What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era | Harvard Business Review

Developing the next generation of leaders continues to be a top priority for CEOs and executive teams worldwide. And according to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workforce Learning Report, almost half of the surveyed Learning and Development professionals expected their learning budgets to increase in 2022—a six-year high since the report’s initial publication. As learning leaders invest their budget dollars in the areas that will bring the most significant ROI, a segment of them are reinventing their leadership development programs to support a hybrid work environment. This article shares learnings from how HSBC revamped its leadership development program from a “week-in-a-classroom model” with follow-up work to something more experiential and applied and partly virtual. This new model included an 11-week learning journey that moved 90-participants through three pathways: 1) sensemaking, or understanding how the business world and the organization works around you; 2) experimenting, or testing ideas picked up in a classroom session, from colleagues, or from personal experience.; and 3) self-discovery, or figuring out your own identity in the workplace. The authors share how they structured each week and how technology had enabled parts of the program to be delivered in a hybrid work environment. For one of the most comprehensive reviews on hybrid work in general, check out Microsoft’s New Future of Work Report 2022.