“The World Economic Forum estimates 133 million new jobs in major economies will be created to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by 2022.”

At the center of this “Revolution” is the rapid onset of digital transformation initiatives being adopted across industries, verticals & locations.

Talent managers & HR leaders are working against the grain to build a sustainable workforce that will be primed to meet the challenges of this digital transformation tsunami.

With each passing year, older technologies and with it, employees proficient in these are becoming obsolete.

As a result, the digital skills gap is widening every day, and organizations are finding it hard to catch up.

However, HR leaders are observing a worrying trend that is accompanying this widening skills gap – a growing mismatch among leadership development and evolving organizational archetypes.

The Leadership Development Framework

Leadership in aspirational corporations is much more than the common image of a passionate, charismatic, innovative CEO. The ability to lead—to inspire, direct, and teach others in an organization—is a capability that must permeate an organization.

But with changing times, comes the need to revamp or redefine what it means to be a leader and how to train the leaders of tomorrow.

A leadership framework is needed to analyze, synthesize, and address key aspects of a leadership problems, context, theories, values and leader competencies. Also, a leadership development framework is needed to craft leaders out of individuals by addressing current problems so the organisations can shape the future they want to see themselves in.

A solid Leadership development framework equips leaders with skills and personal qualities so they are better prepared for a challenging future.

Good leadership development frameworks require a healthy amount of strategizing in order to be effective. A systematic approach pays off, by focusing leadership training programs and other development activities on the specific context and your key leadership development goals.

This is because when it comes to concrete leadership training methodologies, there are many directions an organization could follow. In terms of leadership development needs, it is essential to tailor the leadership development strategy to your organization’s context, strategic priorities, unique challenges, and your leadership population.

One of the major challenges faced during this is the inability to design a career path and specific learning methods. Leadership developments frameworks need to evolve with changing job architectures, and reskilling can help.

It is important for L&D to develop a better understanding of how leaders in their organization prefer to learn and how they are learning now. This includes:

• defining a target audience,
• identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and
• offering a personalized curriculum to suit all personalities.

Every company must begin to re-evaluate which skills are most necessary and how they can develop these skills in their leaders.

Doing so will require organizations to navigate a growing maze of learning and development options and modalities. In addition, organizations will need to focus on supporting leaders through their critical leadership moments, or what can be referred to as “by your side” leadership development.

Forces Driving the Leadership of Tomorrow

A profound shift in human experience at work will be seen when we do not just make employees but leaders of tomorrow.

The leaders of tomorrow need to master the four significant forces of business:

Work: Shorter work cycles, more complexity, daily experimentation, and rapid decision-making are becoming a part of our daily lives. Leaders must manage themselves while managing others to work around these rapid changes.

Structures: Working with teams, especially remote, lacks clear communication and good leaders need to work with diverse teams regularly.

People: With diversity & inclusion finally being seen across the board, leaders need to be able to manage their teams with perfection. With people, their personalities, skills, and qualities must be kept in check and updated too, and good leaders need to know how to lead from the front.

Technology: Leaders must be able to move as fast as the technology around them is moving. If they are to lead from the front, they need to know what’s happening and what will happen to prepare themselves and their teams for it.

Just like everybody else in the organization, Leaders also need to reskill to ultimately lead their teams. According to DDI, 60 percent of frontline leaders say they have never received any training or preparation for the role and two-thirds of frontline leaders felt unprepared for the role. As a result, 87 percent of first-time leaders feel frustrated, anxious, and uncertain about their role, and at least half of the executive transitions fail.

Best Practices to Develop the Leaders Of Tomorrow

The shifts in Leadership require new ways of thinking about leadership development and new ways to address them. To develop the leaders that will be leading the future, it’s essential to look at how this can be done with ease and extract the best results for us.

Different personalities have different needs:

Leaders’ learning and development needs aren’t sparked by a single definable moment. Instead, many needs are dictated by many circumstances that drive different Leadership. Different personalities need different attention and cannot be put under the same box.

Organizations need to focus on each personality and its unique needs to get the best out of everyone. Reskilling based on individuals can help derive the best results because its learning is intended for specific people.

Designing Leaders-First Experiences

Technology isn’t changing the landscape for leadership development. The expectations and needs of today’s leaders are. Organizations must find ways to personalize the leadership development experience. The key is to ensure they understand the specific needs of their leaders and build solutions that speak to those needs. This means putting the learner or leader at the center of the development experience. The Leadership Acceleration Initiative being implemented by certain companies is an exciting example of personalized programs.

Variety of Learning

Trying to pick the best learning method is like trying to determine the best ingredient in a recipe. No ingredient can make the whole dish; multiples of them have to be used. Similarly, one learning method cannot deliver the same results as using multiple methods of learning.

The key is to understand the value each learning option brings and how best to use them to maximize impact. One of the critical factors when considering reskilling is to figure out what skills are needed and who needs them and then putting them together using a variety of learning methods to speed up growth.

Don’t leave development to chance

The foundations are the foundations for a reason. Self-learning is and should be a part of an organization’s approach to leadership development. But that doesn’t mean all development should be self-directed. How would you feel if a pilot only relied on self-learning to acquire their skills? Would you fly in their airplane? And yet, we often think that this is enough in what is one of the most important and challenging professions—Leadership. Don’t leave development at chance, be actively involved in each individual to get the best out of them.

By leveraging data from over 8000 data sources, Draup has extracted and analyzed data pertaining to 4500+ job roles, 2500+ locations and 100,000+ courses spread over 33 industries. It has also analyzed over 4Mn+ career paths and 30,000 skills and has it all in its extensive database.