Old Playbook, New Game: Agile Leadership Development

Remember this time last year when your organization was planning for 2025? How did you predict the year would unfold? What challenges did you anticipate for your leaders? And how did your predictions compare to the reality of what actually happened?

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The disconnect between how fast business moves and how slowly most leadership programs adapt has become a pressing problem for L&D leaders. DDI has found that less than one-quarter of HR organizations emphasize future-focused skills like setting strategy and managing change. It’s challenging to think about what leadership development should look like for your organization in the coming year when the only thing we can say for certain about 2026 is that rapid transformation will continue.

As we were developing our New Lens® learning platform, we quickly realized traditional leadership development didn’t fit today's business environment and that we needed to create something different. Since then, we’ve seen New Lens deliver real results for our clients, even in times of intense disruption.

If unanticipated changes made your 2025 programs feel outdated by midyear, it’s time to shift your thinking for 2026. You can deliver leadership development that adapts to the twists and turns. And here’s how it can take shape.

The Hidden Cost of ‘Content Dump’ Programs

Most traditional leadership programs operate on a “content dump” model. The assumption is that leaders need to be filled up with knowledge in advance. Attend the three-day offsite. Absorb the frameworks. Complete the case studies. Return to work fully equipped.

This approach assumes you can predict what leaders will need to know months from now. It assumes your business strategy will remain relatively stable, and that the leadership challenges your participants face in Month 1 will still be relevant in Month 12.

But in today's business environment, these are dangerous assumptions.

Think about what your leaders are actually navigating: Hybrid work arrangements require entirely new management approaches. AI tools are transforming how work gets done faster than anyone can keep up with. Leaders must make rapid decisions while trying to keep everyone engaged through constant change.

Your leadership program was designed for a different game than the one being played.

Enter the Agile Alternative

But what if your leadership program could adapt as quickly as your business does? What if instead of frontloading content, you could help leaders build skills progressively while applying them in real time?

This is where agile methodology transforms leadership development. Agile means iterative, responsive, and built for constant change. Instead of dumping content all at once, you help leaders quickly absorb concepts, apply them, experiment, and refine their approach—all while ideas build on each other in a structured progression.

Josh Bersin, one of the world's leading HR analysts, has been championing this shift for years. In his research on building agile organizations, Bersin emphasizes that agile organizations “evolve their strategy but deepen it where they have strength.” Management is “thin, hands-on, and highly engaged. And people and teams are constantly learning.”

The key word there is “constantly.” Not annually. Not quarterly. Constantly.

More recently, Bersin's research on why leadership development feels broken points to the core issue: When companies redefine their business models every few years, creating new organizational structures and designing solutions around data and customer experience, traditional “long-form” leadership development simply doesn't keep up.

Learn-Apply-Experiment

The “content dump” model breaks down when the challenges leaders face tomorrow look nothing like the ones you prepared them for yesterday.

Agile development recognizes that modern leaders need ongoing support navigating constant change. They don’t need three days of content downloaded at once. They need the right insight at the right moment. They need connection with peers facing similar challenges. They need space to try something, reflect on what happened, and adjust their approach.

This is the learn-apply-experiment approach. Ideas still build on each other in a logical sequence, but the emphasis shifts from passive absorption to active application. Leaders learn by doing, supported by:

• Micro-learning that fits into the flow of work. Not all-day workshops that pull people away from their teams, but two- to seven-minute lessons they can access on their phones between meetings. Research shows employees have an average of just 24 minutes per week for dedicated learning, typically interrupted every three minutes. Leadership development has to meet people where they are.

• Peer cohorts for real-time problem-solving and accountability. When priorities shift mid-quarter, leaders don’t have to wait until the next module to discuss how to respond. They’re already in regular conversation with peers navigating similar challenges.

• Immediate relevance. Let’s be real: The idea of learning something they aren’t sure they will ever use is not very motivating for your leaders. With the learn-apply-experiment approach, leaders can learn something today, put it into action this week and then reflect on what happened with others during their cohort’s meeting.

Agile Leadership Development in Practice

So what does agile leadership development actually look like when you implement it? We designed New Lens around features like these:

• Content stays nimble. You maintain core leadership principles—the foundational strategies that consistently drive results—while keeping application examples flexible. When your organization announces a major restructuring, you don’t need to redesign the entire program. You adjust the real-world scenarios and discussion questions your leaders are working through.

• Implementation adapts to organizational reality. Programs can launch with cohorts who progress together, or operate on an open-enrollment basis where individuals start when they need it. Content gets selected to fit specific organizational needs before the program begins, but can be adjusted as those needs evolve.

• Learning integrates with real work constraints. Just five minutes a day or 30 minutes a week. Accessible on mobile devices, wherever leaders are working. Built around how work actually happens rather than requiring people to stop working in order to learn.

• Feedback loops operate continuously. Regular cohort check-ins where leaders discuss real challenges they’re facing. Manager involvement through progress dashboards and discussion guides. Action plans that leaders customize for their actual situations and can update as circumstances change.

This approach addresses what Bersin identifies as the critical need for “learning in the flow of work”—providing employees with the information they need, when they need it, without interrupting their work processes.

What Will Your Leaders Need in 2026?

How will your leadership development programs respond to the change and disruption in 2026? Remember, we're here to help. If you'd like to talk more about New Lens or our other products and services, like executive coaching, just drop me a note.

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Don’t wait for performance to drop before taking action. Discover how the New Lens® platform helps organizations support managers with bite-sized, actionable learning—built for today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments.

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.

How to Create ‘Growth in the Flow of Work’

For a long time, there’s been a gap between the development opportunities that employees want and what companies actually offer. Amid the Great Resignation, closing that gap has taken on greater urgency. Employees are more likely to stick with an organization that helps them grow. But with so many development options and strategies to choose from, which approaches actually get results? That’s an important question for everyone from company executives and HR departments to team leaders and individual contributors.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

And a recent report from analyst Josh Bersin has a clear answer. “A New Strategy For Corporate Learning: Growth In The Flow Of Work” has insights that will help you whether you are thinking about learning strategies for your organization, team, or your own development. Here’s what stood out to me from the Bersin report and some ideas for how to put these findings into action.

What Kind of Development Drives Results?

According to “Growth in the Flow of Work,” these are the learning and development areas that have the biggest impact on business results:

• Career growth programs

• Leadership development 

• A culture of learning

• L&D innovation

With my focus on leadership development, I want to share a few of Bersin’s insights in that area:

Developing leaders at all levels. As an executive coach, I’ve seen that, all too often, organizations invest in leadership training for senior leaders and high potentials, but overlook other employees. That damages an organization’s leadership pipeline. Research has revealed new managers felt unprepared for leadership roles. In fact, more than 60% failed within their first couple of years on the job. “This is because many first-time supervisors are thrown into the deep end of the pool, with little guidance or direction, and with little or no formal training in leadership skills,” leadership coach and facilitator Steven Howard writes. 

Teaching leaders to develop others. One of leaders’ most important jobs is helping others achieve their full potential — in other words, developing future leaders. When leaders are skilled at teaching and coaching, it makes development accessible to more employees. It also makes development more effective because it’s relevant to each employee’s work. As the report puts it: “Yes, we each need granular skills to do our jobs. But we can’t really use these skills, hone them, or apply them unless we have context, experiences, mentoring, and wisdom.” To learn more about how leaders can develop team members, check out my articles “How to Stop Fixing and Start Coaching” and “Put Your Coaching Skills to Work.”

Giving leaders ‘Power Skills.’ Bersin defines Power Skills as behavioral skills such as adaptability, time management and communication. Power Skills are the most important skills for driving business results, but they are also more complex to teach than technical skills. I have some articles that can help you with this area, too, whether you are helping others develop their Power Skills or cultivating your own:

• “Making the Most of Transition”

• “How to Lead With Purpose and Have More Impact”

• “Stop Clashes That Stall Your Team”

• “Communicating From a Position of Strength”

• “5 Ways to Feed Your Creativity”

I encourage you to read the full “Growth in the Flow of Work” report and think about how its findings apply to your career and your organization. How can you start weaving more learning and development into daily work experiences? 

It’s exciting to see that our learning platform, New Lens, is aligned with the ideas in the Bersin report. News Lens allows you to deliver the coaching and connection that employees crave, and seamlessly fits into the workday with bite-size lessons and practical action steps. We would love to support your company. Schedule a New Lens demo now.