Advice for Addressing Today’s Top Talent Development Challenges

Interview Transcript

Ashley St. John:

Welcome to Voices of CLO, Chief Learning Officer’s podcast, featuring voices of top movers and shakers in learning and development. I’m Ashley St. John, CLO’s editor in chief, and today I’m thrilled to welcome our guest Pete Ronayne, a Leadership Solutions Partner with CCL, the Center for Creative Leadership.

Pete works with organizations of every size, shape, and sector to help leaders bring their best, inclusive, innovative, and peak performing selves to all aspects of their lives. He creates innovative and impactful experiential learning programs, including leadership excursions with an eclectic range of partners including art museums, top chefs, farms, a rowing team, a survival school, and even Iceland.

To give a little more background, Pete has been helping leaders navigate change, amplify peak performance, and embrace learning agility for many years. Before joining CCL, he spent 15 years as a dean and faculty member at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, VA, and he served for many moons as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, where he offered a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses in leadership and organizational development, as well as in international relations and foreign policy. He’s also the co-author of The Toxic Boss Survival Guide: Tactics for Navigating the Wilderness at Work, and is currently working on a book about how individuals, teams, and organizations can burn bright instead of burning out.

So today we’re going to be diving into the importance of talent development. Namely, how in today’s disruptive business environment, organizations that invest in talent now will be better positioned to succeed down the line. We’ll be exploring a new report that CCL has produced, titled Supporting Talent Development: Creating Collective Capability in an Unpredictable Context, which is focused on the current challenges in talent development and how L&D can address them as well as what Pete’s seen among many of CCL’s clients today.

Welcome Pete, thank you so much for joining me today, on a Friday. I’m looking forward to our conversation. I’ll just hop right into it. I’d love to hear a little bit about you, your current role, if you could share a little bit about your career and your background with our listeners.

Pete Ronayne:

Happy to. And pleasure to be with you, Ashley, and great to jump into the time machine. My path actually is, I think in some ways, relevant to the topic we’re gonna talk about. It’s definitely full of serendipity, I think. Way back when, I started as a French major and then I went into international development. I spent some time waiting tables. I got a PhD in international relations. I’ve worked at Barnes & Noble, taught at a university, and then sort of made this shift more into the space that we’re here talking about.

I worked in federal leadership development at a place called the Federal Executive Institute for 15 years, which really kind of got me into this field. It was a delight, being a public servant for 15 years. While I was at the Federal Executive Institute, I learned about a place called the Center for Creative Leadership. We used some of their 360° assessments and they were very much on my radar as a cool place to work, and I got very lucky after my public sector career, I got to join the Center for Creative Leadership as what we call a Leadership Solutions Partner. Sort of like a faculty member at a business school. Been here for over 10 years now. Just a great place to be. Great place to demonstrate kind of a multi-tool role. I get to meet with clients, explore their leadership development needs. Partner with them to develop potential solutions. You know, really get creative, kick it around with them. And then equally if not more fun, get in the classroom, deliver the program, fine tune it, see the impact that it’s having on people, get amazing immediate feedback. So that’s my current role in the Center for Creative Leadership.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s great. Out of curiosity, do you ever use your French major? Do you use it a lot still?

Pete:

No, actually. I shake off the rust periodically, you know. Turn on some show on Netflix and see what I can actually understand. I would say where French shows up most frequently, honestly, is randomly in dreams. You ever have like a dream and you all of a sudden, you’re speaking a foreign language and it’s French? So sadly, that’s when I’m most fluent, when I’m asleep.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s interesting though. Have you traveled to France and been able to use it?

Pete:

Yeah, a couple times. It’s there and it’s latent, but I definitely have these moments where I think, oh, wish I had kind of kept at this, like kept practicing the piano so that it would be stronger.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s cool though. I speak some Spanish, but it’s fallen off over the years, and I’m like, why didn’t I keep it up?

Pete:

I tested myself on Duolingo a little while back just to see, OK, what level would I actually come in at. It was moderately promising. I’ll just leave it at that.

Ashley:

Well, I know a bulk of what we wanted to talk about today, I know that CCL released a report recently called Supporting Talent Development: Creating Collective Capability in an Unpredictable Context. When we do publish this podcast, I’ll definitely share a link to the report online. I was looking through it. It’s very interesting. The findings are very interesting. I’d love to explore a little bit more about the report and CCL’s findings while I have you here. But before we kind of dive into it, can you provide some general context for the report? What was behind the research, who was surveyed and when, and kind of the basics.

Pete:

Talent development, leadership development, that’s the space that we’re in. We have the pleasure of on any given day, working with such a wide range of clients, and I think this report was an opportunity to move with real intention beyond just the anecdotal, and here’s what this person is hearing and this is what this salesperson’s hearing, and this is what these faculty are hearing, and actually have some purposeful conversations with clients who, as we know, are facing some new, maybe unprecedented, challenges in developing their talent.

We’re a couple years after the pandemic, and so obviously that was already changing how work gets done. We’re in the midst of some economic uncertainty right now. We’ve got technological disruption with AI and certainly hear, particularly from newer hires, that there seem to be maybe some different employee expectations, and so it seems like a great opportunity, a perfect opportunity to talk about maybe this perfect storm that’s swirling around talent development.

So last year, CCL surveyed several panels of client-facing experts, clients that we’ve worked with, as an effort to capture their perspectives around what are the most pressing challenges that you’re facing in this talent development space and how could we make sense of that and sort of group and cluster it, which we did. We distilled that down into 6 challenges.

I think what’s particularly cool and fun about the report is it’s capturing client perspectives and organizations from their different stages of talent development. Some of those who are newer to this space and really just having preliminary conversations about how do we go about this, like who do we include and how do we scale, all the way to clients that are far more sophisticated and nuanced and are more thinking about how might we reinvent an already pretty involved ecosystem of learning. So, it’s cool to get behind those challenges.

I think the last thing when we think about talent development, and the report talks about this, like a cool way to think about it is sort of a protective scaffolding that helps an organization support itself and its leaders. Sometimes that’s called organizational resilience. I was thinking just the other day because I got a shot. It’s sort of like a flu shot, really, for leaders in the organization. You want to get it ahead of time. It won’t help you avoid challenges coming up or multiple crises that you’re facing, but you’re inoculated, you’re more ready for it when it comes. So that’s what that report is about, and that’s a little bit of its genesis.

Ashley:

Thank you. You mentioned that the report identifies the 6 most common talent development challenges that you hear from clients, which I’d love to dive into each of them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s pipeline, focus, overload, adaptability, conversations, and scale.

Pete:

Yep, that’s it. Sadly, there’s no acronym in there, or at least, you know, maybe by the end of our conversation we can figure it out and play a little game of Boggle.

Ashley:

I’m sure we could come up with one. I’ll go in order of the way that they’re actually shared in the CCL report. But I’d love to explore a little bit more about each of them, and we can start with maybe pipeline. What are talent and learning leaders struggling with, so kind of what areas are of greatest concern when it comes to pipeline?

Pete:

The 2 Qs come up right off the bat. They’re struggling with quantity, meaning do we have enough leaders ready for critical roles that need to be filled now or soon. That’s the first Q. The second Q is quality. Are we developing people with the right depth and breadth and the right sort of skills that have them ready to step into and narrow some of these gaps in the pipeline?

It’s interesting. While things like, just the past week even for me with some clients, things like digital fluency and AI understandably grab a ton of headlines. Then there’s also a real sense that alongside artificial intelligence, it’s things like human intelligence and social intelligence that in many ways take on even greater importance now, when you think about curiosity and empathy and communication and influence, those things in a way need to be even more amplified alongside those other skills.

And our work, I would say, just conversations that I have with clients and my colleagues have. Then what are our research and reports tell us and even what outside findings say. A McKinsey report recently noted that 86% of organizations report significant gaps in their leadership pipelines. So, there’s this quantity issue and there’s this quality issue with the pipeline.

Ashley:

This next question is kind of a 2-parter, but what do you see clients with struggles in this area, what are they doing to overcome these challenges or what recommendations does CCL or do you have for bridging the leadership gap?

Pete:

Yeah, so a few things come to mind. I know that a lot of clients talk about new hires as a specific issue, with a lot of concerns often revolving around communication, communication skills, and teamwork. And I think this is a fun issue actually to talk about, Ashley. It’s like, it’s a heck of a time that we’re living in and people are trying to lead in. I mean, you think about, so with that notion of communication and teamwork in mind, you can’t not then think about social media and how that might impact communication and teamwork, particularly in sort of a newer employee pool. More and more reports chronicling just struggles with more isolation. How does that impact communication and teamwork?

I’ve read recently that there are pockets of young people, and it admittedly probably falls out along some socioeconomic lines, but some pockets of young people who have less work experience at a younger age than generations before. So maybe there’s a little bit of less readiness when they hit the workforce, the organizations full time. And of course, the working remotely piece.

One approach or solution to that part is to get that early pipeline simply into leadership development early. That often involves scale, which we’ll talk about a little bit later, but it probably most frequently looks like things that are more asynchronous, a little bit more self-paced. But the idea is to start that scaffolding — talent development is scaffolding and that support that it involves — start that sooner, even if it’s smaller for a large-scale population. So that’s a first part.

If you think about high potentials, that’s a whole other category, and so that’s more about organizations that really want to accelerate and speed the readiness for people into more senior roles. I think from a creativity perspective, I’ve come across some client organizations who are thinking about this more in terms of what they would call acceleration pools. Instead of a traditional succession plan, like I’m identifying Ashley and Pete and Serena, I think that they as individuals could be the next step into the C-suite so we’re going to develop them. Instead of it being that narrow — though there is still room for that — thinking more about developing more breadth and versatile leadership capabilities and a larger pool of people, versus focusing on specific people, specific roles. I think that acceleration pool concept is pretty interesting and probably ends up deepening and certainly broadening the impact of talent development.

Ashley:

Maybe this is a silly question, but how do they identify then the people who are within those pools?

Pete:

Who gets in the pool, who gets in the swimming pool?

Ashley:

Yeah.

Pete:

Right. Yeah, like who needs the floaties … There are diverse approaches to that for sure, in terms of talent assessment and taking a more rigorous review to talent review. There can be the use of different, pretty interesting assessments to capture high potential capability. We talk a lot at the Center for Creative Leadership about differentiating between high performers and high potentials. I think when organizations adopt that mindset and are looking more for the promise of learning agility, the promise of flexibility, the promise of curiosity, etc., those things define high potential. That can be part of the identification process.

What’s really key, and I’ve seen this with some of the more sophisticated clients that I work with and that I learn a ton from, is that you have a culture where identifying who should be in that pool is kind of everyone’s responsibility, or it’s not just HR’s responsibility. You have other managers and leaders with an eye for this talent, and they’re enlisted in those conversations and identifying who they think should be in the pool. It takes more effort, but the payoff tends to be significant.

I think about a program that CCL has been delivering with a large pharma company for over 11 years now. And I’m really lucky to be one of the facilitators for the program. And this particular organization did do all those things that we were talking about. They have other people looking for talent, not just HR. They think in terms of high potentials and not just high performers. And I say that actually because when I show up in the classroom, where I’ll be on Monday for the first session, you can just feel it in the group. You can feel the readiness, you can feel the engagement. Selfishly, it’s less effort for me to kind of win the group and pull them into the learning space. They want to be there. And I think at its root, that is an organization that’s committed to talent development and really identifying those right people for that pool. And it’s a really good example of this pool approach, because a cohort in that program is anywhere from 40 to 50 people, so it’s a good size. That’s far more of a pool than there are 12 people identified from a much more exclusive experience.

Ashley:

So interesting. Thank you. I’ll flow sort of into the next area of the next talent development challenge from the report, which is focus. I’m curious, when the report emphasizes focus as a big challenge, what does that sort of encompass and what are the drivers behind that?

Pete:

This is specifically focused on organizations and talent development and what they think about and what they target. This isn’t about the participants and their ability to focus, we’ll come to that next. But it’s really hard to prioritize development, maintain your commitments to leader development. It’s a cost proposition when there are of course competing business demands. But it’s important, right? This pace of change, growing complexity, etc.

We see clients struggle in a couple areas under focus. I think one of them is, what are some of the more pressing and urgent skills, like the kind of a more immediate gap that they’re seeing show up on a regular basis? What are things that are more strategic that are going to drive future success? And a big part of that is if you think about the sort of classic balcony and dance floor metaphor, sometimes when you’re on the dance floor, things look a certain way. It’s busy, it’s noisy, there’s a lot of movement, and it’s loud. And so that can give you a sense of what the most urgent needs are. However, it’s important sometimes if you get off of that dance floor and you climb up onto the balcony and you look down, you see different patterns, you see different movement, you take it in in a very different way. And that can help organizations see a bit more around, what do they need for future success.

I’m reaching over here because I have this whole pile of stuff. And I was going through this the other day, and it was perfectly timed for our conversation. I had this in one of my baskets, and it’s the periodic table of elements of leadership and management. And the reason I show that to you is, think of how this thing is overwhelming. Think if you’re a leadership development professional, and while it’s cool and it’s fun that someone took time to do this and laminate it, there are 102 elements here. Well, that provides you with no focus, that’s a crazy number of things to have to figure out. We definitely see clients struggle trying to figure out, okay, what are the competencies and behaviors that we need to focus on. And we have methods, we’re in this space of helping them walk through that and define it.

And then I think the other focus issue, which we’ve talked about and also have alluded to, is it’s hard to maintain focus on talent development and leadership development when business conditions change, as we’re experiencing right now. And look, I think finally for some organizations, and we encounter these, it’s even more basic than that. It starts with clarifying, what does leadership even mean? How do we define that? What do we mean by that? We have a particular approach, we talk in terms of what we call direction, alignment, and commitment. And when those things are happening, when those outcomes are there, leadership is happening. But sometimes it’s that fundamental for organizations to start there and then figure out, okay, what from some massive periodic table do we want to narrow down? How are we going to support this? What is the short-term need and what’s longer term for our success? So, those all swirl around focus.

Ashley:

Yeah, I mean, I think that especially with the periodic table, it ties into the next theme, which is overload. When I was looking through the report, I noted to myself, I can only imagine that this is a huge one right now, not just from a work perspective but in general. Just everything feels very overloady right now.

How can organizations keep leadership development effective when people are this busy and overloaded and overwhelmed in some cases?

Pete:

Yeah, and I’d be curious, how does overload show up for you, Ashley? When you think about your work, your day to day, what are some of the hallmarks of that for you?

Ashley:

I would honestly say, I get very deer in headlights. It’s almost like if I feel like I have so many things that I need to tackle, I can freeze and get nothing done. From a leadership perspective too, I think it’s, if you are overloaded with your day-to-day tasks, or for example, I’m in a leadership role but I’m also doing a lot of editorial work for Chief Learning Officer. If I’m overloaded, I’ll go right to those immediate tasks that I can get done, like editing an article, but then all the strategic stuff and everything that I really need …

Pete:

Yeah, you go to the check the box stuff, the thing that gives me a sense of, I got this done, I can move on.

Ashley:

Yeah, but the deer in headlights thing is a big one, just freezing and kind of hiding, like a turtle in a shell.

Pete:

Yeah, it’s not at all uncommon to hear that at all and I appreciate your share, because I think it dovetails with how we think about overload at a couple of levels.

When I was reflecting on this, this might be close to the number one challenge that I hear about, so N of one, N of Pete as CCL faculty member when partnering with clients, and then especially when we collaborate on actual program design. It’s because it’s at the core of this, and in your own answer and experience, I hear a little bit of this. This is another fascinating issue with multiple threads, because the core question here is really one of attention. Attention is the holy grail of learning. We remember and we learn what it is we attend to, where we shine the narrow beam of our attention. And work and life are so busy for people, are sometimes boundary-less, like work seeping into every corner of your household. We have people with different life stages and related responsibilities. We have devices on us almost all the time that are also designed to capture and hold our attention, so we’re in competition with that.

It really creates, I would say, a heck of a paradox where leaders need more development than ever. And we have client organizations talking about this need and these gaps, but those same leaders that they want to develop will self-report, like, “I don’t feel like I have the wherewithal for this. I’m not sure I have the bandwidth.” And you can look at any number of different reports, Ashley, and you’ll easily get numbers like 70 to 80% of leaders feeling sort of just overwhelmed by workload. To your example, the strategic stuff kind of goes away. It’s also easy for the learning stuff to go away, developmental activities.

And lastly, I think we also know that people that are flirting with burnout are far less likely to learn. They’re way less likely to be curious, very difficult to be a good collaborator when you’re even just approaching burnout, you’re not going to deal with change really well. And how likely are you when you’re in that space to sustain any positive behavior change? Which that’s what leader development is all about. It’s really important to name that and really sort of design and approach talent development around it.

Ashley:

Flowing into the next one, adaptability. I think it’s a question so many are struggling with right now, and CCL’s report sums it up really perfectly. We want to be ready for the future, but we don’t know how to prepare for what we can’t predict. I think that’s the big question right now. What are the specific difficulties you are seeing leaders cope with today?

Pete:

Yeah, and I think even prior to flow into adaptability, just another word on overload, if you don’t mind?

Ashley:

Oh, yes.

Pete:

Because I think there’s a real connection here, because it’s hard to get to either individual adaptability or organizational adaptability without addressing that overload piece. And so it’s one thing to diagnose it, which I think a lot of people can do, but when we think about that and we think about leader development, I know for sure the Center for Creative Leadership, we think about it in very holistic and very human terms about leader development.

Our experience tells us clearly that when programs, when talent development is actually built on a foundation of wellbeing, both yours as the participant but also others who you are responsible for, when we create conditions for learners, for leaders to what we like to say, burn bright instead of burning out, it sets them up for leader development at a much higher level of success. We talk about things like being intentional about your health and recharge, and that should be part of programs. We equip people with tactics for that. You throw in things like understanding cognitive overload, how much we can keep in our minds in short-term memory, how important things like spaced learning are, so people have reflection and processing time. Those things matter hugely. It’s not just about content and warehouses of content. It’s thinking about, how can we really intentionally craft these experiences with actual human beings and how they learn and how they bring their best selves in mind — bring that to the actual development experience.

And so from there, getting into the adaptability piece. It’s hard to be thinking about the future and adapt to it if you don’t have the wherewithal and the focus and the energy. The quote that you mentioned, this notion that we want to be ready for the future, but we don’t know how to prepare for something we can’t predict. I think CCL right now, pretty thoughtfully, is describing this as what we call the polycrisis. I’ve heard others call it like a perma-crisis. It’s basically this notion that we’re sitting at, increasingly at this confluence of multiple challenges, multiple crises at any time, at any given moment. And in many ways, it’s kind of the next evolution of VUCA, which has been around for a long time, since the late ’80s. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. I think the adaptability challenge speaks to that core dilemma that organizations are facing.

How do we develop leaders for a future we can’t predict? What we know and what our research into polycrisis tells us is, if you do work on things like complex problem solving, continue to work on improving collaboration and relationships, fine-tuning leaders’ abilities to have a future orientation, those sorts of things, you’re setting them up with the adaptability to deal with some of that unpredictability and that increasing likeliness of dealing with the polycrisis.

Ashley:

This is an aside, but I did not realize that VUCA had been around since the ’80s.

Pete:

Yes, so the source code of VUCA was actually at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was at the tail end of the Cold War, so that’s what we’re talking about, late ’80s, early ’90s. And some big thinkers in the Army were thinking, all right, with this adversary, the Soviet Union, going away, what’s this new world going to look like? How do we define it? And they came up with VUCA to describe that world. Everyone’s borrowed it since then and it seems still pretty relevant and applicable.

Ashley:

Apparently yeah, some things don’t change.

Pete:

VUCA seems to be a constant in some way.

Ashley:

Chaos remains constant. Continuing on with the adaptability, the report suggests that organizations must adapt how they’re adapting. What can that look like in practice? What should they be focusing on?

Pete:

Yeah, this is a favorite. I love this concept that I learned at the Center for Creative Leadership. By the way, a great part of being at an organization like this, and I’m sure at yours, is all the learning that we get ourselves. And so, it really is all about shifting from thinking mostly about the skills in leadership development and focusing also on capacity. It’s 2 things. And specifically at CCL, we talk about horizontal development and vertical development. Horizontal development is, we’re adding more skills. We’re going to help Ashley with active listening. We’re going to give you a couple different ways of influencing up the chain of command. We’re going to equip you with a new feedback model.

Essentially, think of a glass and you’re that glass, your leadership is that glass, and we’re going to pour more content into the glass. That’s important, absolutely, horizontal development. Pairing it with vertical development is really the sort of next stage in thinking and being adaptable. Vertical development is, what if we actually made the glass that is your leadership bigger. It’s more capacity, it’s more capacity to think differently, to see with more depth, to perspective take, to have system views, that sort of thing.

And I was thinking about this too, and it was sparked by 2 things. I heard one observer talk about this, Ashley, in baseball terms. I don’t know, are you a baseball fan at all? Do you pay attention to the game?

Ashley:

I mostly just go for the hot dogs, but I understand the rules.

Pete:

Hey, that’s an important part of our wellbeing, the hot dogs. but you get the basics of the game?

Ashley:

Yep.

Pete:

And for anyone listening, even if you’re not a baseball fan, you probably have a sense that on every baseball team there’s someone who runs the day-to-day of the team in the game and that’s the manager. Pretty important, it’s a key leadership role in baseball. And this report pointed out, and I just love this, it’s stuck with me ever since. That historically, a disproportionate number of managers and Major League Baseball teams came from a particular playing position. They were mostly players before and a disproportionate number were in a particular playing role, one position, and that position is catcher. So historically, 22% of major league baseball managers have been catchers. In 2015, it was 40% of managers, and it’s even 30% today.

And if you think about it, there’s usually only 2 catchers on a baseball team. And then you have a ton of outfielders and a ton of infielders and a whole fleet of pitchers. Why is that? It’s sort of a vertical development thing, because think about the perspective. The catcher is the only one looking this direction. They see the whole game, they see all of the other players, they see all of them. They have the system view. They probably have the most vertical development over their careers. And so, this article talked about how through your leadership development efforts, how through your talent development, do you kind of develop the catcher perspective in more people? It’s not just about their skills, it’s about that vantage point.

And if we can just rip from headlines, so we have a new pope, all the excitement and interest about the unanticipated American pope. Think about it. Pope Leo, if you think about the vertical development that he has experienced. He was a math major, he was a missionary, he was a parish priest, a seminary teacher. He’s American and Peruvian. He was the head of the Augustinian Order, he was a bishop, and then the Vatican leader responsible for bishops. And by the way, he’s a baseball fan too.

Ashley:

Oh, really?

Pete:

So, throw that in the mix. But think about that vertical development, how of course he was developing different skills along the way, but think about the vantage point, the perspective taking, the system thinking, the capacity to think in bigger and different ways that all of those different roles and responsibilities afforded. And some of them were lateral and some of them were vertical moves, for sure. But nonetheless, that creates the kind of adaptability to address and lead in a world that’s unpredictable.

Ashley:

I think you have a talent for tying these big concepts to current headlines and tangible things like baseball. It’s a talent, it makes it make sense to me.

Pete:

Well, and to make it even more tangible, because people listening think okay, that’s great, but I’m not a pope and I’m not going to make my way through the Vatican leadership, or I’m not a baseball player. But you can bring that same intention around adaptability and vertical development into talent development. Like for us, we often will do it with simulations. That puts you into a different kind of perspective in a different kind of role. We do it through what we call organizational excursions, just getting out of the classroom, Ashley, and going to meet with and talk with leaders in different organizations in totally different fields.

One that is particularly enjoyable, you just see participants take to it. You go out to dinner, not at all uncommon, right? You’re in a program, and one evening the group wants to go out for dinner, great. But what we do is in advance, we arrange it so that it’s not just dinner, but we’re going to have a conversation with the chef and the owner at that restaurant, and they’re going to talk about leadership in their world and engagement and keeping people motivated and customer centricity, whatever. It’s a totally different field but through that lens and through that conversation, you absolutely elevate people’s vertical thinking. We can do a lot of skill building in the classroom, but then when we get out, you get that vertical development, you get that perspective taking. We can amplify that even more with things like learning how to row with a world-class team or working alongside a pit crew or a survival school or horse trainers, you name it. So that’s a way that you can do it, but at work you can do it too through rotations and coaching and merging programmatic learning and experience.

We care about the 70-20-10, CCL pioneered that. 70% of learning happens through challenging experiences and assignments. If you craft that, one of our clients does an amazing job with action learning, Ashley, and that action learning provides them an opportunity to practice the new skills they’ve been working on, the horizontal development, while gaining vertical development by being placed onto action learning teams with challenges that are completely outside their area. They purposely assign people to problem solve in some part of the company that is not at all where they work, they don’t know anything about it. And they walk out of that with a much more enhanced system view, system perspective, empathy for other parts of the organization, their development is vertically enhanced. Very cool, very fun.

Ashley:

Yeah. I’ll pivot a little bit into the next challenge.

Pete:

I know I get all fired up about vertical development.

Ashley:

It’s interesting. No, I love it and I’m glad that we have it all recorded in the podcast. The next challenge is conversations. And around this one, I was curious if you could provide a little bit more context. What is lacking in today’s conversations and communications?

Pete:

I remember myself, if I’m fully honest, when I first learned of our work and focus in the conversation space, and I kind of had my own quizzical reaction and I thought, that seems kind of, I don’t know, simple, which I think maybe people have that reaction at first. I get how it might seem a little bit almost pedestrian at first, but then you quickly realize that it is not pedestrian, it’s actually pivotal. It’s actually profound how important the conversations angle is to talent development. Conversations in leadership development, conversations really are the overlooked building block of leadership. I mean, conversations hide in plain sight, but oftentimes we just rely on rituals and habits and routines in terms of how we approach them.

I think at root, what’s most lacking, to your question is, there’s a bit of an imbalance in what we might call the task-relationship dynamic. And this is exacerbated probably more and more by more and more virtual work teams. It’s easy for work conversations, especially when you’re virtual and remote, to very quickly just get down to business. We have things to talk about, we have things to get done, let’s talk about those. And throw in the fact that because so many more of us are virtual, we don’t have the serendipitous hallway conversations, where you just run into somebody and can meaningfully connect with them. And where there are, things are more about personal connection and feelings and challenges. I mean, it’s very difficult to have a serendipitous hallway conversation on Zoom. I mean, I don’t log on Zoom and hang around hoping someone will come by and have a chat.

I think that’s a big part of it, and there are significant numbers of managers, I think even our research shows that over 60% of managers talk about, there’s just less confidence in their ability to have difficult or connecting or challenging conversations in a virtual environment. That’s definitely exacerbating it.

Ashley:

I believe CCL is completely remote, correct? Internally?

Pete:

No, we’re not.

Ashley:

Oh, no, you have the office. That’s right. I was getting confused. Your office is in the Greensboro area, correct?

Pete:

We have Greensboro, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Singapore, and Brussels, actually, and people in those spaces and a significant remote workforce. So, look, we are learning and exploring and figuring this out right alongside every other organization.

Ashley:

Obviously, we were in person for many years, and then in 2020 we went fully virtual, and we are still fully virtual, and that’s one of the things that I definitely struggle with, that I miss is those serendipitous hallway conversations, but also just popping over to someone’s desk and being like, “Let’s chat about this really quickly.” It’s like you have to set up a meeting.

Pete:

Or do the little Teams thing and hope someone’s there to answer, but it’s highly unlikely.

Ashley:

It’s tricky.

Pete:

I’m with you. And so we talk openly about that, and we really do, we have some marvelous research-based approaches to addressing it. We call it Better Conversations Every Day™. And again, it’s so simple in its conception and even in its description. And look, it’s not about amazing life-changing conversations every moment. It’s just, what if you had slightly better conversations every day? And when you focus on and we create opportunities for people to practice, really practice listening to understand? Remember our overload conversation. We’re so pulled in different directions and constantly distracted, etc., when you really bring intention to your listening, what a game changer that is. When you can shift from being a problem solver for your team into question mode and asking open-ended powerful questions like, how might someone else see that differently? And what if you had a magic wand, what would you do? Or how would your 8-year-old self see this issue, Ashley, or how would your 80-year-old? It changes the dynamic and becomes one of exploration and connection.

And remarkably, when people engage in deeper conversations, especially when people are overloaded and stressed, when you lace together these skills, you create what we’ll call a virtuous cycle where people are showing up with more vulnerability, which builds more trust. And that trust allows for more vulnerability, builds more connection, builds more belonging. And all of that ultimately, it’s proven just to fuel better performance — leader performance, team performance, organizational performance.

Ashley:

Yeah. Well, I think you flowed right into a couple my additional questions about conversations, which were, how can people managers improve, and what are the outcomes of these deeper conversations? Is there anything else you wanted to add around that theme before we move into scale, the final one?

Pete:

Yeah. There was a story, I remember working actually with a particular healthcare leader and group during COVID. And I would say kudos to them, they maintained a commitment to leader development, and we had to do a major shift to online. And she reported, basically, I’m kind of paraphrasing that, “what really kept our team together and our performance moving and accelerating through that, wasn’t that we had more resources or that we had a budgetary boon, etc. It was this opportunity that CCL created for us to have better conversations. And in that case, better conversations about our concerns, our real challenges, and the hopes we had during this difficult time.” And then it was the foundation of those conversations that built the connection, the resilience, the momentum that they needed to get through the crisis. So again, while conversation can seem pedestrian, it’s not, it’s really profound.

Ashley:

Absolutely. The final challenge that’s outlined in the report, which I think is a big one, and I think the report even mentions that at many organizations this can be the biggest challenge of them all, is scale. I’m going to read a little piece of CCL’s report.

It detailed how many organizations have excellent pockets of development with initiatives for specific groups like executives, emerging leaders, those who are deemed hi-pos, or select teams. But this can create a piecemeal or patchwork approach, which fosters inconsistencies across the broader leadership ranks, and gaps in knowledge and values across teams, and divisions that can hinder decision making. Sorry, that took me a minute. What recommendations do you have for organizations to create a more unified development strategy?

Pete:

Yeah, it’s a good one. The scale comes up a ton for sure, and in many ways, it really does flow naturally from both pipeline and focus. This idea of, how do we create consistent, high quality development opportunities across an organization. And when we talk about across an organization, any given week, CCL might be working with a 200-person organization, that’s one scale, but it matters to them. We might be working with a 20,000-person organization or larger.

If you think back to focus, I think a big part of scale does start there with figuring out, what’s going to be our common leadership language in our framework. So doing the discovery that requires, figuring out the actual capabilities, the language that we want to use, the competencies and behaviors we want to anchor around, so that then we can be consistent with those across levels. I find a lot of programs are really effective when they are cross level and you do have these basics that everyone covers and touches on, even though they might customize it differently for a group of new hires versus the C-suite, but they still have these core sort of leadership values and behaviors that everyone needs to live into. I think that’s an important part of scale, that common language and consistency. It’s fun, honestly, and very rewarding when you work with an organization and you’ve worked with them for a couple of years and you see that. You hear the consistent language, that shared leadership lexicon across levels. It’s amazing and you can feel the momentum and impact that has.

I think second, this is no surprise, but scaling is often also about being real intentional about a blended approach. The reality is, and I know that you’re interested also in potential hurdles to this, cost of course. And in an ideal world, everybody gets together for powerful face-to-face programs and it’s transformative. That’s not a reality. It’s not now, it wasn’t before either. So I think we see great impact with clients who partner to create leadership learning ecosystems that include self-directed programs, like we have one called Frontline Leader Impact. So that is generally targeted at a particular leader level, but shared leadership lexicon and foundational understanding. We have things like what we call our Passport program, which will give you access to our whole library, but it’s also customizable. There’s train the trainer. And you can do that alongside sending some participants maybe to an open enrollment program someplace, maybe CCL.

And where we’ve seen a lot of this scaling work very well is let’s say, Ashley, you and some colleagues attend one of our open enrollment programs. You come back, you report to your colleagues about the impact, about what really worked. And often you say, “We need this for more people.” Then that’s the shift into, what would a custom learning journey look like for a director level or a VP level high potential audience? You’re addressing all of the levels, but it’s for sure is not a one size fits all, and cost is always in mind.

Ashley:

Yeah. In addition to cost, where else do you see clients sort of running into hurdles or challenges?

Pete:

I think one big one, I was in a conversation just earlier this week that ultimately kind of centered around this, which is thinking that any learning platform that has a lot of stuff is the solution. You have to think about more than just warehouses of content. And I see clients run into that, where they rush into something that involved volume and a lot of content, but it lacked any ability for curation, like consultation, collaboration with that partner to really make it fit what their learners need and what learners and users will actually do in that client’s context. Then you end up with low adoption, you paid a ton of money for this warehouse of information that no one’s using. I definitely see people run into that.

And then I think a second part is relying on or putting too much of a burden on managers to drive development and development conversations without actually first equipping them with the skills that they need, which leads to its own inconsistency. And also, to your point, if I don’t feel comfortable doing that, I’m going to focus on the things that I’m good at and I can get these things done. And your development, I’m going to keep pushing off and pushing off because it’s just not my comfort zone. I think those 2 pieces are additional hurdles, for sure.

Ashley:

Yeah, that completely makes sense. In this area of scaling, how do you think that organizations can start to take concrete action or what would be next steps for organizations where this is something they’re definitely coping with?

Pete:

Yeah, so it’s certainly a strong point of view from the Center for Creative Leadership because this is what we do when we think about it. But first off, just viewing leadership development and talent development as a core business process, and that it’s integrated and that it’s systematic, just like you would with your financial reporting or accounting or product development. Not like this random collection of disconnected programs, that doesn’t help at all. Sort of rationalizing what you’re doing and where you want it to go, and being really intentional about, how are we blending like nano offerings, little, short, bite-size things, all the way through micro, mini, and major learning journeys all the way through. But that you’re understanding what’s happening in all of those and you’re thinking through, what would it look like if Ashley were a new hire and started in this program and then 3 years later, she’s ready for the mid-level talent program? Is there rationalization? Is there flow? Is there connection but not duplication? Those sorts of things, that really helps you get at impactful scale.

Ashley:

With everything we’ve discussed …

Pete:

It’s a lot. You’re very patient.

Ashley:

It’s a lot.

Pete:

I get worked up and …

Ashley:

Oh no, I think it’s great. I love to hear your insights around all of these. Kind of to sum up, I think the big stressor behind this, or the big thing that we want to emphasize, is obviously the importance of talent development more than ever before in positioning organizations for success. I’m curious, are there inherent challenges you see among talent development teams in taking kind of a holistic approach to preparing themselves for the future? Are there issues with leadership buy-in when finances are tight? Or what do you see as being hurdles?

Pete:

I’m trying to think if I call it a hurdle. I was trying to think of another word for it, but look, I would just say the press of AI right now and the push for what we need, that technical skill and that integration, that can be a hurdle or it can at least on the surface seem like it’s something needs to replace more leadership development, that as we talked about before, they really need to go hand in hand. That artificial intelligence is best leveraged with human intelligence and social intelligence. I think that’s an inherent challenge that can get in the way of a more holistic approach.

You can have pockets of an organization that are just more vocal or better at asking for and promoting themselves for development. And I think similar to that, there’s a tendency for that high potential focus or that immediate succession focus, and that is a little bit narrow, and it certainly moves you away from the more holistic approach, so you have that broader pool that’s ready.

Now when you talk about leadership buy-in and look, finances are tight. Like you said, the future of the economy is uncertain. And there was Gartner research that shows that, and we know this, learning and development budgets are usually the first to be cut, along with travel during downturns. But actually, it diminishes your ability to be ready when things bounce back. There is evidence that organizations that maintain or even increase, believe it or not, their investment in talent development during difficult times, when things bounce back, they actually outperform their peers.

I think 2 things for me, it’s sort of like your network when you think about individual networks, and there’s always the advice. You need to build the network now that you need then, or sort of like that flu shot I mentioned before, getting a flu shot after you already got the flu, not super helpful, but getting it before, doing talent development before, positions you to get through that crisis more effectively and be ready to bounce forward once you’re through it.

And I’m always reminded, you’ve probably heard this story, it’s so old, but it still seems relevant to me. The sort of apocryphal story when a boss says, ‘Well, what if we invest in all this leadership development for our people and then they just leave?’ And their HR counterpart says, ‘Well, what if we don’t invest in them and they stay?’

Ashley:

So true.

Pete:

You know? I mean, it’s sort of thinking about it that way. I think there are creative ways to win buy-in as well. I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in nano-journeys for the C-suite. We’re going to give you this little micro, microburst and taste of what’s going to be in this program and to enlist you as a champion. I love when clients invite C-level leaders and even just below to kick programs off, to come to lunch-and-learns, whether it’s virtual or face-to-face. One of the clients I get to work with, they do a fantastic job with what they call leaders as teachers. There’s a dedicated afternoon where a series of leaders come in and they rotate through these panel conversations, and it adds an organizational level, it adds some vertical development to it, but it also enlists senior leadership in supporting this. It enrolls them in the program. They get firsthand input and feedback from participants. I think those are some fun and creative ways to get over those hurdles and, like you said, get leadership buy-in.

Ashley:

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to wrap up with one final question, and that’s, what’s the number one takeaway that you would want people to leave this podcast conversation with?

Pete:

Hopefully they leave it being reminded that leadership development and talent development can be fun. It can be engaging, etc., and multidisciplinary, but in particular, that talent development shouldn’t be viewed as just a luxury that we can indulge in when things are good and give up on it when times are challenging. It’s really a strategic imperative that’s even more important during disruption, polycrisis, VUCA, etc. So, developing people now to meet those challenges, but also for the future.

Way back when, Peter Drucker famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” And so the best way for organizations to create the future that they want — their prosperity, their people, their purpose — is to develop the people who will lead them into that future that they create. So that’s what I’d leave us with.

Ashley:

I think that’s fantastic. And just a big thank you for hopping on with me, especially on a Friday.

Pete:

Oh, my pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to it. I mean, geez, you give me a microphone, you see what happens.

Ashley:

Oh, no, I think it’s wonderful and I’m so glad we had the chance to catch up today and spend some time together discussing this. Thank you.

Pete:

My pleasure. Yep, anytime.

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