The Opportunity:

Regardless of economic conditions, new government regulations, global growth, or demographic changes, leadership development assumes a top priority on the agendas of all business leaders year over year over year. We suspect the focus on developing leaders won’t be going away anytime soon, if ever, and in fact, the highest performing organizations — what we call Level 4 — are planning to accelerate leader development more so than ever before. Why? Because while the majority of organizations tout the business importance of leadership development, a mere 8% have yet taken the time to define their unique leadership requirements and design leader development in alignment with those requirements.

The Insights:

Defining leadership requirements means understanding how many leaders are needed in what parts of the business with what skills and experiences and at what levels. Plain and simple, it is called a leadership strategy. Of the mere 8% of organizations who have a leadership strategy, more than three-quarters (77%) told us their leadership strategy  was only somewhat, or not at all, aligned with their business strategy. Without a leadership strategy, it is virtually impossible to define a leadership development strategy — the approach for building requisite leader skills and experiences. It is no surprise then that more than a third (36%) of organizations say their leadership development practices are below average or poor and not producing the quality of leader essential for growing and sustaining the business.

The Research:

Our empirical research validates leadership development as a long-term business imperative, not a short-term training program. Implementing it as a strategic differentiator is guided by four crucial modern-day transformations:

• A dramatic shift in demographics — a new leader is here: out with Boomers and in with Millennials
• A reprioritization of targeted development —out with executive education only and in with immersive experience development for all leaders, particularly Millennials
• A shift in learning delivery — out with leader by leader training programs and in with mobility opportunities to build functional leader experience
• The arrival of leadership analytics -- out with leader program completion metrics and in with leadership requirements forecasting capability

Sample Research:

Executive Summary

Leadership Development 2015: The Time to Act is Now

Excellence in Practice

Measuring Leadership Development

KnowledgeGraphic

Leadership Development 2015

Research Summary

Leadership Development 2015

Business Impact Model

High-Performance Leadership Development

The Tools

Brandon Hall Group doesn’t stop at the research. We know insights and trends are necessary and informative, but applying them in the context of your culture and business makes the real difference. To this point, we make available downloadable and interactive tools and benchmark data to ensure your success as you shape the implementation of a high performance leadership development strategy.