Leading, Learning and Change

Everywhere you look, learning professionals and consultants are writing about coping with tough times, surviving the downturn, or bracing for the worst. I don't blame them, times are tough and many people I talk to are cutting corners and balancing expenses. By people I mean friends, family, and business contacts. Personally or professionally, anyone with a checkbook is paying even closer attention to what's going out.


So when I ask training leaders, and I've spoken to quite a few, what the biggest learning need is in these times, I get a handful of answers: leadership, continuing development, and change management top the charts. I think these are very achievable and can be closely aligned with your business results.

1. Leadership Training. Spend the time developing leaders to be more successful and building your succession plan. And face it, they will leave. Strong leaders will help guide your company in these challenging times and then be tempted away when conditions improve. How you keep them is a different conversation, but make sure you have their successor lined up.

The other benefit to leadership development is the establishment of a shared language. Leadership development, done right, involves both the leaders and the led. It creates a common understanding of the role of leaders and accountability for leadership behaviors. Employees know what to expect from their leaders, managers are better able to provide peer coaching and feedback, and executive leadership has an "apples to apples" way of describing and identifying high performers in the organization. For more on leadership and succession planning, Talent Management has a very good article on developing emerging leaders.

2. Continuing Development. Many organization are adopting the "do more with less" mentality these days. I don't have a problem with that, as long as people are prepared to do the work you need them to do, and that might mean more training. Yet in the "more with less" mindset, the learning organization has less to work with. Once again, social media comes to the rescue as does a proactive communication plan.

• Let the organization know you are creating informal learning and development opportunities.


• Communicate the topic areas and the means to obtain training.


• Partner those who have skills with those who don't for more peer training and informal development.


• Have experts answer questions on discussion boards or document success in wikis.


• Create lunch and learn sessions through which experts can share experience and answer questions.


• Remind employees to document learning opportunities and time spent practicing new skills.


• Remind your experts to document time spent teaching, training or mentoring. Ask them how you can help develop them further by making them better trainers.

This continuing development should fit hand-in-hand with your leadership development and succession planning process.

3. Teach people how to manage change. Change management isn't just a task for the senior leadership or the training department. Managing how team members cope with and respond to changing conditions falls to front line leaders. Since these line managers may be formal or informal leaders, it is important to create an awareness in the population of how people handle change and how to help people use the tension to move forward and be productive. I'm not arguing for enterprise-wide change management training. I am arguing for creating opportunities for the entire workforce to learn about the change process and some of the ways that successful organizations handle and grow from change pressure.

To be successful, organizations need to continually grow, develop and innovate. By focusing on a leadership platform, all team members share accountability for leadership. Through continuing development, team members have an opportunity to grow and be successful. Continuing development doesn't have to draw on excessive resources when information sharing becomes the norm. Finally, create a culture that knows how to adapt to and use the tension caused by change events and you will have an organization ready to cope with the challenges of today and tomorrow.