Unlock the Secrets to Leadership Development That Actually Works: Join Our June Webinar

Are your organization's leadership development efforts falling short? You're not alone. Despite the billions spent annually on leadership training, many programs fail to produce meaningful results. We're tackling this critical issue in our upcoming free webinar, “3 Hurdles When Implementing a Leadership Development Program & How to Avoid Them.” Join us on Thursday, June 26 at 9 a.m. CT to discover practical strategies that will help ensure your leadership development programs deliver the results you need.

You Can’t Afford Ineffective Programs

We chose this topic because it’s one that keeps executives and HR leaders awake at night. The statistics paint a troubling picture. Companies globally invest massive resources in leadership development, yet many organizations still fail to meet their leadership standards:

• About 75% of employees believe their managers are ineffective.

• Leader and manager effectiveness is a top priority for 60% of HR leaders.

• Only 12% of companies are confident in the strength of their leadership bench.

• More than three-quarters of companies believe they are experiencing a leadership gap.

Meanwhile, more than half of organizations with effective leadership development programs at all levels report being in the top 10% of their industry's financial performance (54%), compared with just 31% for organizations with effective programs at only one leader level. The business case for getting leadership development right is clear.

The Human Toll of Unprepared Leaders

Beyond financial considerations, ineffective leadership development has profound human costs:

• 84% of respondents in a Society for Human Resource Management study said poorly trained managers create stress and extra work.

• Ineffective leaders even hurt employees’ health.

• More than half of managers feel burned out, partly because they lack the training and preparation needed to excel in their roles.

These statistics highlight why leadership development can’t be treated as just another HR initiative. It's a strategic imperative that directly affects employee engagement, retention, and business performance.

Let’s Talk About Solutions

While the challenges are significant, there are clear strategies for overcoming them. And we’ll be covering them in our June 26 webinar. Join us to learn about:

• The key barriers that prevent leadership programs from gaining traction and delivering impact

• Why traditional learning methods often fail to stick—and what actually works

• Practical ways to integrate leadership development into employees’ daily work without adding more to their plates

• How our New Lens® learning platform eliminates common roadblocks to make implementation seamless and effective

Spaces are limited, so reserve your spot for this free webinar now. We’ll see you at 9 a.m. Central time on Thursday, June 26!

---

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.

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.