By Shwetha Mudabagilu Krishnappa
Leadership is an integral component of personal and professional growth. Developing competent leaders is a significant concern for organisations of all types and sizes. Organisations invest heavily in executive education but frequently yield a meagre return on this investment. According to TrainingIndustry.com, global spending on leadership training in 2020 reached an estimated $357.7 billion, with $165.3 billion allocated in the United States alone. Leadership development accounts for approximately 25% of an organization’s total training budget. Despite these substantial investments, skill gaps within leadership ranks persist.
Leaders in large organisations commonly possess technical skills in their field, earning their peers’ respect and the capacity to lead with credibility. People often get promoted to leadership positions because of technical competency, not personability. They lack experience in contextualising, formulating strategy, setting goals, and making decisions due to a lack of strong interpersonal and analytical skills. According to research from the corporate executive board, 50-70% of new executives fail in the first 18 months of promotion into an executive role, either from within or outside the organization. Several large-scale industry studies indicate that more than 50% of senior leaders believe their talent development efforts don’t adequately build critical skills and organizational capabilities.
A prevalent issue in leadership development is the adaptation of a one-size-fits-all approach, assuming leadership and skills to be the same traits all leaders need regardless of context and circumstances. The broad assumption is that the skills you need to be a leader are transferable. Executive programs are designed as an extension or as a substitution for MBA programs focusing on discipline-based skill sets such as strategy development and financial analysis, underplaying the development of soft skills that organizations need. Research from the Neuroleadership Institute suggests we must excel across three core domains of great leadership: being future-focused, being good with people, and being able to drive results. Chief learning officers are increasingly voicing concerns that traditional programs no longer adequately equip executives to confront the evolving challenges of today and the future. Companies seek the communicative, interpretive, affective, and perceptual skills to lead coherent, proactive collaboration.
Nonetheless, these skills alone will not make a leader because you also need a lot of technical expertise to excel at the list of skills in practice. For example, take one of these skills: thinking critically to find the essence of a situation. To do that well, you must have specific technical expertise. The essential data required for an engineer to design a bridge is distinct from the information used to analyse a literary masterpiece, and both differ significantly from what is needed to create an effective marketing campaign. Leaders develop across multiple domains by explicating the process and content of leader development. Leaders who had a combination of technical knowledge and leadership domain expertise were seen as more effective.
Implementing a thorough program for leadership development prepares leaders at all levels to take on responsibilities with more responsibility and scope. As a result, there is a high demand for personalised, socialised, and contextualised leadership development programs moving away from prepackaged material of a one–size–fits–all–all approach. Business schools, consultancies, and corporate universities are reshaping the leadership development industry by leveraging the advantages of remote personalised learning platforms. This dynamic environment shows an industry that is ready to change to satisfy the constantly shifting leadership expectations in the contemporary business environment.
Author is an Assistant Professor, T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal.