What does the future of leadership development look like? In the last 12 months, we’ve worked with organizations that are doing some incredible work to help their leaders navigate disruption and change.
Our clients around the world tell us they’re facing volatility on multiple fronts: an increase in the complexity of the business environment and competition, the impacts of instability in the global economy, and the disruption we’re all facing with AI and a shift to a hybrid working model.
Leaders need to be highly agile in this landscape. So how do we support them to adapt and thrive as the winds of change accelerate?
Our experience and the results we’re seeing tell us the answer isn’t to keep doing leadership development as it’s always been done (the trusty classroom approach) — or to replace human facilitators and coaches with AI 😕.
Instead, we’re supporting organizations and leaders in their unique context by bringing these things together in a development ecosystem, through a blend of:
- Experienced facilitators and coaches — creating the best conditions for group development and supporting leaders 1-1 when they need it the most.
- Smart, AI-powered technology to individualize development to leaders’ needs and context and enable organizations to roll out programs at scale.
- On-the-job actions and experiments to help leaders grow and combine development with their day-to-day work and challenges.
- Supportive conditions for leaders to prioritize development and try new things, by involving one-up managers and bringing executive leaders on board.
With this blended approach, leadership development moves from being an ‘event’ that’s disconnected to a leader’s day-to-day work, to a continuous process that is woven into how the leader approaches their work and navigates change.
Empowering leaders at scale
With the traditional approach, a common scenario we see is a few top leaders get access to development and coaching, while mid and entry-level leaders get less, and individual contributors receive little (if any) leadership development.
Organizations today need everyone to think and act as leaders. Combining facilitation with the scalability of technology enables us to make executive-quality leadership development more accessible.
Let’s take last Thursday for instance. We had several in-person workshops running, impacting around 1OO participants combined. On the same day, we had over 5OO unique logins on the Adeption platform — some of those were leaders attending the workshops, others were logging in as part of ongoing programs. Whether in a training room or on the Adeption platform, all of these leaders were consciously reflecting on challenges, gaining new ideas and perspectives from peers and the best available leadership tools, and committing to taking action to try new things and build their way forward.
As AI and technology keep evolving, we’re actively experimenting and innovating with new capabilities — so much is possible when combined with the magic of face-to-face development experiences.
Bringing you the latest, best thinking from around the world
March 2O24 marked a big milestone in our journey: Adeption is now one global company. Our journey began back in 2OO9 with our New Zealand business, Jumpshift, which continues to have a powerful impact on leadership development locally. It has now joined the global Adeption brand. As a global Adeption, we combine our strengths and leverage our global insights, best practices, ideas, and learning to refine our leadership development programs around the world. To mark the occasion, we celebrated with our valued friends, partners, and clients in New Zealand. Enjoy our highlights video below.
Want to learn more about our approach? Get in touch to request access to our new ‘Experience Adeption’ demo.