Companies are looking for a different kind of leader now, one who has strong soft skills and can guide rather than rule over staff. New technologies also mean training can be personalized and delivered remotely.
The rapid pace of technological innovation is forcing businesses to adapt their leadership training practices and requiring those leaders to develop new skills, while also giving them new tools for doing so.
Leadership training has historically been conducted in large group settings at a designated time and place separate from daily work activities, such as conferences, seminars and lectures. The pandemic, however, forced many organizations to evolve to a more flexible, digital and on-demand approach, and put a greater emphasis on the more human aspects of leadership.
More recent business challenges are evolving leadership training further, inspiring a re-evaluation of the kinds of skills leaders need to be successful, and how to best deliver that training.
“As opposed to the lengthy seminars that we used to go to for maybe a full day, we’re starting to see more micro-learning programs,” says Lisa White, a leadership consultant for Trinity Training and Development, which is based in Austin, Tx., but has a remote team. “It tends to give them bite-sized learning, and it tends to give them skills to work on, so quite often they’ll have assignments that they need to work on and come back and report on.”
