your Leadership Pipeline?

When a company decides whether to invest in leadership development for an employee, they directly shape that employee’s career path. Employees who receive leadership development are more likely to be promoted to senior level, high-exposure roles. Meanwhile, employees outside of that high-potential group are more likely to stay at their current performance level or even get worse — because they’re getting less access to the leadership development programs that could help them improve as well as opportunities for career advancement.                       

When only a select group of employees gets greater access to leadership development, organizations miss out on what others could potentially contribute. Although budget is a key consideration, can we afford to do this? Even small improvements across a broader population can have a big impact on overall company performance and cultivate a sustainable culture of growth and innovation.

According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023, CEOs are already worried about how to develop the next generation of leaders — and only 12% of companies are confident that they have a strong bench of leaders who are prepared to step into key roles.

As a firm with a niche focused on developing women leaders, we’re also concerned about how the leadership development paradox may disproportionately affect women. Ambition has increased, as shown in the McKinsey/LeanIn.org Women in the Workplace 2023 report, which  found that eight out of 10 women want to get promoted. The numbers are even higher for women younger than 30 and women of color (93% and 88%, respectively).

However, the report also found that women are still under-represented at every level of leadership. They’re less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

How to Develop More Leaders

To fix the leadership pipeline, we must offer leadership development more broadly — but in a way that satisfies each individual’s needs while addressing tight schedules and company budgets. 

We embedded those principles into our New Lens® learning platform, added the same expertise we’ve used to help 75% of our clients get promoted, and packaged it all into bite-sized lessons and collaborative learning that employees can easily fit into their days.

Beyond considering something like New Lens, use these strategies to strengthen your leadership pipeline:

• Rethink how you identify potential leaders. DDI recommends using digital assessments to identify hidden talent.  They explain that “leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like in the organization,” adding that in remote or hybrid environments, some leadership skills may be overlooked.

• Tap into your internal expertise. How are you making the most of the vast knowledge your people can share with each other? Mentorship and sponsorship are surprisingly underused tools for cultivating future leaders. Also look for opportunities to use peer-to-peer cross-training to build relationships and leadership skills.

• Make key experiences more accessible. It’s common for organizations to have roles that are seen as a springboard to higher leadership positions. Is your organization inadvertently funneling only certain groups to these jobs? For example, are women pushed toward marketing and HR vs. operations?

Your organization can unlock limitless potential by investing in more leadership development opportunities for your employees. We live and breathe these issues with our Fortune 500 clients. So, as you consider your company’s short and long-term development needs, schedule a call with us. We would be happy to discuss how you can strengthen your pipeline of talent by unleashing more employees’ potential.

Are You Underutilizing These Powerful Ways to Close the Leadership Gap?

I have some bad news and some good news about mentorship and sponsorship at work. First, the bad news: These two strategies are extremely underused. According to Gallup, only 40% of employees have workplace mentors, and 23% have sponsors. The good news? Improving these numbers is low-hanging fruit and holds huge potential for increasing the number of women in senior leadership, enhancing engagement and retention and even bolstering the bottom line at your organization.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic after serving as one of the mentors at the Dallas Business Journal’s recent Mentoring Monday, a nationwide event sponsored by The Business Journals that brings together successful female business leaders and women who want to tap into their advice and insights.

Image by Sue Styles from Pixabay

As a longtime advocate for advancing women, I’m excited that we’re learning more about how to create meaningful results for individuals and their employers through relationships with mentors and sponsors. In honor of Women’s History Month, let’s take a deeper dive into this topic and make the case for your organization to invest in programs that integrate the power of both mentorship and sponsorship.

What Is the Difference Between Mentors and Sponsors?

Mentors and sponsors serve valuable, but not identical, roles in your network. Mentors typically serve as role models, providing advice and perspective to help you develop your skills and navigate challenging situations. Mentors can be at any level in the organization, with peer and reverse mentoring becoming more frequently used approaches. 

Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give you critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on your behalf. 

As a longtime executive coach and the creator of a leadership development platform, I’m not surprised by how underutilized mentorship and sponsorship are. I’ve had many clients fall into the trap of thinking their good work is enough. It often takes people a while to realize that who they know is just as important as the quality of their work. They overlook how much their relationships give them access to resources, information and influence that they need to get work done and to advance their careers.

The Power of Support at Work

While mentorship and sponsorship are good for everyone, I’m especially intrigued by their potential to address an issue that many organizations struggle with: the leadership gap between men and women.

According to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report  from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, women are underrepresented at all stages of the leadership pipeline. While 48% of all entry-level employees are women, only 40% of managers are. The gap keeps getting broader all the way to the C-Suite, where men outnumber women by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

That’s a problem on many levels. Researchers have found that companies with more female leaders make more money, are more socially responsible and have better customer service. Female CEOs can even drive stock prices. Companies recognize these benefits, and many are increasing their efforts around leadership development for women.

These programs must include opportunities to develop relationships with mentors and sponsors. When you look at data from Gallup, the Women in the Workplace report and other recent research, it becomes clear why these relationships can be so beneficial for women’s careers:

• Women are more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81%. (For women under 30 — your organization’s rising generation of leaders —93% want promotions.) In other words, high-potential women want to know that they have a future at your organization. Gallup found that when an employee has a mentor or sponsor, they’re much more likely to feel that they have a clear path forward.

• Learning and growth are deeply important to your workforce. More than 9 out of 10 employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. Mentorship and sponsorship help address that demand. According to Gallup, employees with mentors are twice as likely to say they’ve had recent opportunities to learn and grow.

• Perhaps the greatest potential for mentorship and sponsorship programs lies in helping more women find sponsors. Currently, 25% of men have a sponsor at work, while only 22% of women do. According to Herminia Ibarra of London Business School:

Too few women are reaching the top of their organizations, and a big reason is that they are not getting the high-stakes assignments that are prerequisite for a shot at the C-suite. Often, this is due to a lack of powerful sponsors demanding and ensuring that they get these stepping-stone jobs.

Ibarra has also found that men and women describe their relationships with supporters differently: Women talk about how these relationships increase their self-understanding, while men talk about others endorsing them and helping them plan their career advancement.

How to Improve Mentorship and Sponsorship

So how can your organization maximize the power of mentorship and sponsorship to advance women leaders?

• Examine how the rise of hybrid work has affected who receives mentorship or sponsorship in your organization. For example, men are more likely than women to receive mentorship and sponsorship when they work onsite, according to the Women in the Workplace report.

• Start thinking about how to weave elements of mentorship or sponsorship into existing programs without overburdening participants or executives. While support relationships that develop on their own are great, formal programs can create even more impressive results, Gallup found.

• Whether or not you have a formal program, make sure your organization is teaching coaching skills. Potential mentors and sponsors are more likely to help when they have the right tools to do so.

• Consider a tool like the New Lens® platform that facilitates mentoring conversations. Our app leverages the power of both peer learning and manager feedback.

Finally, remember that we understand the power of mentorship and sponsorship at Newberry Solutions and we welcome the chance to answer your questions and share how New Lens and our other tools can empower you to support women leaders. Schedule a New Lens demo now, or get in touch with us for more information.

How to Make Hybrid Schedules Work for Men AND Women

Women, Men and Hybrid Work

Have you been thinking of hybrid work as just a “women’s issue”? The recent Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org debunks that narrative — but it also finds  some inequity between women’s and men’s experiences with hybrid work schedules. Based on the report, as well as my own conversations with clients and other business leaders, I want to share some ideas that will help you maximize the benefits of hybrid work for everyone in your organization, as well as make return-to-office initiatives less contentious and more productive.

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

Flexibility Benefits Everyone

First, some good news. In large numbers, both men and women said that hybrid work has improved their work-life balance and reduced feelings of fatigue and burnout. Additionally, 83% of all respondents said one of the biggest reasons that they like hybrid work is that it helps them be more productive. 

It’s great to see this confirmation that it isn’t just women who value hybrid schedules. All too often, there’s a perception that women want to work remotely, while men prefer going back to the office. But, in reality,  women and men want control over where and when they work. Flexibility is one of the key benefits that attracts an employee to a company and keeps them there.

I was also happy to see the report address a trend I see playing out every day with the high-performing women I work with. In our new hybrid world, women are more likely to feel set up to succeed than they did in the past. Hybrid work has taken away a barrier to their ambition by making it easier to balance their career with other priorities, such as childcare and eldercare (both of which are still disproportionately handled by women).

Men Benefit More from In-Person Work

The Women in the Workplace report also points to some areas for improvement when it comes to how organizations are handling hybrid work.

It is disappointing to learn that men are still more likely than women to receive mentorship and sponsorship, to be looped in on information, and to be praised and rewarded when they work onsite. However, I wasn’t surprised, especially when it comes to sponsorship. While both mentors and sponsors give you advice, sponsors also advocate for you within your organization. They’re vital to career advancement, but there’s a long-term trend of more men than women having sponsorships.

The report also points out that women — especially women with traditionally marginalized identities  —  experience microaggressions at the office  more often than men do. Women are a little more likely than men (29% vs. 25%) to like hybrid work because it cuts down on unpleasant interactions with their coworkers. Another finding hints at what may be driving those interactions: There’s a big difference (53% vs. 36%) in how many women over men said that hybrid work reduces the pressure they experience about managing their personal style or appearance.

Recommendations for Organizations

So what actions should organizations take based on the Women in the Workplace report? As a firm that has a long track record of helping high-performing women succeed, we offer these ideas:

Right now, both men and women who work flexibly aren’t worried that it will affect their careers. However, as we see more news articles reporting that remote employees are more likely to be laid off, concerns could start rising. Make sure that your managers are trained to evaluate remote workers. For example, face time at the office should not be a key performance metric. You can also look at your performance review process to make sure it treats all employees fairly, whether they work onsite, remotely, or on a hybrid schedule.

While workplace conflict is unavoidable, keep in mind that employees may also be experiencing microaggressions, such as comments on their appearance. If your organization is pushing for more in-person work, consider offering some refreshers on microaggressions. When employees, especially women and other marginalized groups, feel more welcome and accepted, it’s only natural that they will want to be in the office more often.

Level the playing field for men and women, remote workers and onsite workers. Everyone should feel that they have access to the information, relationships, recognition and training that will benefit them. This was one of our big motivators in creating our New Lens® learning platform, which can be accessed 24/7, no matter where an employee is. (Go here to see it in action.) Also consider implementing programs that pair women with mentors and sponsors.

Hybrid work is here to stay. To reap its benefits and minimize disadvantages, organizations must be deliberate about shaping policies to promote equity and inclusivity. What is going well — and what isn’t — with hybrid work at your organization? What else can you do to make sure that hybrid schedules work for everyone?

Fixing the ‘Broken Rung’ for Women at Work

You’ve probably heard of the glass ceiling for women at work. But what we really should be focusing on is the broken rung.

That’s according to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org. The report debunks workplace myths about women (I wrote about its findings regarding women and ambition recently.) One of the biggest myths is that the glass ceiling is the biggest obstacle women face in reaching senior leadership. But what McKinsey and LeanIn found — and what we’ve observed firsthand here at Newberry Solutions — is that the barriers to women start far earlier in their careers.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

The broken rung discussed in the report is the fact that fewer women than men get that first key promotion to manager. That puts fewer women in the leadership pipeline, which ultimately leads to a shortage of female candidates for senior leadership positions. As the report states:

Because of the gender disparity in early promotions, men end up holding 60 percent of manager-level positions in a typical company, while women occupy 40 percent. Since men significantly outnumber women, there are fewer women to promote to director, and the number of women decreases at every subsequent level.

How big of a problem is the broken rung? McKinsey and LeanIn found that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 87 women were. The gap is even bigger for women of color: 73 were promoted to manager for every 100 men who were. This problem is not new. The Women in the Workplace report has flagged it for nine consecutive years. But we clearly need to do more to address it. As a firm that’s passionate about helping women succeed — and that has a strong track record of helping them get promoted — this is one of our top priorities. So we want to highlight McKinsey and LeanIn’s recommendations on fixing the broken rung — and add some of our own.

How to Help Women Get Promoted

• Realize that the problem is not with women and their ambition. Some leaders may brush off the broken rung by claiming that women don’t want promotions and are more likely to step away from work. But that’s outdated — and inaccurate — thinking. The Women in the Workplace report shows that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic. (We’ve seen the same thing in our work with high-performing women.) Roughly equal numbers of women and men want promotions. That’s even true for women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

• Address performance bias. All too often, women are hired or promoted based on what they’ve done, while men are hired or promoted based on potential. In their report, McKinsey and LeanIn recommend taking “de-biasing” steps. For example, require that managers give their rationale behind performance evaluations and recommendations for promotions.

• Make development more equitable. Do the current learning and development programs at your organization include enough women who have the potential to be promoted? And does the content of those programs focus on what women need to get promoted? For some inspiration, check out our case study “Empowering Women to Reach Their Leadership Potential.” It tells the story of how a Fortune 50 company used our New Lens® learning platform to prepare more women for promotions.

Research is clear that companies benefit from having women in senior leadership roles. But to accomplish this goal, you have to take action much earlier in the leadership pipeline. This is one of the reasons we created New Lens, and we’re excited that it’s becoming part of the solution for the broken-rung problem. To learn more and set up a demonstration, visit newlensleadership.com.

The Truth About Women and Ambition

True or false? During the Covid-19 pandemic, women have become less ambitious than men are.

False. Very false.

But if you answered “true,” I can understand why. Perhaps you’ve seen news articles about the “lazy girl jobs” trend or women leaving the workforce.

Photo by Jopwell

Those headlines, however, tell only part of the story. The Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, fills in some gaps in the narrative. This report debunks myths about women at work, including the one that they lack ambition.

Because we’re a firm with a special passion for developing women leaders, the Women in the Workplace report is always required reading for us. We believe it should be for your organization as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the report’s findings, compare them with what we see firsthand through our work, and share recommendations on cultivating women leaders in your organization. And we’ll start with the myth of women’s declining ambitions.

8 Out of 10 Women Want Promotions

The pandemic was an enormous blow to women at work. More women than men lost their jobs, and women experienced more stress and burnout than men did. But the Women in the Workplace report found that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81% — identical to the percentage of men who want to get promoted. Younger women and women of color are even more ambitious. Among women under thirty, 93% are aiming for a promotion, while 88% of women of color are.

The report also refutes the perception that women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule are less ambitious. In fact, they’re a little more likely to want promotions than women who work fully on-site. Furthermore, across all types of work schedules (remote, hybrid, on-site), women are just as likely to want a promotion as men in comparable arrangements.

What We’re Hearing from Women

The Women in the Workplace report’s findings on ambition track closely with what we’ve observed firsthand. Our work frequently involves helping top organizations cultivate women leaders. (For some examples, check out our case studies on how companies are using our New Lens® app to invest in women’s development.) We’ve coached countless women and spoken at events for women (such as the D CEO Emerging Women Leadership Network Program). Beyond  Newbery Solutions, I’m also involved with nonprofits and other entities that focus on elevating women, including Texas Women’s Foundation, the Senator Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership at Texas Woman’s University, the United Way Fund for Women and Children, and 50/50 Women on Boards. So I have a lot of conversations with women about what’s happening in their careers and in their workplaces.

And what I hear from them echoes what McKinsey and LeanIn.org found. Women care deeply about their work and are constantly looking for ways they can make a bigger impact. They’re excited about flexible schedules that help them manage their personal lives without shortchanging their careers. The McKinsey/Lean In statistics aren’t the only findings that demonstrate women’s ambition. Women are starting more businesses than they did before the pandemic. Women are also more likely to attend college and obtain their degrees than men are.

Build a Pipeline of Women Leaders

As we celebrate women’s growing ambitions, we must also look for ways to translate these ambitions into gains for women at the top levels of leadership. While we’ve made some progress in closing the C-suite gender gap, women still hold less than one-third of these roles

The problem, according to the Women in the Workplace report, is a broken leadership pipeline. Women are less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

 This discrepancy ultimately hurts organizations. We see in the McKinsey/Lean In report that there are great numbers of ambitious women out there who are eager to lead. When these women don’t get promoted, their employers miss out on untold potential. 

So how can we make our workplaces more equitable and help women get the promotions they aspire to?

• Talk about the Women in the Workplace report with your team. This discussion can help surface any misconceptions about women and ambition that your employees may have.

• Make leadership development training accessible to more employees. Companies rarely have budgets to provide coaching to everyone who wants it. It’s more likely to be reserved for senior leaders. That leaves out vast numbers of high-potential employees who could benefit. This was one of our main motivations for creating New Lens.

• Implement employee resource groups (ERGs) for women and women of color. According to the McKinsey/Lean In report, 93% of companies with strong pipelines of women leaders had ERGs with content tailored for women. That’s compared with 83% for companies overall. For women of color, the difference is even more dramatic: 61% of companies with strong pipelines have targeted ERGs, compared with 44% of companies overall.

Increasing the ranks of women leaders is a big topic, and one we’ll continue to explore in upcoming articles. Got questions? Please share them with me on LinkedIn. You could help shape our future content. In the meantime, check out the full Women in the Workplace 2023 report and explore how New Lens® democratizes access to leadership development.

4 Questions for Team Leaders as 2023 Ends

As 2023 draws to a close, you might find yourself in a whirlwind of year-end tasks, deadlines and holiday preparations. In the middle of all that, you might not have had the chance to take a step back and assess the broader picture of how your team is faring. But as we approach the new year, it's crucial to set aside time to reflect. Taking a pause to evaluate the collective journey of your team over the past year can provide invaluable insights on the path you should take going forward. Use these questions to help you take the pulse of your team and identify what they might need from you.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

What does your team’s stress level look like? As a leader, it’s crucial to recognize the symptoms of burnout on your team and to address them quickly. The effects of long-term stress (which we’ve all been experiencing!) can show up in different ways. For example, you may have noticed that your team members don’t seem as focused as they used to, or that communication feels strained. If your team members are showing signs of burnout, affirm your commitment to their well-being and look for ways to address the situation. Do you need to adjust workloads, deadlines, or the pace of work? Do team members need more support to navigate any changes or uncertainty? 

How can you help team members manage their energy? To address stress and burnout, you can also ensure that team members have the resources they need to maintain balance and sustain high performance. Leaders play a pivotal role in fostering a supportive environment that encourages overall well-being. Encourage healthy habits like regular breaks, setting boundaries between work and personal time, and actually using vacation days. And don’t forget to lead by example: If you work around the clock or don’t take breaks or vacations, your team members will assume that’s what you expect of them (no matter what you say).

How clear is your team on what success looks like? Since the beginning of 2023, a lot may have changed in your organization. Priorities and expectations have shifted; new challenges and opportunities have emerged. You may assume that your team knows what’s most important now. But, in times of rapid change, sometimes key messages about priorities get lost in the busyness of our day-to-day work. So, take some time with your team before year-end to talk about priorities going into 2024. Connect the dots for your team members about how their roles fit in and affect those priorities. Make sure each team member knows the top areas where they should focus to have the biggest impact on the business and empower them to focus on those “big three.”

Is there a need to upskill your team? If you have observed performance issues in your team in 2023, ask yourself whether they have the skills and training necessary to succeed. Over the past few years, so many organizations have gone through resignations, layoffs and restructuring, leaving their employees grappling with new roles or evolving responsibilities. Beyond that, if staffing is lean and workloads are heavy, your newer team members may have received little to no onboarding. But even your seasoned employees may need additional training if they’re taking on different types of projects. We’ve definitely seen these struggles and created the New Lens® app to address them while making it easy to fit development into busy schedules and tight budgets.

This week, I challenge you to identify one area to focus on with your team in 2024, and one or two initial steps you will take. This small investment of time will yield big payoffs in the coming year.

12 Key Takeaways from the New Lens Micro Summit

What an amazing event we had last week! Of course, that's thanks to our wonderful speakers and to all of you, our engaged New Lens® Micro Summit: 4 Core Strategies for Success attendees. I’m still soaking in all the insights that were shared and am so grateful to each of you who joined us.

Reflecting on the summit, it's clear that each speaker brought a unique perspective, shedding light on critical areas of leadership, teamwork, networking, and resilience. I've taken a moment to recap a few of the takeaways that stood out to me. Whether you attended the summit or are catching up now, I believe these insights will resonate and offer actionable strategies for your own leadership journey. Let's dive in.

Michol Ecklund

Michol, Chief Sustainability Officer and General Counsel at Callon Petroleum, has navigated change throughout her career. So who better to speak on the topic “Focus on the Right Work: The Great Resignation Compounded Workloads”?

In her comments, Michol highlighted the emerging challenges post-pandemic where workers are increasingly unhappy, burnt out, and seeking new job opportunities, often attributed to amplified workloads from organizational restructuring. Here are some highlight from the advice she shared:

• Create space to connect in a genuine way. Remember, everyone has a life outside work. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with your team. “By checking in with others and sharing more about your own situation, I think you ultimately build deeper relationships,” Michol said. “You build even more motivated employees and even more committed employees that want to be part of your organization.”  

• Balance your personal productivity with that of the team. You may be more productive working from home, but your team may be more productive if everyone spends more time at the office. Find an approach that considers both sets of needs.

• Get back to the basics to avoid burnout. Getting enough sleep is critical. It affects how you show up personally and professionally, your energy, and your ability to be productive.

Mark Benton

Mark, Vice President of HR Corporate Functions at McKesson, also talked about navigating the shift to hybrid work when tackling his topic, “Develop a High Performing Team: How Unprepared Leaders Impact the Workplace.” I so admire Mark's ability to surface important topics that need attention. 

One theme that stood out was the challenge of staying connected when working remotely. In this context, building trust and understanding your own strengths and weaknesses are vital for good leadership. Other highlights:

• Empathy is more important than ever in the world of hybrid work. Your team members want to know that you care about them as people, that you recognize what they are contributing and that you are willing to help them.

• Managers today have to help distributed teams stay connected. One way to do this: be very intentional about checking in with each other.

• Be more of an "ask person" than a "tell person". You can help your team members grow by asking coaching questions.

Hilda Galvan

Hilda, Partner-in-Charge at Jones Day Dallas, spoke on the topic “Build a Powerful Network: How Remote Work Affects Relationships & Productivity.” Hilda is gifted at cultivating relationships both professionally and in her community involvement, so I was thrilled that she could share her advice with us. 

She advised leaders not to favor in-office workers over remote ones and to communicate clearly. Building relationships, even when remote, is key to good leadership. A few key takeaways:

• To get people back to the office, talk about why it’s so important. For example, remind veteran team members how much they learned by being around colleagues who were senior to them. Today, they can do the same thing for younger employees. By broadening their perspective,

• Engaging with issues you care about will energize you and can help counteract any feelings of loneliness from remote work. Connecting with others who share your passion can also lead to meaningful relationships.

• Treat small pockets of time in your day as opportunities to maintain relationships. For example, call an old friend while you’re driving to a meeting across town.

Tina Bigalke

As Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at PepsiCo and someone with a wealth of leadership experience in business and HR, Tina was the perfect speaker to talk about the topic “Build Leadership Courage & Resilience: Strategies to Navigate Uncertainty”. 

She also gave us insight into how PepsiCo has been a training ground for so many Fortune 500 CEOs and shared PepsiCo’s holistic resilence model which has helped its staff navigate these challenging times.

Some key insights:

• Identify the capabilities and skills your organization will need for the future (not just for today) and assess your employees against those skills.

• Don’t be afraid to have honest conversations with employees about how they’re doing and their path forward in your organization. 

• Have a variety of development tools in place for employees, especially younger ones, who truly want to gain new skills.

More Micro Learning

A huge thanks to Michol, Mark, Hilda and Tina for packing so much valuable information into just a couple of hours. It was so important to us that this event fit into busy schedules and deliver a powerful payoff for just a short investment of time. That’s the same philosophy that drives Newberry Solutions’ award-winning New Lens® app. With “snack size” lessons combined with collaborative learning, New Lens makes leadership development affordable and scalable. I invite you to learn more and schedule a demo for your organization.