As the world enters the mid-2020s, the pace of change and the possibility of disruption are only increasing. The US is facing another presidential election year, international tensions continue to rise, and technological developments lead us all to wonder, “What’s next?” in the realm of AI.
It’s no wonder that a recent report from Boston Consulting Group identified leadership development as the area of “Highest Need to Act” in 2024. The group surveyed nearly 7,000 leaders across more than 100 markets and found that most of the urgent business challenges identified by respondents had a clear “people” or talent component. While respondents identified other challenges, such as digital transformation and the possibility of economic downturn, leadership development is an urgent need in most organizations for 2024.
Here are four leadership development priorities organizations should focus on in 2024:
Leadership Behaviors
The BCG survey respondents ranked “Leadership behaviors and development” as their number two topic in “Future Importance Ranking” but number 15 on the “Current Capabilities” scale. This result means that companies view leadership behaviors as vital to future success but see their current leaders as lacking capabilities.
Leaders need to be able to influence, motivate, and enable others within the organization, and those results all begin with leaders who capably exhibit leadership behaviors. When leaders can think strategically, make effective decisions, and inspire and enable others, they create highly effective teams that deliver results for the organization.
Change Management
Given that the pace of change and the possibility of disruption is only increasing across the business world, ensuring leaders can support holistic organizational changes and major transformations is more critical than ever. “Change management is like a muscle that can be built, but it needs to be trained consistently if the organization is to benefit from its strength,” the report said.
The most important lesson about organizational change is that all change is ultimately personal. The question most employees have when faced with any kind of change is, “How will this impact me?” Leaders need to be able to manage change while addressing employee concerns, which requires a combination of emotional intelligence and future thinking.
Organizational Development
Among the many changes companies will face in the next few years are generational shifts, an ongoing crisis among middle managers, and increasing adoption of AI and other technologies. To address these changes, HR professionals and leaders across functions need to consider how to best position and organize talent to meet the needs of the business.
“People management functions should position themselves as leaders in this endeavor to actively shape the people agenda of their organization and to execute change programs,” the report says. “In doing so, they should adopt a holistic perspective that focuses both on recruiting external talent and on nurturing and upskilling the existing workforce, as this is paramount to making individuals an integral part of the change journey.”
Recruiting, hiring, and developing the right people is essential, but it’s only part of the equation. To truly meet the challenges of the present moment and the future, companies should revisit the design of their organizations and structure their teams and functions to execute the company initiatives more effectively.
Emotional Intelligence
A 2022 article from Harvard Business Review revealed a surprising trend: between 2007 and 2017, companies searching for a new CEO increasingly emphasized “social skills” over “strength in managing financial and material resources.” “When we refer to ‘social skills,’ we mean certain specific capabilities, including a high level of self-awareness, the ability to listen and communicate well, a facility for working with different types of people and groups, and what psychologists call ‘theory of mind’—the capacity to infer how others are thinking and feeling,” the authors say.
While this study shouldn’t be taken to mean that traditional business skills are unimportant in the C-suite, the shift toward emphasizing interpersonal skills is a recognition of how much the emotional intelligence in the C-suite impacts overall employee experience across the organization. When employees feel that their basic human needs are being met from the top down, they are likelier to stay and thrive in the organization.
In today’s rapidly shifting world, organizations can’t wait another year to focus on developing the crucial skills leaders need to propel their companies into the future. Stewart Leadership can help. From our LEAD NOW! training to one-on-one coaching, our experts can provide the training and development your leaders need to deliver business results and people results. To learn more, contact us.
SELF CHECK:
- What is the most critical skill our senior leaders need right now?
- What is the one skill our middle managers need right now?
- How can we deliver more development opportunities in 2024?
Daniel.Stewart
