As the world enters the mid-2020s, the pace of change and the possibility of disruption are only increasing and the top priorities for leadership development in 2025 are centered on meeting these current and future challenges.
It’s no wonder that a recent report from Gartner identified leader and manager development as a top priority for the third year in a row. The Gartner survey of more than 1400 HR leaders from 60 countries found that 70% of respondents believe that leaders and managers are not adequately equipped to effectively develop mid-level leaders. Manager overwhelm is another compounding factor with 75% of respondents reporting that managers are overwhelmed with the expanding scope of their responsibilities. In 2025, leaders will also need to balance out increasing dependence on technology with emotional intelligence and conflict management skills.
Here are five leadership development priorities organizations should focus on in 2025:
Top Priorities for Leadership Development in 2025
Developing and Improving Leadership Behaviors
According to Gartner’s results, only 23% of HR leaders have confidence that rising leaders can meet the organization’s future needs. One way to address this gap is to highlight and emphasize leadership behaviors at all organizational levels, prioritizing the development of these skills and identifying leaders with high potential for further investment.
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.
Increasing Peer Learning Opportunities
Despite more than 75% of Gartner respondents reporting that their organizations have updated their leadership development programs and increased planned spending, only 36% of respondents feel that their leadership development programs are capable of helping these leaders develop the leadership behaviors necessary to lead their organizations. In 2025, organizations must update their leadership development methods to create connections and a sense of belonging for their managers.
Finding opportunities to develop peer connections for managers across the organization and investing in team-building offsites will help managers feel more connected to other employees who face similar leadership challenges. Organizations should rethink their leadership development program design, preferencing shorter but more frequent training sessions, group coaching, and on-demand development where possible.
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Building Adaptable and Change-Ready Leaders
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. Gartner reports that the “volume of yearly enterprise-level change has grown exponentially in response to culture shifts, office work mandates, and new technology.” As a result, change fatigue is harming performance and individual contribution at all levels.
Leaders must learn to be change-ready and adaptable, and executive leaders must focus on developing effective change communication approaches. The most important lesson about organizational change is that all change is ultimately personal. When faced with any kind of change, most employees ask, “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.
Emphasizing Emotionally Intelligent Leaders in a Digital World
One consequence of the AI and automation boom has been the desire for leaders who can foster emotional connections. This desire for connection highlights the importance of emotional intelligence, adaptability, and empathy for humans navigating an increasingly digital workplace.
A 2022 article from Harvard Business Review revealed that between 2007 and 2017, companies searching for a new CEO increasingly emphasized “social skills” over “strength in managing financial and material resources.” According to the authors, “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.”
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 recognizes how much 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.
Highlighting Conflict Management and Interpersonal Communication skills
Humans have long held a preference for interacting with others who tend to agree with them. According to Emily Rose McRae, senior director analyst at Gartner. “People are by algorithmic bias and by personal bias, exposed to people who think like them. The workplace is one of the few places that you are likely to be exposed to people who think differently than you,” she said. According to a report from Gartner, managers are increasingly expected to address and resolve interpersonal conflicts that threaten team dynamics, making increased conflict management skills one of the top priorities for leadership development this year.
A closely divided and highly-charged political climate has proved to be an enduring source of workplace tension since the mid 2010’s and 2025 is already poised to be dominated by divisive headlines that tend to engender passionate feelings on both sides of any issue. Furthermore, the impact of remote and hybrid work may mean that some of the tolerance and goodwill employees had built up for each other during their day-to-day interactions has disappeared. Add to that the traditional drivers of workplace conflict, including poor communication or lack of clarity around roles, and you’ll see why managers need to develop conflict management skills in 2025.
Organizations must upskill managers and provide tools and resources to navigate and manage conflict while also seeking opportunities for managers and teams to build connections and a sense of belonging.
In today’s rapidly shifting world, organizations can’t wait another year to focus on their top priorities for leadership development in order to ensure their leaders have the crucial skills they 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 2025?
