Let’s try and define Leadership Development

The role technology plays in leadership development and millennial management

What we have entered is an age of millennial management, with the average age of first-time managers at 30. Surveys from various sources tell that nearly 30% of millennials hold manager roles and they value leadership development for professional growth and skill-based learning more than the previous generations. Upwork’s Future Workforce Report says that they are three times more likely than the previous generation to take responsibility for their re-skilling. Yet, having grown in a tech-booming era, they want the resources delivered to them in new ways that can be accessed from any time, anywhere. 

So, how do leadership development professionals tailor programs for such a group of managers?

While the leadership skills can be taught, to transform someone into a great leader takes a well-planned and monitored journey of continuous learning. There are a lot of missed opportunities in leadership development in today’s high-stakes environment. HBR estimates that “only 10% of training programs are effective.”

The right approach to leadership development includes

1. Focus on identifying and creating new desired behaviours.
2. Enable learning by doing – use roleplay as a mechanism to facilitate leadership abilities under specific light, facilitating self-insights
3. Provide knowledge, skills, and practices On-demand  to ditch traditional classroom lectures and 
4. Drive intentional repetition and practice through business simulations to ensure leadership behaviours are developed sustainably.

Cautiously implemented leadership development programs using digital tools to allow

1. Aligning of development around key topics/valuable skills
2. Launching continuous learning journeys rather than one-off programs
3. Facilitating collaborative and ongoing discussions
4. Running business simulations simultaneously across large audiences 
5. Gathering insights based on candidate’s behavioural and decision-making records

The right use of technology can skyrocket your team’s development initiatives. Active conversations, business simulations, role-playing, and collaborating to gather fresh insights – that’s what drives learning now. 

Drawing on research by Towards Maturity, 20% organizations are more likely to enable their leaders to access support at the point of need and improve talent management, and additionally, they are 30% more likely to increase learning access, upon the successful use of technology.

Virtual leadership development tools allow participants to go live from wherever they are, and translate their expertise into real-life business scenarios in addition to other forms of assessments. Digital tools can help create high-impact leadership development plans to build critical talents, enabling the successful execution of business strategy. 

As the development program plays out, data can be analyzed in real-time with results captured translated to invaluable insights into the dynamics of leadership development professionals, individual learning, and how the enhanced methods are received.

An effective leadership development program results in these 4 big benefits: 

With a well-planned leadership program, you’ll find numerous leadership training benefits but here are 4 of the big ones

1. Attracting good employees. Engaged and committed employees are the ones to look for. This is one of the advantages of leadership training you might not initially consider but it is what you want for your organization. When you give employees a role in your company’s future, they respond with loyalty.

2. Shaping company culture. You invest in them, and they invest in you. Investing in leadership development sends a message to your people that you care about them and inspires them to meet and exceed performance expectations. Investing time and energy into helping your employees succeed makes them more likely to help your company succeed.

3. Better financial performance. It is a sound investment. Companies that invest in their employees tend to perform better financially. By training leaders who know how to do their jobs well, you can reduce costs, increase productivity and improve departments throughout your company.

4. Accountability. Leadership programs provide accountability that helps to maintain a proactive approach to change. Leadership training benefits include evaluating a leader’s strong skills and areas of weakness. 

The lack of an effective leadership training program leads to a dip in leadership engagement, with participating employees finding themselves forced to attend the programs rather than enjoying the time off. With a majority of leadership programs taking the traditional approach of relying heavily on classroom lectures, standard presentations, case studies, built around age-old competency models, the returning candidates may be equipped with the knowledge but fail to apply it practically. 

Learning and development is the core of DronaHQ’s initiation

We have worked relentlessly in delivering mobile training and development solutions while working in close collaborations with businesses big and small, launching individual development programs to uncover critical leadership behaviours, mindsets and capabilities. In our journey of launching our no-code platform to build workplace applications, we have seen a variety of tools and techniques including individual assessments, business simulations, live proctoring, situational and cognitive analysis, coaching initiatives and many more built on our platform by HR and L&D professionals from leading organizations to design powerful leadership training experiences that have a profound and lasting impact on people and their careers.

Leadership development cultivates the capital of an organization and as we move further into the 2020s, it’s an exciting time for top-to-bottom transformation of the leadership development departments for continuous training and sustaining impactful leaders in the organization. 

To embark on your digital Learning & Development journey – from Individual Learning Program, Gamification Apps, Assessments, Sequential learning, Effective Engagement apps, Virtual Assessment Center App, connect with us.