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.

It’s critical for companies to hire and develop more effective managers and leaders capable of moving their organization forward during both good and challenging times. That requires looking beyond traditional strategies for management development and cultivating the skills most important for success.

One of those skills, perhaps unexpectedly, is empathy — a vital leadership competency.

Empathetic leadership means having the ability to understand the needs of others, and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. Unfortunately, empathy in the workplace has long been a soft skill that’s overlooked as a performance indicator. Our research, however, has shown that today’s successful leaders must be more “person-focused” and able to work well with people from varying teams, departments, countries, cultures, and backgrounds.

To determine if empathy influences a manager’s job performance, our research team analyzed data from 6,731 mid- to upper-middle-level managers in 38 countries. The leaders in our study were rated by their peers, direct reports, and superiors on their level of empathy through a Benchmarks® 360-degree feedback assessment.

As noted in our white paper, we found that empathetic leadership is positively related to job performance, particularly among mid-level managers and above.

In other words, our research found that managers who practiced empathetic leadership toward direct reports were viewed as better performers by their bosses. The findings were consistent across the sample: those managers who were rated as empathetic by subordinates were also rated as high performing by their own boss.

The ability to be compassionate and connect with others is critical to our lives, both personally and professionally. Demonstrating empathy in the workplace — a key part of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness — also improves human interactions in general and can lead to more effective communication and positive outcomes, in both work and home settings.

Defining Empathy in the Workplace

Empathy is the ability to perceive and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experiences of others. Those with high levels of empathy are skilled at understanding a situation from another person’s perspective and lead with compassion.

Empathetic leadership in the context of the workplace simply means that people leaders are able to establish true connections with one another that enhance relationships and performance.

It’s important to remember the difference between sympathy and empathy, as the 2 are often confused.

• Sympathy is typically defined by feelings of pity for another person, without really understanding what it’s like to be in their situation.
• Empathy, on the other hand, refers to the capacity or ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas, or opinions of that person.

Both in and out of the workplace, empathy is often more productive and supportive than sympathy.

How to Show More Empathetic Leadership

4 Ways to Increase Your Empathy in the Workplace

Displaying empathetic leadership can take many shapes and forms. We recommend leaders take the following 4 steps to show greater empathy in the workplace and with their colleagues and direct reports.

1. Watch for signs of burnout in others.

Work burnout is a real problem today, and it comes at greater risk during times of intense stress and pressure. Many people are stressed, putting in more work hours than ever before and finding it difficult to separate work and home life.

Managers who are skilled at empathetic leadership are able to recognize signs of overwork in others before burnout becomes an issue that results in disengagement or turnover. This might mean taking a few extra minutes each week to check in with team members and gauge how they’re handling their current workload and helping them to recover from overwork.

2. Show sincere interest in the needs, hopes, and dreams of other people.

Part of leading with empathy involves working to understand the unique needs and goals of each team member and how to best match work assignments to contribute to both performance and employee satisfaction. Team members who see that their manager recognizes them in this way are more engaged and willing to go the extra mile. Showing kindness in the workplace can boost performance and culture.

3. Demonstrate a willingness to help an employee with personal problems.

Lines between work and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred. Empathetic leaders understand that their team members are dynamic individuals who are shouldering personal problems while having to maintain their professional responsibilities. They recognize that it’s part of their role to lead and support those team members when they need it most.

Keeping open lines of communication and encouraging transparency is a good way to foster psychological safety and help team members feel comfortable sharing.

4. Show compassion when other people disclose a personal loss.

Real connections and friendships at work matter, and empathetic leadership is a tool that managers can use to establish bonds with those they’re privileged to lead. We’ve all been through personal loss, so even if we can’t relate to the specific loss our team member experiences, we can act empathetically and let them know they’re supported. This is key for compassionate leadership.

How Organizations Can Encourage Empathetic Leadership

Some leaders naturally show more empathy at work than others and will have an advantage over their peers who have difficulty expressing empathy. Most leaders fall in the middle and are sometimes or somewhat empathetic.

Fortunately, it’s not a fixed trait. Empathetic leadership can be learned. If given enough time and support, leaders can develop and enhance their empathy skills through coaching, training, or developmental opportunities and initiatives.

Organizations and HR leaders can encourage a more empathetic workplace and help managers improve their empathy skills in a number of simple ways.

5 Ways to Encourage Empathy in the Workplace

1. Talk about empathy at work to signal its value.

Let leaders know that empathy matters. Many managers consider task-oriented skills such as monitoring and planning to be more important in controlling the performance of their team members. But research shows that understanding, caring, and developing others is just as important, if not more important, particularly in today’s workforce.

Your organization should put an emphasis on leadership soft skills needed at every leader level, and explain that giving time and attention to others fosters empathy, which in turn enhances team performance and improves perceived managerial effectiveness.

2. Teach listening skills.

To understand others and sense what they’re feeling, managers must be good listeners, skilled in active listening techniques, who let others know that they’re being heard and express understanding of concerns and problems.

When a manager is a good listener, people feel respected, and critical trust on the team can grow. To show the highest levels of empathy in the workplace, managers should focus on listening to hear the meaning behind what others are saying by paying attention to not only the words being said, but also the feelings and values being shown, through nonverbal cues such as tone, pace of speech, facial expressions, and gestures.

3. Encourage genuine perspective-taking.

Leaders should consistently put themselves in the other person’s place. For managers, this includes taking into account the personal lived experiences or perspectives of their employees. It also can be applied to solving problems, managing conflicts, or driving innovation. It’s very helpful for individuals to understand the role social identity plays as well.

4. Cultivate compassion.

Support managers who care about how others feel, and consider the effects that business decisions have on employees, customers, and communities. Go beyond the standard-issue values statement and allow time for compassionate reflection and response. Remember, your employees care about social responsibility; your organization should too.

5. Support global managers.

The ability of your middle managers to be empathetic leaders who can collaborate across boundaries is especially important for those working in global or cross-cultural organizations. Leading a multicultural team requires cultural intelligence and the ability to understand people who have very different perspectives and experiences.

A Closing Thought on Empathy in the Workplace

And as the data we shared above shows, when managers hone their empathetic leadership skills, they improve their effectiveness and increase their chances of success in the job. Empathetic leaders are assets to organizations, in part because they are able to effectively build and maintain relationships and retain talent — a critical part of leading organizations anywhere in the world.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Model empathetic leadership and help your people develop greater empathy in the workplace with a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-backed modules. Available leadership topics include Boundary Spanning Leadership, Communication, Emotional Intelligence Training for Leaders, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety & Trust, and more.

The post The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace appeared first on CCL.

Talent development is more critical than ever in today’s landscape of economic and geopolitical instability, generational shifts, industry disruptions, and hybrid workplaces.

But creating greater collective capability in this unpredictable context isn’t easy.

Forecasting which skills your workforce will need most in the future can feel difficult, and planning talent development is especially challenging in times of increased uncertainty.

But one thing is clear: Organizations that invest in talent now will be much better positioned to succeed when things stabilize and outlooks improve.

Research consistently shows the benefits of leader development, which enables individuals to become more agile, resilient, effective, and future-oriented. At scale, talent development ensures that the entire organization itself becomes more agile, resilient, effective and future-oriented, too. Layering development across all levels and functions creates a protective scaffolding for the organization.

The Top Challenges of Talent Development

Our report reveals the 6 biggest talent development challenges that we hear most often from clients and offers reflection questions and actionable recommendations to address each:

1. Pipeline: Addressing talent gaps to strengthen the leadership pipeline
2. Focus: Prioritizing the development of what’s most important
3. Overload: Breaking through despite competing demands and distractions
4. Adaptability: Navigating uncertainty and orienting to the future
5. Conversations: Strengthening and deepening foundational communication
6. Scale: Expanding development efforts across the entire organization

This guide will help you recognize your talent development challenges and build confidence and clarity in your approach to overcoming them — starting with understanding where your organization is now, and where it needs to go.

Start From Where You Are

Beyond time and budget constraints, readiness also plays a critical role in the success of any development efforts, especially at scale. Understanding your individual, organizational, and L&D readiness levels is crucial for planning and supporting effective talent development.

Whether your next step is assessing your organization’s current state and building a foundation for development, expanding your existing efforts, or elevating talent development to take it to the next level, at scale — we can help, and meet you where you are.

Download Report

The post Talent Development Challenges for HR and L&D Leaders appeared first on CCL.

There’s no magic bullet to ensure that people apply what they learn. But there are steps you can take to create leadership programs, experiences, and support mechanisms that improve learning transfer and support lasting growth and behavior change. Over time, new skills, perspectives, or behaviors can be reinforced, until they become unconsciously and competently put to use.

As a professional interested in learning and development, you may be in a position to acknowledge and help overcome the challenges of learning in your organizations. You are likely in a position to influence supervisors and executives, as well as potential participants, in leadership development efforts. You may also have a role in creating and supporting a learning environment.

The Challenges of Improving Learning Transfer

Individuals — and organizations — face significant challenges in their efforts to apply and integrate learning and develop the leadership capacity they need. These challenges include the following:

• Formal training is just one aspect of learning.
• Leadership — and its development — is always dependent on the people involved and the context.
• Leaders are already overloaded.
• Learning isn’t always aligned with what matters most.
• The learning culture clashes with the operational culture.

Given these realities, though, you can still begin to help leaders and your organization overcome challenges to learning transfer — and earn greater benefit from leadership development investments.

In the face of unrelenting disruption, effective leadership is what’s needed most. Download our new Talent Development report to learn how investing in talent development today will position your organization to succeed tomorrow.

Get the Report

How to Improve Learning Transfer for Leadership Training

Learning is a process and works best when it’s viewed as more than merely a program. Leadership development can include formal or classroom-based training — but it’s just one piece of the learning puzzle that must have corresponding pieces back on the job.

Research supports the value of extending learning into the workplace and connecting the workplace into formal learning. Most executives cite on-the-job experiences as the key events that shaped them as leaders and taught them important skills, behaviors, or mindsets. In fact, research shows that senior executives distribute their sources of key developmental experiences as 70% on-the-job challenges, 20% other people, and 10% formal coursework and training. At CCL, we use the 70-20-10 “rule” as a guideline rather than a formula for creating learning experiences. Yet, we know that experiences that focus on creating learning in all 3 categories can boost learning transfer and accelerate development.

Learning transfer is also a social process. Learning — and the desired performance that comes from learning — doesn’t take place in isolation. The work context, including the level of support from role models, mentors, peers, coaches, and bosses, has a powerful impact on turning lessons learned into leadership in action.

Drawing on our understanding of and experience with adult learners, we produced a white paper on making learning stick and explaining our 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer. This framework informs our leadership development work — and can be applied to development programs or initiatives within your organization.

Our 3 x 3 x 3 Model for Learning Transfer Helps Make Learning Stick in Development Initiatives

Our 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer and making leadership learning stick is:

• Think in 3 Phases: Learning isn’t a one-time event, but rather it occurs over time, as explained more below.
  • Prepare
  • Engage, and
  • Apply.
• Use 3 Strategies: Use at least 3 different approaches to provide a chance to deepen and reinforce learning.
  • A key leadership challenge,
  • In-class accountability partners, and
  • At-work learning partners.
• Involve 3 Partners: They each have to take responsibility to ensure learning happens and isn’t a passive activity.
  • The learner or participant,
  • The organization, and
  • The training provider.

This 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer helps organizations that need to look at organizational change and leadership development in large-scale and deeply-personalized ways. It also outlines the critical steps that are required of the leadership development sponsor in the organization.

Improve Learning Transfer by Designing Development in 3 Phases: Prepare, Engage & Apply

For making learning stick, what happens before and after the formal part of a program or development effort is just as important as the program content and delivery. This is true whether the initiative is long or short, in-person or virtual, ongoing or one-time.

At CCL, we design leadership development keeping the 3 phases of “Prepare, Engage, and Apply” in mind, to help both individual leaders and organizations get the most out of their investment in leadership development.

The Prepare Phase

As soon as a person is tapped for or has chosen to participate in a formal leadership training effort, the development process begins. Consider:

• How might you help participants start learning right away?
• How do you get them thinking about their leadership experiences, challenges, and needs?
• How do you help them connect to the purpose, content, and value of their development experience?

This is a time when boss support is crucial. The Prepare phase involves good communication about logistics and expectations — but also begins to build an emotional connection to personalize the learning experience. It’s a chance to engage and excite the learner — rather than approaching the process as another item on their to-do list. Research shows that participants begin to engage in a development experience when they’re able to make plans with a boss, mentor, or coach and discuss the support they’ll need and understand how the program will benefit them.

At CCL, we carefully prepare participants for their learning experiences in our leadership programs by providing guidelines for selecting raters and completing 360 leadership assessments, interviewing key stakeholders, selecting real-life challenges they’re facing to apply to course learning, and asking the learners and their colleagues to complete self-assessments and reflections on their leadership style and skills. Other activities during the Prepare phase could include asking participants to read material ahead of time or watch welcome videos from course faculty.

The Engage Phase

The content of a learning experience is important, but so is the way it’s presented. Listening to speakers and reading information is a passive learning process — and information is less likely to stick than processes that connect and engage each person through applied practice. So when designing leadership development initiatives, we always consider how we might create opportunities for guided practice and skill development throughout the program to help improve learning transfer.

At CCL, we ensure our learning experiences include a variety of ways to keep learners engaged, whether in a live, in-person setting or a virtual leadership program. We use a mix of activities such as skill-building, action learning, reflection, simulations, experiential activities, goal-setting, and coaching.

The Apply Phase

Reinforcement and support at work — away from the learning environment and over time — is also essential for learning transfer. How might you create opportunities for the participants to use and continue new learning at work and beyond? Most people need structures that foster the application of new concepts and practice of new skills to achieve lasting behavior change. To improve learning transfer, participants need support and encouragement to get past the initial awkward phase that accompanies the application of new skills.

At CCL, we often use tools such as action-learning projects tied to real work issues; conversations to help connect new learning to an existing business challenge; follow-up lessons through reading, discussion, toolkits, and job aids; and executive coaching focused on making progress on goals.

A Closing Word on Making Learning Stick

We know that leadership development can create competitive advantage, but organizations rightfully want to ensure that their investments pay off through sustained behavior change. With a better understanding of the 3x3x3 model for learning transfer, you can help your organization improve learning transfer and realize multiple benefits, including a greater impact from investments in development, more effective leaders, and a stronger organizational culture.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We can help you make learning stick and improve learning transfer. Get our latest leadership research, tips, and insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post Make Learning Stick: Improve Learning Transfer to Get the Most Out of Leadership Development appeared first on CCL.

These are the timeless, fundamental skills that are needed by leaders throughout every organization — and they’re important regardless of role, industry, or location.

But the way you address each core leadership skill, and what you need to learn or emphasize around it, will shift and change as you move into higher levels in the organizational hierarchy and encounter new leadership challenges.

So what exactly are these foundational leadership skills? While there may not be a single definitive list of core leadership skills, at CCL, we call the core leadership skills needed in every role and career “The Fundamental 4.”

In the face of unrelenting disruption, effective leadership is what’s needed most. Download our new Talent Development report to learn how investing in talent development today will position your organization to succeed tomorrow.

Get the Report

The Fundamental Leadership Skills Needed in Every Career

The “Fundamental 4” Leadership Skills

At CCL, we see the 4 core leadership skills as:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Communication
3. Influence
4. Learning Agility

1. Self-Awareness.

Simply put, knowing and leading yourself is key to becoming as effective as possible at leading others. But gaining greater self-awareness is anything but simple. It takes intentional effort to assess your natural abilities and development opportunities; determine how to maximize your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses; and recognize your own values, biases, and perspectives.

Taking the time to reflect on these things and consider how you’ve been shaped by your background and social identity builds greater self-awareness. And ultimately, greater awareness about yourself as a person will make you a better leader. If you’re not sure where to start, here are 4 sure-fire ways to boost your self-awareness.

2. Communication.

Communication is one of the most basic, across-the-board leadership skills that all of us need to develop and refine during our careers. “Communicating information and ideas” is consistently rated among the most important leadership competencies for leaders to be successful. Communication is also embedded in a number of other core leadership skills, including “leading employees,” “participative management,” and “building and mending relationships.”

Writing clearly, speaking with clarity, and active listening skills are all part of the core leader competencies related to effective communication. And as you move up the career ladder, communication in leadership roles expands to behaviors such as encouraging discussion, building trust, conveying vision and strategic intent, and pulling people along with you. At every leader level, communication is a critically important skill.

3. Influence.

Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to communicate your vision and goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment from people at all levels.  

Influence can vary greatly at different levels in the organization. Knowing your stakeholders, or audience, is key. Do you need to influence your boss? Your peers? Direct reports? Customers? Each stakeholder has special concerns and issues, so consider the most appropriate ways of influencing others for your particular situation.

Early in your career, or in individual contributor roles, influence is about working effectively with people over whom you have no authority. It requires being able to present logical and compelling arguments and engaging in give-and-take. Later on, or in more senior-level or executive roles, influential leadership skills are focused more on steering long-range objectives, inspiration, and motivation. But throughout your career, influence remains a core leadership skill. Ultimately, influence allows you to get to the business of getting things done and achieving desirable outcomes.

4. Learning Agility.

To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active, agile learners. Leaders need to be in a mode of constant learning, valuing and seeking out experiences to fuel leadership development, and recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes are required — and accepting responsibility for developing those.

Learning agility is critical for career longevity, and it involves learning from mistakes, asking insightful questions, and being open to feedback. It also includes learning new skills quickly, being open to learning from hardships and taking advantage of opportunities to learn from heat experiences, and responding well to new situations.

For senior leaders, learning agility is also about inspiring learning in others and creating a learning culture throughout the organization.

Set your development as a leader on the right track by learning and practicing core leader competencies and the 4 foundational leadership skills of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility.

How to Grow the Core Leadership Skills

Developing Foundational Leadership Skills to Prepare for Every Role

If you’re thinking about adding the Fundamental 4 to your leadership skills list, keep in mind that each skill should be continuously improved, or “built on as you go.” To be effective, you must continue to develop, adapt, and strengthen these core leadership skills throughout your career — because the learning never ends. As you gain leadership skills in one area, you’ll find there’s even more to learn and practice in taking on new challenges and larger roles.

And if you think you’ve “skipped over” any of the Fundamental 4 core leadership skills during your career, you won’t be as effective, or fully develop your leadership potential. The good news is that, with concerted effort, you can still develop any skills you missed out on; it’s never too late for soft skill development!

If you can identify any leadership gaps or weaknesses in your leadership journey, you have the potential to learn, grow, and change. With the foundational leadership competencies of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility as the core of your leadership skills development, you can be confident that you’re building capacity for new opportunities and the next level of responsibility — because these 4 are core leadership skills needed for everyone, and every career stage.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Partner with us to help your organization develop the4  fundamental leadership skills. Our leadership fundamentals course: Lead 4 Success®, helps grow core leader competencies for foundational leadership skills development.

The post The Core Leadership Skills You Need in Every Role 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.

There is a significant lack of women, particularly women of color, in management positions. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women achieve the same, and this disparity is even greater for Black women, with only 54 promoted for every 100 men, according to the Women in the Workplace report by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company.

Women face the “broken rung” phenomenon, where men at entry-level are promoted to managerial roles at much higher rates than women.

This early career setback puts women at a lasting disadvantage. Rachel Thomas, co-founder and CEO of LeanIn.org, emphasizes that this “broken rung” restricts women’s career progress. Despite some progress at higher levels, these advancements often come with caveats.

The Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation (SGB) is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting equality and resilience through 4 initiatives: LeanIn.org, Lean In Girls, OptionB.org, and the Dave Goldberg Scholarship Program. Launched in 2013, LeanIn.org supports Lean In Circles, small groups of women who meet regularly to empower each other personally and professionally. These Circles help women build confidence, develop leadership skills, and achieve their goals. Over 100,000 women in 183 countries have started Circles, with 85% of members reporting positive changes within 6 months of joining.

To enhance the leadership skills of regional Lean In Network Leaders, SGB partnered with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). “We chose CCL for their exceptional reputation and expertise in leadership development,” said Nikki Pawsey, Director of the Global Network Leader Program. “Their global reach and commitment to co-creating a tailored leadership course for women aligned perfectly with our vision of empowering more women leaders in the workplace.”

Solution

CCL and SGB collaborated to create the Network Leadership Development Program (NLDP). This program is designed for mid-career women leaders, focusing on immediate and practical application to build confidence and navigate strategic leadership challenges. According to Pawsey, “Our primary goal was to offer our global network of volunteers the opportunity to develop their leadership skills in a way that would empower them both personally and professionally. We wanted to raise their level of self-awareness and provide tools for them to strengthen their ability to lead, inspire, and make a difference in their communities worldwide.”

The NLDP is a 3-month, multi-modal learning experience that includes:

• Asynchronous preparatory learning in a custom online course
• Offline peer discussions managed by participants
• Live online sessions every other week to engage on topics
• Pre-work including the WorkPlace Big Five Profile, a senior leader interview, and defining a Key Leadership Challenge

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The program elements designed to boost engagement and learning include:

• Amplifying the collective power of broad, diverse networks
• Strengthening and leveraging authenticity and credibility to gain trust
• Developing leadership skills and preparing for career acceleration
• Leveraging peer support to work through critical leadership challenges
• Driving conversations and practices promoting belonging
• Building a network of ambassadors to retain and advance women in organizations

CCL has completed 10 successful cohorts globally with more than 250 participants from diverse backgrounds and locations finding common ground in their volunteer leadership role with Lean In.

Results

Following the NLDP, participants have committed to applying their new insights and skills. They plan to:

• Share knowledge with their teams
• Foster resilient work cultures
• Engage in networking and mentoring
• Support other women in their professional journeys

By the Numbers

The program has inspired participants to enhance their leadership skills, promote inclusivity, and focus on personal and professional growth. They are also eager to expand their professional networks and become more active in the Lean In community.

Participants have reported:

• Increased assertiveness
• Improved decision-making
• Enhanced leadership presence
• Greater focus on creating inclusive and diverse environments
• Efforts toward equality

Many participants plan to use their new skills to advance their careers, start businesses, or take on new roles. Pawsey emphasized, “The impact of this partnership has been profound. Through CCL’s programs, our volunteers have not only grown as leaders but also built stronger connections within the network, fostering a sense of shared purpose and collaboration. We’ve seen enhanced confidence, creativity, and problem-solving skills amongst our community. Many of our leaders would not have the opportunity in their country to access such high-quality training.”

Participants Say

The post Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Foundation Advances Women’s Leadership Globally appeared first on CCL.

CCL has been on Training Industry’s global Top 20 Leadership Training Companies List in the each of the following years:

• 2010
• 2011
• 2012
• 2013
• 2014
• 2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019
• 2020
• 2021
• 2022
• 2023
• 2024
• 2025

As Training Industry notes, their Top 20 Leadership Training List each year “is based on thorough analysis of the capabilities, experience, and expertise of leadership development providers.” Criteria for inclusion include:

• Breadth and quality of program and service offerings.
• Industry visibility, innovation and impact in the leadership training market.
• Client and customer representation.
• Business performance and growth.

Because of the diversity of services included in leadership training programs, Training Industry does not rank the Top 20 in order of priority.

We’re proud to have earned this award from Training Industry once again, in addition to being ranked as one of Training Industry’s Top 20 providers of leadership assessments, in each of the past 10+ years.

The post CCL Ranked Among the World’s Top Providers of Leadership Training appeared first on CCL.

In most cases, your organization will have a number of more seasoned leaders who have dealt with similar challenges and could offer some help and guidance. By using coaching and mentoring programs strategically, you can support your newer managers with access to more experienced leaders, thereby cultivating an organizational culture that prioritizes learning and developing a pipeline of leaders who are resilient, agile, and engaged.

But how do you get started with organizational coaching and mentoring programs?

First, start with an understanding of how they’re similar and how they’re different.

Coaching and Mentoring Programs: What’s the Difference?

Coaching and mentoring are typically related and sometimes overlap. However, while both may be performed by the same leader, coaches and mentors serve different roles, and it’s important to know the difference between coaching and mentoring:

Coaching typically focuses on enhancing current job performance by helping someone resolve a here-and-now issue or blockage for themselves.

HR leaders often prioritize leadership coaching services, such as executive coaching, because coaching helps individual leaders hone self-awareness and provides individualized challenge and support. But coaching doesn’t always have to be provided by a formal coach; coaching can happen for everyone across the organization when people are skilled at holding coaching conversations.

Mentoring, on the other hand, focuses on career path. Rather than helping someone resolve a current challenge, mentoring at work is usually about a mentor helping a “mentee” to become more capable in the near future. Mentors take time to guide and advise their mentees on issues that will likely arise, but may not have yet.

Mentors leverage their expertise to transfer knowledge and help expand networks. They can also leverage their positions to sponsor mentees for developmental experiences, advocate on their behalf for promotions, and survey the environment for threatening forces and opportunities.

Recommendations for HR Leaders Implementing Coaching and Mentoring Programs

Learning to lead is an intensely personal experience, so it’s particularly important for new and emerging leaders to have access to coaches and mentors who can provide them with guidance, support, and context for their their development. Organizational coaching and mentoring programs can be a formal part of an enterprise-wide initiative, or they can be more informal arrangements that are agreed to by both parties.

If you’re designing, initiating, or implementing coaching programs, drive better outcomes by exploring our actionable handbook of coaching in organizations.

Creating a Culture of Coaching and Mentoring

When an organization has a “culture of coaching,” it has a culture that encourages giving feedback and honest conversations across functions and leader levels that amplify collaboration, agreement, and alignment.

Any conversation can become a leadership development opportunity when it’s candid.

Our research with emerging leaders shows that when people are in the early stages of their careers, they often feel it’s risky to speak up. When supervisors and informal coaches throughout the organization demonstrate that they value the thoughts and perspectives of even the youngest members of their teams, they build understanding and glean a more accurate picture of the challenges and opportunities their direct reports face.

Senior leaders and managers can apply the following foundational conversational skills to all of their interactions to coach their people, helping to foster an organizational culture of feedback, coaching, and candor:

Build These 4 Conversational Skills for a Coaching Culture

1. Listen to understand.

When supervisors listen to colleagues, they should be aware of their own agenda. Instead of trying to promote that agenda, listening to understand involves listening with an open mind for facts, feelings, and values.

2. Ask powerful questions.

As 2 people delve into a conversation, they can uncover new insights by making inquiries that stretch the other person’s thinking. Encourage “coaches” to begin their questions with “what” or “how” to tap into feelings and values that encourage reflection.

3. Strike a balance between challenge and support.

Listening to understand doesn’t mean listening to agree. Supervisors can show their support by restating the facts and values they hear. When 2 people have a shared trust built on psychological safety, they are able to ask tough, challenging questions that uncover unexamined assumptions.

4. End your conversation with clear next steps.

Supervisors can establish a sense of accountability by agreeing to next steps. That can be as easy as committing to one small action item that moves the issue forward and demonstrates that the supervisor values the facts and emotions shared by the individual being coached.

Consider What Makes Mentoring Programs Successful

Whereas coaching is intended to address a current challenge, mentoring looks to the future. Therefore, the most successful mentoring programs include careful, strategic planning.

According to our guidebook, Seven Keys to Successful Mentoring, mentoring is an intentional, developmental relationship between a more experienced, knowledgeable person and a less experienced, less knowledgeable person. Often, but not always, this means an older person mentoring a younger one, although reverse mentoring arrangements flip this model around, but work in much the same way.

When creating or improving an organizational mentoring initiative, use these strategies and questions as a guide:

• Be purposeful and strategic. Before you begin pairing mentors and mentees, consider your goals and how these goals fit into your overall development efforts. Think about how your demographics might change in the next 5 years: Who will retire, and who will backfill those roles? How will this mentoring program fit into your overall business plan and human resources strategies?
• Engage leaders. The most effective mentorship programs have buy-in at the executive level. Once you’ve outlined your goals, clearly articulate and communicate those goals. What role can the CEO and senior team play in the process? Who else in the organization will help make the formal mentoring program work?
• Start small. It takes time to recruit and brief the right mentors and mentees, and lessons learned from the beginning of the program can prove beneficial when it’s time to extend it to more people. Be sure your program includes a diverse group of leaders (all genders, people of color, different levels/career stages, etc.) and establishes clear rules about confidentiality to establish trust.
• Train mentors and mentees on skills for developing the relationship and holding mentor conversations. You can’t assume senior people will have the right skills for mentoring. Investing time and resources in training also shows that the company leadership values the program. Along the way, offer support for mentors; this support should be included in the program’s design.
• Measure and share. What is most important for the organization and those participating? Consider the specific needs of the mentoring partners, HR, and business leaders. How can you publicize any early wins in order to build momentum?

Coaching and Mentoring Programs: Especially Key for New Leaders

As noted in our white paper on mentoring first-time managers, when individual contributors are promoted into their first formal leadership positions, many don’t expect the transition to be as difficult as it is. Worse, they often lack the support and development needed to help make that transition successfully. Without support, new managers can suffer — along with their teams and direct reports. By extension, this affects the organization’s retention levels and leadership pipeline, which ultimately can negatively impact the bottom line.

Given the important role that frontline managers play in talent development and succession management, organizations should help ease the transition for new managers by providing them with access to leadership development — especially courses targeted to the needs of new managers — and by exploring formal organizational coaching and mentoring programs to support them.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Give your new leaders the support they need to reach their full potential and help move your organization forward through a combination of coaching and mentoring programs, coaching and conversational skills training, and proven development courses that work for your culture and needs.

The post How to Use Coaching and Mentoring Programs to Develop New Leaders appeared first on CCL.

Our white paper explores what research suggests are the direct benefits of leadership development (i.e., program-specific outcomes) and the indirect benefits of development, including increased employee engagement and attractiveness to potential employees. It outlines 4 key leadership development benefits that have emerged from both our own and other research, noting that investments in leadership development:

1. Facilitate organizational alignment,
2. Enhance the organization’s change readiness,
3. Promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and
4. Strengthen leadership pipelines.

Creating Competitive Leadership Advantage

When implemented effectively and comprehensively, leadership development has the potential to grow individuals and transform an entire organization from being one that merely meets its objectives into one that excels.

That’s why we say that one of the key benefits of leadership development is also simply that it creates competitive leadership advantage. And having a competitive leadership advantage not only raises the organization’s level of leadership capacity, developing a healthy leadership pipeline for the future, but also enables organizational agility, which is essential in today’s era of constant disruption.

One of the most critical drivers of organizational success in adapting to change is effective leadership at all levels — not just at the top.

To create the engagement and productivity required for this level of performance, leaders need to inspire others, drive innovation, collaborate across boundaries, and create an environment of psychological safety and inclusion. But these leadership skills don’t simply emerge and spread throughout the organization on their own. It takes focused effort and intentional strategy to optimize the leadership talent organizations need today and in the future.

Building these needed skills, from the top to the bottom of your organization, can feel like an impossible task. How can you possibly get quality development into the hands of all employees to fully leverage the benefits of leadership development?

The answer is by implementing a leadership development initiative that can be scaled. A scalable leadership development program is one that can easily be adapted and executed across an organization, regardless of its size or structure. A scalable development program unlocks leadership development’s benefits and creates significant competitive leadership advantage.

Download our white paper today to learn the many benefits of leadership development and how to scale it to start building a stronger talent pipeline at your organization.

Download White Paper

The post Creating Competitive Leadership Advantage: 4 Ways That Scaling Development Powers Engagement, Retention & ROI appeared first on CCL.