Welcome to the succession-centric era of leadership development.

Whether you’re here to decode the patterns of past leadership transitions, pinpoint the forces shaping talent development today, or get a framework for understanding the needs of tomorrow’s leaders, this is your guide to making sense of succession planning.

Our research connects the dots between cultural stories, scientific insights, industry case studies, and actionable frameworks to help you and your leadership team navigate one of the most critical challenges in leadership. We break down some of the biggest wins and losses in leadership transitions, reveal emerging trends reshaping succession planning, and give you data-informed strategic recommendations to make decisions.

How to Make Our Succession Planning Research Work for You

• Know your why. Before diving in, ask yourself: Why I am here? What am I solving for? Are you here to design a long-term succession strategy? Strengthen your leadership pipeline? Learn more about how your teams understand and experience succession? Avoid the traps that have taken down others? The best way to use this succession planning research is to read with a purpose. And that purpose is yours.
• Think playbook, not textbook. You don’t need to read every word we’ve written to get value from our research. Start with the executive summary for the big picture. Then, pick the sections that align with your opportunities and challenges. For some it will be lessons from high-stakes stories of transition. For others, it will be evidence-based best practices or frameworks you can put into action today.
• Engage actively, apply impactfully. Take notes, flag key insights, and concentrate on execution. Succession isn’t a passive process. It’s an evolving mindset that shapes the future of your organization. Use our research to ask better questions, start critical conversations, tell impactful stories, and design leadership transitions that fill today’s gaps while creating stronger tomorrows.

Read Our 4-Part Research Feature

The post Succession Planning Reimagined: Research for Navigating Leadership Transitions appeared first on CCL.

Researchers from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® presented several sessions at this year’s annual conference of the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP). The conference was held April 3–6, in Denver, Colorado.

SIOP is the premier professional association for the science and practice of Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology, which focuses on the scientific study of human behavior in organizations and in the workplace. This specialty focuses on principles of individual, group, and organizational behavior and applying this knowledge to solving problems leaders experience in the workplace.

CCL researchers presented and lead discussions on several topics at the conference, ranging from wellbeing to coaching and more.

Listed below are the sessions researchers presented along with descriptions for each:

Does Team Virtuality Affect Perceptions of a Leader’s Power and Influence? A Natural Experiment from the COVID Pandemic

CCL Presenters: Dr. Andy Loignon and Dr. Diane Bergeron

This session featured a study that leveraged data from 485 senior leadership teams, collected around the COVID pandemic, to explore how virtual work impacts a leader’s power and influence. By using a network-based approach, it examined how virtuality affects a leader’s role as a source of influence and their reliance on others. By addressing endogeneity bias, the study offers causal insights from a natural experiment driven by pandemic-related shifts in team virtuality.

Capturing the Complexities of Leadership Coaching: A Test of AI-Assisted Evaluation

CCL Presenter: Katelyn McCoy

Coaching can be a highly effective method of leadership development, but evaluating its impact has traditionally been a difficult task. Evaluators often find participant reflections most insightful for understanding how and why coaching works well for leaders. To better understand the process and impact of coaching provided as part of leadership development programs, we engaged OpenAI’s GPT-4 model and a group of human coders in identifying and tagging themes to 1,500 participant comments from program evaluations. In this session, researchers shared their methods, lessons learned, and results.

Should’ve Learned That in Grad School: Gaps & Solutions in I-O Practitioner Curricula

CCL Presenter: Katelyn McCoy

Although most I-Os end up in nonacademic roles, graduate students often receive limited insight into the activities and competencies needed for applied careers. This session invited the audience to join breakouts to discuss the KSAOs that are lacking in I-O curricula and brainstorm practical solutions. A diverse range of professionals representing various stakeholders (e.g., professors, students, administration, managers of new grads) facilitated the breakouts which identified what is missing in I-O curricula, barriers to improving it, and concrete steps to bolster I-O education.

The Working Wounded: The Effect of Bereavement Grief and Workplace Practices on Employee Outcomes

CCL Presenters: Dr. Diane Bergeron

This symposium on bereavement (i.e., the death of someone significant), examined relationships among bereavement grief, bereavement leave, other organizational policies and practices, and work-related outcomes (job behaviors, work engagement, perceived organizational support). The insights shared showed concrete implications for people leaders and organizational decision makers.

The Bereavement Burden and Employee Leave Policies

CCL Presenters: Dr. Diane Bergeron and Dr. Andy Loignon 

The study featured in this session provided concrete evidence for managers, organizational leaders and policy makers to reference when making decisions about bereavement leave. In a survey of 1,535 bereaved employees, researchers investigated the prevalence and impact of various types of bereavement leave policies. Regardless of policy, 53% of participants reported their manager told them to “take as much time as you need.” They found that more generous bereavement leave policies predicted greater employee fairness perceptions, satisfaction with bereavement leave, and more favorable perceptions of the organization as supportive. Supportive leader behaviors also predicted these outcomes, but leader support does not substitute for flexible and generous bereavement policy.

Good Grief: Rethinking Workplace Policies and Practices Support Bereaved Employees

CCL Presenter: Dr. Diane Bergeron

Bereavement has a significant impact on employee well-being, and yet, surprisingly, it is a seldom-explored topic in the organizational sciences. This symposium covered the prevalence of bereavement in the workplace, the impact of bereavement, bereavement leave, and workplace practices on employee outcomes (e.g., work engagement, fairness perceptions, organizational commitment). It also focused on how organizations can better support bereaved employees.

Leading Wellbeing at Work: Creating Environments Where Humans Thrive

CCL Presenters: Sol Bulkin and Dr. Paige Graham

Leadership is pivotal in fostering workplace wellbeing. This session explored the integration of wellbeing into leadership development programs, the importance of recovery-friendly leadership, sleep leadership, and the impact of leadership on mental health. Presenters also shared practical communication, connection, and belonging tips. Following presentations from each panelist, participants also engaged in guided discussions in small groups, allowing for more in-depth exploration of the topics.

Practical Solutions to Common Challenges in Impact Measurement

CCL Presenters: Dr. Heather Champion and Dr. Jeff Kosovich

Drawing on the collective knowledge and experience of practitioners and researchers in impact measurement, this session explored common challenges in measuring the impact of learning and development initiatives. It introduced three practical, undervalued solutions to help address these challenges and demonstrated the application of the solutions with data and tools. Panelists also shared insights to demonstrate the value of learning and development through impact measurement.

Navigating the Labyrinth: Diverse Pathways to Success in I-O Psychology

CCL Presenter: Dr. Stephen Jeong

This panel discussion explored the diverse and often unexpected career paths in I-O psychology and featured four professionals sharing their unique journeys from aspiring students to successful practitioners and academicians. Designed for both aspiring and early-career I-O psychologists, the session illuminated the challenges, opportunities, and pivotal moments that shape careers in the field, demonstrating that success often comes through adaptability and embracing the unpredictable nature of professional growth.

Coaches Gone Wild? Executive Coaching in an Unregulated Environment

CCL Presenter: Patricia Overland

In this session, experienced practitioners from diverse backgrounds shared their insights regarding the self-regulated field of executive coaching. Panelists discussed ethical considerations surrounding navigating the coaching industry and used prompts to share how they would respond to specific ethical dilemmas.

Is Nature the Best Leadership Teacher? Outdoor Adventure for Leader Development

CCL Presenter: Trevor Rosenberg 

Drawing on the collective expertise of practitioners and researchers in experiential leadership development, learning agility, and nature contact, this session examined current practices in outdoor adventure leadership development. Panelists identified key elements in program design and execution and discussed potential challenges and opportunities. Panelists also shared insights to the benefits of outdoor adventure leadership development for individuals and organizations.

As a pioneer in the leadership development space with over 50 years of experience in leadership research, CCL’s presence at the SIOP conference allows us to amplify vital insights that help shape the field across leader levels, industries and sectors. It also provides an opportunity to integrate differing approaches and perspectives, further strengthening our dedication to our mission of advancing the understanding and practice of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

The post CCL Researchers Present at 2025 Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology Conference appeared first on CCL.

We’re facing what experts call a “polycrisis” — where challenges like technological disruption, market instability, and geopolitical tensions don’t just pile up but actually amplify each other, creating a much bigger problem than any single issue alone. While some might try to simplify these complex issues by isolating or even denying them, the reality is unavoidably complex.

Organizations are at a critical moment where the decisions their leaders make will determine how successfully we navigate these interconnected problems. What makes these issues so difficult is how they feed into each other: For example, when technology disrupts industries, markets become vulnerable, making them susceptible  to geopolitical tensions — creating a cycle that traditional compartmentalized approaches simply can’t handle.

As a Senior Fellow researching leadership development, I’ve been speaking with leaders across industries to understand how they’re responding to these challenges. One conversation really captured the issue: “The pace of change is so dramatic that even the most capable leaders need outside perspectives and continuous learning. It’s ironic — the more we truly understand, the more we recognize how much we don’t know. We’re constantly balancing competing viewpoints while still needing to acknowledge fundamental realities.”

These problems are daunting, but they also present opportunities for meaningful impact. This is where leadership development plays a significant role. Why? Because leadership development is a vital force multiplier that enables organizations to effectively intervene in the world’s greatest challenges.

Taking Ownership of the Problems

To address this web of challenges, organizations and leaders must fundamentally change their approach to systemic problems. Our research shows that the critical first step to systemic solutions is changing leaders’ perspectives.

For organizations to effectively address complex challenges, leaders need to overcome a key mental barrier: they must stop viewing global challenges as abstract external issues and start recognizing them as connected to their organization’s purpose and future.

The most successful organizations understand that systemic crises — whether climate change, social inequality, or economic instability — aren’t external issues, but are directly linked to their long-term success.

This shift from “the problem” to “my problem” requires overcoming 2 types of barriers: individual beliefs and collective action.

Addressing Individual Belief Barriers

Individual belief barriers disconnect leaders from systemic issues. These barriers are deeply embedded in ideologies, awareness levels, and confidence in finding solutions:

• The “me first” mentality that puts short-term profits ahead of collective well-being
• The “science will save us” belief that reduces the sense of urgency for immediate action
• The “humans first” mindset that misses our fundamental interdependence with natural systems
• The “nothing can be done” fatalism that shuts down action and innovation

Organizations need leadership development to overcome these limiting beliefs. Rather than just communicating urgency, effective programs create hands-on experiences that transform how leaders understand their relationship to systemic challenges.

Navigating Collective Action Barriers

Collective action barriers present equally tough obstacles, as addressing these crises requires unprecedented collaboration. Even when individual leaders grasp the importance of systemic issues, organizational dynamics can block effective collective response:

• Vested interests that actively push back against necessary changes
• Disagreement on solutions by stakeholders who push conflicting goals and interpretations
• Incentives that reward individual inaction over collective action

The strategic shift needed isn’t just about raising awareness — it’s about creating environments where leaders at all levels can truly own these challenges and collaborate effectively across boundaries. This is where leadership development becomes transformative.

4 Ways Leadership Development Drives Critical Capabilities

In our research, we found that leaders need 6 critical leadership capabilities to navigate a polycrisis:

• Complex problem-solving
• Collaboration and relationships
• Transformative leadership
• Fairness and ethics
• Inner capabilities
• Future orientation

However, even equipped with these capabilities, leaders face significant headwinds when attempting to drive meaningful change. The systemic nature of these challenges means there is no single solution — yet organizations cannot afford to wait for perfect answers.

Leadership development creates the conditions for meaningful change by empowering organizations to act rather than waiting for outside solutions. When integrated into a broader systemic approach, leadership development contributes value in 4 ways:

• It helps transform individual beliefs and mindsets. Leadership development helps leaders cultivate the cognitive flexibility to handle complexity, the emotional resilience to sustain engagement, and the systems thinking needed to understand interconnected challenges. For example, a global manufacturing firm we worked with used immersive learning journeys where leaders visited communities directly affected by their supply chain decisions. After experiencing firsthand the interconnected impacts of their choices, these leaders fundamentally shifted from viewing sustainability as a compliance issue to seeing it as central to their business strategy and personal leadership legacy.
• It creates shared language and understanding across boundaries. By establishing common frameworks and experiences, leadership development enables organizations to better align diverse stakeholders and address the social barriers that typically hinder collective response. We observed this at a healthcare system where leaders from clinical, administrative, and community roles participated in a year-long development program focused on addressing health inequities. The shared frameworks they developed enabled them to transcend professional silos and create an integrated approach to community health that had previously seemed impossible amid competing priorities.
• Leadership development facilitates experiential learning cycles in the face of uncertainty. The most effective leadership development approaches embed learning cycles that help organizations experiment, reflect, and adapt as they navigate complex challenges. These cycles help organizations overcome initial barriers and ensure they don’t slide back into limiting beliefs and old patterns as they face new obstacles. A technology company we worked with demonstrates this principle through their “leadership labs,” where cross-functional teams tackle real business challenges while practicing adaptive leadership techniques. When their initial approach to developing a sustainable packaging solution failed, the structured reflection process helped them recognize and learn from systemic patterns that were blocking innovation, leading to a pivot in approach that ultimately succeeded.
• Leadership development cultivates the capacity to generate and scale small wins. Leadership development helps organizations identify opportunities for small, sustainable, and scalable interventions, rather than waiting for comprehensive solutions. These opportunities accumulate into meaningful systemic progress over time by teaching leaders how to document, share, and replicate these successes. We’ve seen this with a financial services organization that empowered regional managers to conduct small experiments in improving customer experience. One team’s innovation in streamlining loan processing was documented through their leadership development platform, allowing other regions to adapt and implement it, ultimately leading to a company-wide practice.

Developing Your Leaders for Systemic Solutions

Interconnected, systemic issues require not just awareness, but decisive action. Leadership development, when strategically reimagined and deployed, can serve as a force multiplier for organizations seeking to address these complex challenges.

Rather than relying solely on heroic individual leaders with exceptional expertise — an approach that has repeatedly failed to address complex systemic challenges — leadership development’s dual impact on individuals and systems helps create systemic solutions: practical pathways for distributed leadership and collective action.

Our research-based and experience-driven development solutions can help your leaders build the mindsets, skills, and collaborative capacity needed for transformative action.

Transform learning ecosystems beyond organizational boundaries.

The complex problems we face don’t respect organizational silos or sector boundaries, meaning you’ll need to work and influence across boundaries to make things happen. By aligning diverse groups around a common purpose, boundary spanning leaders can drive collective action and mobilize efforts to collaboratively tackle systemic crises. Our research shows that spanning boundaries is important: leaders who effectively collaborated across boundaries were seen as significantly more influential by their teams, but that only 7% of senior executives feel they’re very effective at doing it. Addressing this gap can be a key differentiator in tackling systemic issues.

Create shared ownership with a comprehensive leadership framework.

Abstract learning about systemic issues isn’t enough — leaders need to practice applying new mindsets to real situations. Our research-based Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) framework provides a structure for diverse stakeholders to forge shared purpose, clarify their distinctive contributions, and build sustained commitment to addressing complex challenges. This approach directly addresses the “someone else’s problem” mindset by creating shared ownership through collective action.

Build collective resilience through continuous learning.

Systemic transformation requires harnessing diverse perspectives and creating environments where innovation can flourish. By creating a learning culture in your organization, you can build psychological safety and learning agility — key differentiators both in individual leader success and in helping those same leaders grow and build the collective capabilities needed for the challenges of tomorrow.

Expand cognitive capacity for systems thinking.

Traditional leadership development focuses on what leaders know — but today’s challenges require expanding how leaders think. Vertical development — developing more complex and sophisticated perspectives and mindsets to help leaders achieve greater wisdom and clearer insights — is essential for navigating systemic issues. While integral for all levels of organizations, vertical development is especially critical for senior leaders for whom success requires navigating increasingly complex systems and boundaries.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Our polycrisis and systemic solutions research is ongoing. Stay updated on our latest insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post Leadership Development as a Force Multiplier for Systemic Solutions appeared first on CCL.

The more we thought about this finding — and its important implications for how leaders interact with their team members and peers — the more we felt compelled to share it. Let’s explore why this happens, the connection between speaking time and leadership, and what it means for your organization.

Our Research on Speaking Time and Leadership

In this study, we and our co-authors examined teams of participants completing the “Everest Challenge” simulation from Harvard Business Publishing. (This challenge involves an interactive exercise where teams simulate an ascent of Earth’s highest peak by sharing information, overcoming challenges, and making decisions. While completing the simulation, teams [such as those in a sales or engineering department] manage competing goals and priorities, sift through ambiguous information, and negotiate influence among group members.)

Here’s our intriguing finding: Leaders spoke 150% more than team members and 300% more than observers.

Leaders: The Best at Talking More Than the Rest

In this simulation, each of the teams had a formal leader responsible for deciding when the team moved to the simulation’s next stage. When we examined the audio recordings from nearly 200 participants in 38 teams, we found that leaders spoke significantly more than their team members.

To help make this clearer, imagine you’re in a team meeting where key decisions are being made. During this meeting, the leader is speaking for 4 to 8 minutes more than everyone else. You’re sitting there, waiting for your chance to share your great idea. But, by the time the boss finally takes a breath, the moment has passed. This wasn’t just an ineffective meeting — it was a lost leadership opportunity. Perhaps if it’s just one meeting, it’s not a big deal. But, if it’s more than that, consider the accumulative effect. Over a week, it’s a pattern. Over a month, it sets the tone for the group. Over years, it becomes your (unhealthy) culture. When leaders talk more than others, it’s not just “talk” — they’re shaping what gets heard and whose ideas gain traction, and determining who they keep silent.

If you want to experience this effect, set a timer for 4 or 8 minutes, then simply sit in silence until the timer goes off. Then, imagine that silence was filled with the babble of a single person. Andy tried this and, along with concluding that he probably talks too much during meetings, he realized how uncomfortable he is with silence. This isn’t unusual and may explain why some leaders jump in and keep talking. It’s a fine line to recognize your own discomfort but not let it affect what might be best for the group.

Why is our study finding so surprising?

• First, the “leaders” in this simulation weren’t actually leaders. They were randomly assigned to that role. So, presumably, there is no reason to expect that pre-existing individual differences — such as being an extravert — would account for this finding. That is, these were not extraverted individuals grabbing the leadership role and then expressing their personality by being more talkative. Instead, these differences emerged primarily, and arguably exclusively, simply because we said, “You are the leader.”
• Second, this effect is even more surprising because these “leaders” didn’t have any of the typical ego-enhancing trappings associated with leadership. They couldn’t provide rewards or punishments, they didn’t have access to any unique information, they didn’t have any additional resources, and they weren’t connected to other authority figures. Thus, these were leaders in name or title only. Nevertheless, they took up significantly more airtime than their colleagues (team members) who had important information to share or others (observers) who may have had helpful insights about the task.

Is Speaking Time Just Babble?

No, speaking time isn’t mere babble (although past researchers have studied the “babble hypothesis”). Rather, speaking time has long been recognized as a vital team resource because it’s the conduit through which information is exchanged, ideas are challenged, solutions are proposed, resources are secured, reputations are built, and influence is claimed. In fact, some have argued that verbal communication is a cornerstone of leadership. Indeed, it’s difficult to verbally communicate without speaking.

What’s more, speaking time is rarely shared equally within teams. Past research consistently finds speaking patterns similar to those depicted in the graphic below. In this “typical” team, one member (person A) speaks more than 3 of the other team members combined (persons C + D + E). This suggests that a handful of team members are more likely to have their voices heard and garner the most influence. In our study, person A would most often be the team’s leader, with their ideas, suggestions, and influence taking center stage. That said, we suspect that there are instances where reserved or stoic team members can also be a source of influence. These “quiet influencers,” although seemingly less common, are an important area of future research.

The risk of having one individual garner so much speaking time purely due to a title or role is that their ideas may not help the team reach its objectives. In fact, there is a tendency for individuals to overestimate their abilities, appear overconfident, and thus misjudge their expertise.

To the extent that leaders, being human, fall victim to this so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, there is good reason to “make space” for others and push towards more equal distributions of speaking time within teams. Importantly, there can also be a reverse Dunning-Kruger effect, in which highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their own abilities relative to those of others. Because of this, they may defer to others and speak less in meetings. It’s not hard to see where that precarious and hazardous combination can lead organizations astray. Consider, for example, a situation where a lower-level employee, who’s on the frontlines of their organization, fails to speak up and thus their team and their leader cannot make an informed and effective decision.

Making Space for More Leaders to Emerge

In reflecting upon our finding and its implications, we know it’s overly simplistic to counsel leaders to limit their speaking time. Leadership roles are challenging, and leaders need to lead. Although some may equate leading with simply garnering more airtime, we suspect the leadership role itself is a powerful signal that not only invites leaders to talk more but also sets expectations for others to defer and give leaders more space.

With these points in mind, we offer 3 promising approaches for how leaders and team members can establish more equitable speaking patterns and potentially improve collective outcomes.

1. Recognize the power of roles.

If you’re a manager, director, vice president, or chief executive, our data on speaking time and leadership suggest that your title alone will likely affect you and afford you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to speaking time. The onus, then, is partly on you regarding how you use that time. Rather than simply speaking less (and artificially creating “silence”), you might maximize your role by inviting others to participate.

Self-managing your speaking time takes mental effort; thus, some executives focus on asking questions to engage others and limit their own speaking time. Including others (and encouraging those who may be less inclined to speak) can unearth important information that would otherwise go unsurfaced.

2. Begin to think about roles more broadly.

Our study focused on “formal” leadership roles within teams, but research also shows the effects of powerful, and sometimes competing, culturally bound roles. For example, gender is a role that comes with its own societal expectations and may affect the likelihood that a (non)leader speaks. By thinking critically about differences or roles in the team, you stand a better chance of adopting a more balanced speaking pattern during your team meetings.

3. Adopt invitational discussion and decision-making structures.

We recommend using specific structures to help establish speaking patterns that suit your team’s needs. Might this feel a bit artificial, at least at first? Yes — and that’s the point.

The goal of these structures is to not fall victim to typical patterns and to nudge yourself and your team toward behaviors more likely to help reach the group’s objectives.

As a leader, you want to ensure all voices are heard. Bringing others into the conversation, according to our research, can help create a climate of psychological safety in which it’s safe to take interpersonal risks. Other CCL research shows that when leaders listen, team members feel safer and are more likely to speak up. So, you might think of this as auto-enrolling your team in a more equitable “investment plan” for team members’ speaking time. There are many different options, but consider this tiered approach.

• Start small. Providing an agenda prior to each meeting or asking people to quietly review the relevant material before the discussion may help those who process information internally feel better prepared to voice their perspective.
• Go one step further. To counter the leader role, the team could have rotating team roles. For example, assigning someone to serve as a devil’s advocate and challenge the team’s ideas might invite new people into the conversation.
• Use a more heavy-handed structure. To hear more input from all team members, play with different meeting structures. One example is to establish, as the team’s leader, a rhythm to your meetings where you briefly summarize the issues facing the team (or coordinate in advance with other team members to do this), pose 2–3 open-ended questions, and invite others’ thoughts for the remainder of the meeting, with the goal to summarize what you heard at its conclusion. It’s important, however, to ask questions and solicit input only on issues that haven’t already been decided. Otherwise, you run the risk of being perceived as inauthentic or not open to new ideas. This structure might require some commitment and practice, but it can evolve over time with the help of others on the team.

Our emphasis here is on setting the conditions that will elicit helpful speech patterns for your team and for you as a leader. The trick is deciding what those patterns are and what structures are best suited to achieve those patterns. Hearing more perspectives, having more engaged team members, and making better decisions will provide the fuel needed to keep refining your approach.

All of This From One Measly Finding?

Yup, it’s pretty great, isn’t it? Since we’re writing (and not babbling in a meeting), we could just keep going and going and going … But, in all seriousness, we believe this a powerful finding. To us, it speaks volumes (pun intended!) about why some individuals get into powerful leadership positions and what might explain their ascent. Although our finding pertains to day-to-day interactions, we contend that paying attention to speaking time — and how it is used — may help us spread leadership more evenly across everyone, regardless of their role, in organizations and in society.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Strengthen interactions in your organization with our conversational skills training solutions. We provide training for leaders of all levels, including custom solutions and scalable programs.

The post Chatterboxes in Charge: Why Leaders Can’t Seem to Stop Talking appeared first on CCL.

Each year, the Journal of Business and Psychology awards the Editor’s Commendation to papers that the journal’s editors find particularly intriguing and exciting. This recognition is awarded to the top 2% of all papers submitted to the journal each year.

Written by CCL’s Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Andy Loignon, and Senior Data Scientist, Sirish Shrestha, the paper was completed in conjunction with colleagues at Rice University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  It discusses synthetic data as a solution to address concerns surrounding privacy and integrity in data sharing.

This recognition underscores CCL’s 50-year legacy of pioneering leadership research driven by cutting-edge data science.

“This groundbreaking work on synthetic data represents a pivotal advancement in leadership research, offering innovative solutions to data privacy challenges while enhancing the rigor and accessibility of our studies,” said Dr. Sarah Stawiski, Vice President of Leadership Research & Analytics. “By pioneering new methodologies, CCL is setting the stage for future explorations in leadership science.”

Learn more about our leadership development research.

The post CCL Researchers Honored With Editor’s Commendation appeared first on CCL.

For more than 50 years, we’ve worked closely with leaders, conducting research and studying what makes them effective. We’ve also examined how people learn, grow, and change during their careers as a result of leadership development programs and evaluated our own programs and their impact.

Our dedication to expanding human potential in an ever-changing world has allowed us to continually evolve our understanding of effective leadership — producing new concepts, innovations, and leadership models over the years.

This paper can help you understand, apply, and reference our leadership models in your work. Whether you’re involved in designing leadership training curricula, nurturing employee engagement, or simply enriching your understanding of the field, you’ll find information about our pioneering and time-tested models.

What Is a Leadership Model?

A leadership model offers a simple, concrete way to teach leadership topics. Models (sometimes called “frameworks”) are conceptual structures that offer informed views on topics, issues, or processes. Researchers and practitioners often present models in graphic form, as visual representations provide an engaging and effective way to organize and communicate large amounts of information.

As our understanding of leadership evolves, these models continue to play a crucial role in advancing both the theory and practice of leadership development, helping leaders navigate increasingly complex organizational environments.

4 Types of Leadership Models

In this paper, you’ll be introduced to 23 of our most frequently referenced leadership models that can help you understand leadership spread effective leadership practices across your organization. They are organized in 4 high-level types:

1. Process models that help leaders understand the processes that build effective leadership.
2. Topical models that deepen understanding of how people work together within organizations.
3. An organizational framework that provides a structure for understanding and developing leader competencies.
4. An impact assessment that organizations can use to measure and enhance the impact of leadership development initiatives.

Our Most Common Leadership Models

The 23 leadership models included are:

1. 3 Types of Organizational Leadership Cultures: Labels organizational cultures as dependent, independent, and interdependent.
2. 3X3X3 Model: Outlines the key elements for effective learning transfer across 3 dimensions.
3. 4 Core Behaviors for Better Conversations Every Day: Shows the core skills that can build trust, fuel collaboration, and drive better business outcomes.
4. 70-20-10 Development Framework: Identifies 3 key types of blended learning developmental activities: challenging assignments, developmental relationships, and coursework and training.
5. Advanced Strategic Leadership: Illustrates the components of strategy formulation and execution.
6. Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS): Displays 3 critical elements driving leadership development both in and out of the classroom.
7. Anatomy of a Learning Experience: Illustrates the complex journey of leadership development.
8. Beyond Bias: Demonstrates how bias manifests as stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.
9. Boundary Spanning Leadership: Provides 3 interrelated strategies to help leaders welcome, accept, and coordinate people of diverse perspectives.
10. Change Leadership / Change Management: Synthesizes research with clients, our Strategic Leadership model, our Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) framework, our Leadership Culture Model, and John Kotter’s Change Management model.
11. Comprehensive Resilience Framework: Outlines the 4 interconnected aspects of resilience and 8 evidence-based practices.
12. Competencies of Leadership: Shows the Fundamental 4 competencies that consistently emerged as necessary for leaders across various career stages, organizational levels, and sectors.
13. Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC): Promotes a relational view of leadership, moving beyond command-and-control to mutual influence.
14. Digital Leadership Capability: Displays 9 people-related leadership capabilities, organized into 3 cycles of digital transformation.
15. Feedback That Works (SBI): Illustrates our seminal approach to giving feedback that we’ve been practicing and teaching for decades.
16. Fundamental 4 Components of Learning Agility: Shows the 4 behaviors we believe to occur sequentially in the learning process.
17. iAIM2 Communicate: Displays a 5-step process that transforms how leaders frame their messages and connect with their audiences.
18. Influence: Highlights 6 components regarding a leader’s ability to influence.
19. Leadership Development Impact (LDI) Framework: Showcases an approach to show the multi-layered impact of leadership development initiatives.
20. Model of Leader Competencies: Provides 20 critical competencies of leader effectiveness.
21. REAL: Outlines our approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).
22. Team Effectiveness Framework: Displays the critical areas in which teams must channel their collective effort and energy.
23. The Delegation Cycle: Shows what leaders can do to improve their delegation practices and team empowerment.

Download Our White Paper

The post Develop Your Leaders Using Our Top Research-Based Models appeared first on CCL.

The Kenneth E. Clark Student Research Award recognizes outstanding unpublished papers by undergraduate and graduate students. Named in memory of Kenneth Clark, a distinguished scholar and former president of CCL, the award is co-sponsored with the International Leadership Association.

Dr. Karryna Madison received the 2024 award for her paper titled, “Rewrite the Recipe: A Gendered Examination of Social Exchange Theory in Leadership Research.” Dr. Madison is an Assistant Professor in Leadership from the Australian National University and her research examines how gender interacts with communal approaches to leadership.

The awarded paper challenges traditional leadership studies to consider gender dynamics within organizations. It also highlights how this oversight can limit our understanding of leadership, noting that research must acknowledge gender as a key factor to accurately capture the complexities of social exchanges between leaders and their teams.

Also sponsored by CCL, the Leadership Quarterly Best Paper Award is presented annually in recognition of the best published paper submitted during the previous year to Leadership Quarterly.

Dr. Mladen Adamovic, a Senior Lecturer in Cross-Cultural Management at King’s College London, and Dr. Andreas Leibbrandt, a Professor of Economics at Monash Business School, are the 2023 Leadership Quarterly Award winners for their paper. Their research focuses on social issues in the workplace as they relate to leadership, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion and cross-cultural management.

This paper reveals that ethnic minorities experience significantly greater discrimination when applying for leadership roles compared to non-leadership positions. The Australia-based study involved submitting over 12,000 job applications and found that applicants with non-English names received 57.4% fewer positive response for leadership roles than those with English names, despite identical resumes.

As a pioneer of the industry with over 50 years of experience in leadership research, CCL is dedicated to stimulating and recognizing outstanding research in the field and its application to the practice of leadership at every level in organizations across the world.

“Our mission is to advance the understanding and practice of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. To achieve this mission, we must support scholars who are conducting vital research that shines light on leadership dynamics affected by gender and ethnicity,” said Sarah Stawiski, Vice President of Leadership Research & Analytics. “By doing so we’re investing in a future where leadership is accessible to all, regardless of gender or ethnicity.”

Learn more about our leadership development research.

The post CCL Sponsors Awards for Leadership Research Scholars appeared first on CCL.

Development initiatives are a vital part of any leader’s growth, but our research shows such initiatives are truly effective when they align with real challenges leaders are facing. What are the biggest challenges facing a leader today, and how can you equip leaders with proven, researched-backed insights to meet those challenges?

Our research team has, for decades, explored the top challenges of leadership, and with the power of AI, we’ve analyzed responses of over 48,000 leaders at 7,000 organizations to better understand the most critical leadership challenges of the past several years. In this webinar, you’ll learn the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at every level of the organization, and what you can do to build developmental initiatives that not only meet those challenges but grow much-needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• The biggest challenges leaders face today at every level
• How to craft learning and development initiatives to meet a leader’s specific needs
• Researched-based strategies to create learning and development programs to directly address the most significant issues facing your organization’s talent

The post The Biggest Challenges Facing Today’s Leaders at Every Level appeared first on CCL.

Anyone guiding a group toward a shared result will encounter challenges along the way — but what’s most challenging about leading organizations today? What are the top challenges of leadership, and have they shifted since the pandemic?

Our research team has been exploring such questions for decades now to stay abreast of the challenges and issues most commonly faced by leaders at every level. (See our 2023 research brief, 2021 technical report, and 2013 white paper for more information.)

Our Research Into the Challenges of Leadership

Based on the collective challenges reported in over 7,000 organizations around the world, and using anonymized data on individuals collected through our global 360 assessments, our research team has examined what over 48,000 leaders have identified as their most critical leadership challenges over the past several years.

Using an AI-powered language processing model to review and analyze their responses, we identified the most consistent challenges of leadership across many industries and sectors around the world. We further analyzed the data to determine how these challenges evolved in the wake of the pandemic.

The Most Common Challenges of Leadership at Every Level

Here we present what our research has found are today’s biggest challenges of leadership — the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at each of level of the organization — ranked by their relevance post-pandemic. And because development is more effective when it uses data to support the challenges of leaders at different levels, this list of leadership issues can be the focus for training & development efforts in all organizations, everywhere in the world.

For Frontline Managers

1. Frustrations with people and time

2. First time managing people

3. Deficient operational processes

4. Team performance

5. Personal improvement

For Mid-Level Managers

6. Personal limitations

7. Challenging business context

8. Ineffective interpersonal style

9. Cross-functional influence

10. Competing people and project priorities

For Senior Leaders

11. Credibility gaps

12. Limited market / sales growth

13. Process improvement across groups

14. Limited self-awareness

15. Transitioning into a new role

For Executives

16. Dynamic business environment

17. Strategic responsibilities

18. Interpersonal rigidity

19. Organizational readiness

20. Lack of cooperation

The Top Leadership Challenges of Frontline Managers

Regardless of where they live or work, those managing others in supervisory roles reported that their most common leadership challenge is frustrations with people and time — and this issue has only increased in frequency since the pandemic. Here are the top 5 most common challenges for frontline leaders, based on our research:

Frustrations With People and Time

Many frontline managers reported that their top leadership issue is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes challenges with offering guidance to direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, dealing with difficult employees, and adjusting communication and feedback styles to collaborate more effectively with different people. And again, this appears to have become an even bigger concern for leaders at this level since the pandemic.

First Time Managing People

Another common leadership challenge among new managers is learning to juggle day-to-day challenges — such as managing others who were formerly peers, or employees who are older than they are — and just generally gaining respect as a new, first-time people leader.

Deficient Operational Processes

Needing stronger operational processes to address organizational problems was another frequently cited leadership challenge for this group.

Team Performance

First-level leaders also reported challenges with developing teams, giving effective feedback, providing direction, holding coaching conversations, and dealing with resistance from direct reports.

Personal Improvement

Learning to be better at active listening to understand the perspectives of others, improving flexibility, and being less reactive in pursuit of an “ideal self” are other commonly reported challenges for leaders on the front lines, our research found.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges of Mid-Level Managers

Managers who are leading from the middle — with senior leaders above them and direct reports below — face many similar challenges of leadership as well. Our research found that the most common issues for mid-level managers were:

Personal Limitations

A top challenge for leaders at this level is their own personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy, as they often must overcome their own doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead — as well as the doubts of their peers or supervisors. Dealing with the challenge of personal limitations requires overcoming impostor syndrome, humility to seek the input of others, courage to do the right thing, and projecting confidence while communicating effectively.

Since the pandemic, mid-level managers have reported this as an issue even more frequently. With new cultures brought on by remote and hybrid workplaces, overcoming common limitations in order to make an impact as a leader has become even more challenging.

Business Challenges

In a tumultuous work environment, managers (particularly mid-level leaders) may struggle to deliver results. Leading within a challenging business context requires the careful deployment of limited resources, improved processes, and keeping employees engaged and motivated.

Ineffectiveness

When a mid-level leader has an ineffective interpersonal style, they struggle with relationships. This can play out on a spectrum, from dominating interactions to lacking the self-confidence to be assertive. On the other hand, effective interpersonal styles and embodying the characteristics of a good leader allow for open and honest conversations.

Influence

Successful leadership requires the ability to influence others beyond one’s group — often without formal authority. For those leading from the middle, the challenge of influencing others across functions includes building credibility, developing cross-organizational networks, and building and bridging partnerships.

Competing Priorities

Mid-level leaders report that they often find it difficult to balance competing people and project priorities, especially when they’re sandwiched between project-based deadlines and their employees’ engagement. It’s an important paradox that leaders must manage both relationships and tasks effectively. When resources are limited, motivating team members who vary in personality, abilities, and experience can feel at odds with effective project management.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Senior Leaders

We noticed that the pandemic shifted the top leadership challenges for this group somewhat. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was cited as the most frequent leadership issue among senior leaders who head up functions, business units, departments, divisions, and regions, but the frequency of this challenge dropped significantly more recently. The challenge of overcoming credibility gaps, on the other hand, has become more pressing after the pandemic.

Credibility Gaps

This includes the challenge of building credibility as an organizational leader. Examples include gaining the trust of stakeholders and enhancing visibility within an organization. Senior leaders may also need to strengthen their leadership image or presence to be most effective.

Limited Market / Sales Growth

Making strategic shifts to maximize market growth and sales is another top challenge of senior leaders. This may include expanding the organization beyond core products, extending market reach, shifting to a market / customer orientation, and better aligning of sales.

Process Improvement Across Groups

Another key challenge for senior leaders is influencing the organization to improve and accept new processes, which requires being a strategic leader, effective boundary spanning leadership, and developing a broader perspective by taking a systemic view.

Limited Self-Awareness

Understanding how others perceive them and recognizing their impact on others — along with improving their confidence, approachability, and communication style (particularly when delivering difficult messages) — can be especially challenging for leaders at the senior level.

Transitioning Into a New Role

Adapting to changes in responsibilities and managing new people or former peers is a final key leadership issue at this level. This challenge may be brought on by a promotion, a new role, a functional shift, or a geographic move, or simply through preparing for the C-suite.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Executives

Finally, senior executives leading the enterprise told us that their top 5 leadership challenges are as follows.

Dynamic Business Environment

For C-level leaders, the challenge of working in a dynamic business environment topped their list of leadership issues. This challenge can be brought about by new regulations, market and economic conditions, competition, or growth. To be effective, leaders must be able to develop and keep the talent needed to support change and revise their organization’s models and systems as required.

Notably, this challenge experienced the biggest rise in the wake of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, senior executives were already used to leading their organizations in adapting to ever-changing circumstances, but COVID and its fallout accelerated that need even more.

Strategic Responsibilities

Developing strategy for an organization is another top leadership challenge for senior executives. This includes aligning priorities and initiatives across groups and developing teams to support strategic efforts. It’s helpful when senior leaders are able to link business strategy to leadership strategy.

Interpersonal Rigidity

For many senior leaders, shifting the way they interact with others to be more effective and the ability to adapt their style for varying situations or stakeholders is an important challenge. Leaders in C-suite need to have different techniques for flexing their approach, including in how they communicate the vision, manage or influence others, or leverage power over others to get things done.

Organizational Readiness Amid Uncertainty

Preparing their organizations for a turbulent future is an ongoing issue for senior executives. This challenge of leadership is experienced most often when there are organizational mission shifts, significant resource constraints, technology changes, or when new ways of working are needed.

Lack of Cooperation

Lastly, influencing others toward collaboration is a key leadership challenge for senior executives. This is especially common when they’re new to a role, managing former peers or more experienced colleagues, or collaborating with others on the senior team.

How to Respond to These Top Leadership Challenges

Tips to Help Leaders Address the Most Common Leadership Issues

Now that you know the most common challenges of leadership, how do you begin addressing them? One way is by looking at the larger themes that emerged from our leadership challenge research. Across all levels of the organization, we found that the challenges of leadership generally fall into 3 high-level themes, related to:

• Challenges of personal growth,

• Challenges related to managing people and getting work done, and 

• Challenges in managing across the organization and within a larger system.

Here are some recommended ways to respond to these 3 common themes in our overall leadership challenges research.  Many of these suggestions are part of developing the core leadership skills needed in every role, at every stage of a career.

1. To respond to leadership challenges related to your personal growth, work to maximize personal value.

Personal shortcomings and the aspiration to become a better leader define our first theme. Challenges here include learning to be more assertive during interactions, developing confidence, and understanding how others perceive you.

Individuals overcome leadership issues and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions that only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as possible), allows leaders to maximize their value.

It’s important to recognize your own characteristics, behaviors, and habits in order to know what may be triggering challenges for you in your career. This way, you can work toward increasing your self-awareness and strengthening specific skills and growing as an individual leader.

Some internal challenges that many leaders face include a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity during self-promotion, impatience, resistance in responding to new ideas, or struggling to manage conflict in the workplace. All of these can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and maximizing your unique value are part of improving your personal leadership brand.

2. To respond to leadership challenges around managing people and getting work done, focus on delegating more to others.

Our second leadership challenge theme involves the demands of managing both people and tasks. Specific challenges include managing for the first time, building cooperation between people, and overseeing multiple projects that compete for importance and resources.

You’ll be more productive, give your colleagues a greater sense of ownership, and build more trust on your team if you delegate, as well. But effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

1. Understanding your preferences. Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want while the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.
2. Knowing your people. To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to others with the necessary knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand people’s preferences and abilities, using delegation to help direct reports develop, and coach people while allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.
3. Being clear about the purpose of the task. A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become part of purpose-driven leadership and an opportunity for personal growth.
4. Assessing and rewarding. You should engage in collaboration and work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

3. To respond to leadership challenges related to managing across the organization, work to increase boundary spanning and build high-performing teams.

Working within the larger system of an organization is our third high-level leadership challenge. Examples include working in a dynamic business environment, needing stronger operational processes, and creating cross-functional influence.

As a leader, you must be able to create and lead teams effectively. To build high-performing teams, use our team effectiveness framework, which has 4 components:

• Core: Communicate a team’s reason for being so that all team members understand their core purpose and value. (A team charter can help with this.)
• Collective Mindset: Be sure everybody on the team knows what it takes to be a good team member. Teams adopt a collective mindset when they understand all members’ roles and responsibilities, as well as team norms for how team members work together.
• Cohesive Relationships: Ensure team members relate interpersonally by fostering a psychologically safe work environment where everybody feels a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and communicates effectively.
• Connection: Teams can have a broader organizational impact when collaborating across boundaries. In other words, when colleagues who have different backgrounds and experiences connect, innovation and collaboration are enhanced.

A Final Word for HR Leaders on Our Leadership Challenges Research

Focus Development Efforts to Address the Top Challenges of Leaders

Developmental initiatives are more effective when they align with the real challenges that leaders are facing. For those who work in HR or Learning & Development, understanding these common leadership issues can be the catalyst for creating initiatives that truly address real-world needs, growing needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Build your team’s capacity for overcoming common leadership challenges. Our array of leadership development programs are carefully designed to address the leadership challenges faced by leaders at every level. 

The post The Top 20 Leadership Challenges appeared first on CCL.