Effective leaders do more than manage performance: They inspire. They innovate. They listen, and they go out of their way to help their team members succeed.
To learn more about modern leadership, we spoke with Laura Smith Dunaief, CPTM, an experienced learning leader and an instructor for Training Industry’s continuing professional development programs, and Mark Herschberg, a chief technical officer, professor and author of “The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You.”
Listen now for insights on:
- The skills modern leaders need to succeed.
- Developing high-performing, cross-functional teams.
- Why all employees, regardless of their position, deserve leadership training.
Listen Now:
For more insights on leadership training and development, download this e-book:
Additional Resources:
- Developing the Modern Leader: Essential Skills and Training Tips
- Leading Leadership Development Certificate
- A 4-ingredient Recipe for Leadership Success in 2021
- The State of the Leadership Training Market
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Hello, and welcome to The Business of Learning. I’m Taryn Oesch DeLong, managing editor of digital content at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
I’m Sarah Gallo, an associate editor here at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
This episode of The Business of Learning is sponsored by Training Industry’s Leading Leadership Development certificate.
Speaker 4:
Today’s leaders are faced with a host of challenges, whether it’s managing a remote team, keeping pace with the industry advancements, or navigating difficult conversations with employees. That’s why Training Industry’s Leading Leadership Development certificate program was designed to give you the skills you need to manage successful leadership development programs, which in today’s business climate, is imperative for lasting success. Explore what makes a great leadership development program and learn strategies to develop your current and future leaders. For more information on the program, visit trainingindustry.com/lld.
Sarah Gallo:
It’s safe to say that leadership today looks different than it did 20, 10, or even five years ago. Effective leaders do more than manage performance. They inspire, they innovate, they listen and they go out of their way to help their team members succeed. To learn more about modern leadership, we’re speaking with Laura Smith Dunaief and Mark Herschberg. Laura is an experienced learning leader and an instructor for Training Industry’s Continuing Professional Development programs, and Mark is a chief technical officer, professor and author of “The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You.” Laura, Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Thank you Sarah, really glad to be here.
Mark Herschberg:
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here today.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
To get started with, why don’t you both share with us how leadership has changed in recent years. Mark, let’s start with you.
Mark Herschberg:
As you noted in the introduction, leadership went from simply [being], ”Well, I am in charge,” typically in a command and control way, to now more inspirational leadership. And it’s not simply about delivering values, say, to your company or on the project. It’s also about making sure there is engagement, getting the team engaged and aligned to the goals, helping the team to meet their personal goals, ideally aligned to whatever your team or corporate goals are, as well as being a good corporate citizen and aligning to the needs to the community, whether that’s local or global in nature.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Laura, what about you? What are your thoughts?
Laura Smith Dunaief:
So, as Mark was alluding to, the world of leadership has absolutely changed, both for corporations and for other types of organizations. And I think that that pace of change has accelerated significantly in the last year. In some ways, and I know there have been a lot of discussions about this, the role of the leader has completely changed in terms of its focus and perspectives. So, when I think about the role of the leader now, as Mark alluded to, it’s much more about inspiring, and I like to think of it as facilitating, decision-making, creativity, culture, etc. versus that directive command and control [type of leadership] that Mark was talking about. There are some very specific things that have changed in the world of work in the last year that probably will continue beyond just this year post-pandemic. When we think about things like an enhanced need for creative problem-solving in an organization, everything from what we do as a core function to how we go about doing it [is changing]. So, if we are a manufacturing organization, in the last year [manufacturing] organizations had to look at how to re-manage, or manage differently, their supply chain or their suppliers, all the way to how we communicate with our customers since there’s a lot less face-to-face [customer interaction] in a lot of businesses. Obviously, we have a lot more remote team members. Zoom is a thing now, and lots of other platforms [are connecting remote team members], so virtual collaboration and management is a whole different set of skills than [simply] being able to manage by walking around, as I used to like to talk about. And because we have so many different remote team members, we need to expect that lower levels of leadership in the organization, so not just the people with the titles, are going to need to drive culture, change and be culture carriers in our organizations. And that doesn’t even get into how we manage resilience, which is a big issue these days.
Mark Herschberg:
And Laura, I think you mentioned something that really underpins one of the important currents in leadership, which is that we have to have more of this creative problem-solving [skill set], and one of the reasons is because when you look back 40 years ago, you became a leader by putting the time in, right? You were in this role, you moved up more and more senior until you became a leader, and you got that leadership because you were the expert in this industry or in this area. But what you really alluded to is that the world, the pace of change, is so much faster [now than it was in the past], and you need that creative problem-solving because no longer are we looking at “I just need to know what I do and be the best at [it].” You’re going to have opportunities and risks that come from different angles as industries integrate and de-integrate, and we have currents from all over multiple different industries can impact our own … not to mention global pandemics. And so, a good leader needs to be not just that deep expert but that person who can combine expertise and knowledge from other people to come up with those creative solutions.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Absolutely. So, that kind of goes back to my point about a really good leader is a really good facilitator, not just someone who has all the answers. They can draw the best out of the people that work for them, the best ideas, the best knowledge about what’s going on in the economy [and] the world and use it to anticipate how we need to shift in our organization to take advantage of opportunities [and] mitigate risks.
Sarah Gallo:
Leadership has definitely come a long way over the years. With that in mind, Laura, Mark, what skills do you think today’s leaders to be successful in their roles? Laura, do you want to start with this one?
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Absolutely, although I’m sure Mark has a lot to contribute here, especially around my first thought, which is enhanced communication skills. No matter how good a communicator you are, you can always be better, and if I want to think about what are the most important communication skills, it’s probably listening. So, the thing we’re taught the least about as we’re going through school and learning communication skills So, how do we listen more effectively to employees, customers [and] others within our organization about what their needs are, what’s working and what’s not working? And that ties closely in with probably the second most important [skill], in my mind, which is emotional intelligence. So, we are developing much more diverse organizations, teams [and] customer bases, and being able to understand how people, and how we ourselves, respond to continually changing environments and [the] changing demands of the workplace is going to be crucial to us being successful as leaders. Of course, we need to be able to develop diverse talent, motivate teams in all different arenas and foster creativity, which goes back to the whole idea about creative problem solving that we were talking about before. So, Mark, I’m sure you have a lot to add here.
Mark Herschberg:
The class that I’ve been teaching at MIT for the past 20 years was based heavily on feedback that we got from corporate America saying, “These are the skills we want to see in people we hire, but we’re not finding it.” And similar feedback has been given to career offices at universities all across the U.S., and I believe in Europe as well. Some of the skills that they are emphasizing the most include being proactive at work. It’s not simply [saying], “I know how to do my task,” but “How do I think a few steps ahead? How am I using this task to deliver value and taking initiative?” They want to see strong communicators, as you said, and I particularly see communication [skills becoming more important] as we have these diverse teams, and I don’t simply mean the classic diversity of gender and race, although that’s certainly very important, but even diversity of these cross-functional teams of different disciplines. We have to learn how to communicate across those disciplines. [Companies] talk about [the demand for] leadership, and by leadership they don’t mean “we need more people in executive titles.” They mean people who can display the attributes of leadership, [who] can stand up and be a leader even from day one, right out of college. They want to see people who know how to negotiate well, and that doesn’t mean simply negotiating a salary or sitting across a table but negotiating both with other employees and people within the organization as well as [people] outside [it], people with strong diverse networks, people who understand key managerial skills because we all match, even if we’re not in a managerial role, we match our fellow colleagues. If you’re in a project with more than one person, you’re managing. And so they want to see these skills across disciplines, across levels of experience, and as you point out, it’s not something we have emphasized in traditional university teaching, or even much within our corporate training. I think that has to change.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. Those were some great skills, Mark. I especially liked what you said about “even if we’re not in a leadership role, those leadership skills are still just so critical.” So now that we know what skills modern leaders need, how can training help actually develop them?
Mark Herschberg:
Here, I think we have gotten it wrong. Our traditional training model, both in the university system and our corporate training has been, I’m going to call it “the lecture model.” It’s having experts stand in front [of an audience] and broadcast knowledge. Now, this could be a classic [example of] someone standing in front of the class [and lecturing]. This [also could be] a book where you’re broadcasting through written pages or a blog or YouTube video, [or] even a podcast like this. And I say “broadcast” because it’s not interactive. We happen to be a little interactive, but the listeners can’t engage with us or each other, and this is important to understand: When we are teaching knowledge, if I am teaching you the new accounting laws that came into effect this past year, broadcast is fine. When people do their continuing education credits in their profession, when technologists keep up with new technology, this is fine. Learn whatever the new knowledge is. But when we’re looking at skills-based learning, there is no three-step process for being a leader. There’s no algorithm for networking. And so we can’t teach it in this broadcast, knowledge-transfer method. We fortunately have a model. The way that we teach this at MIT is how business schools have been teaching these skills for decades. And that is a peer learning model. So when we want to teach these skills, we don’t say “go read a book” or “go take this class.” We say, “We’re going to put you with a group of people with diverse experiences and backgrounds.” So, it might be people from the accounting department, sales department [and] engineering department. You’re going to come together, and we’re going to talk about these issues, and we’re going to explore them from your different perspectives, and I’m going to learn how you approach it, you’re going to hear how I approach it, and all of us are going to build a richer understanding of how to do this. At the same time, by having a peer learning group that is continuous, for example, [one that meets] every other week or once a month keeps [these skills] top of mind because that knowledge approach of, “Okay, I need to learn the new accounting laws” [isn’t enough]. Well, okay, it’s a new year, and so I’m going to start doing the accounting for this year, I better know the new skills. You do a gist and time learning. Unfortunately, we can’t say, “Oh, guess what? You’re going to be leading next Wednesday afternoon, so we’re going to send you to training today, and then remember [on] Wednesday afternoon, start doing this.” It’s not always so obvious, so by having this ongoing peer learning, we’re keeping [leadership skills] top of mind, and we’re going to be more open to seeing the opportunities both for our own development and the applicability of these skills.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah, Mark, I couldn’t agree with your more. What we used to call “the sage on the stage” model does not necessarily work for teaching leadership. Like you said, there’s not a three-step model, do these three things in this order and you are miraculously a really effective leader. What I have found works better is exactly what you are describing, those peer coaching, or peer communities, or what I like to call “communities of practice,” of people who are developing, especially, interpersonal skills or dealing with different types of problems and problem-solving [and] fostering creativity, etc. So, that’s a much more modularized approach. You might provide foundational content and video casts, or in classroom-type of environments, but that doesn’t really enable people to practice it, and it also doesn’t enable people to reach back into the, we’ll call it the “learning way back machine,” when they need to use something and pull it out a refresher. So, I do think that really effective leadership training now is much more modularized, focusing on key skills. Yes, negotiation is a skill, and yet the opportunity to practice that is the [crucial along with the] support that goes with that. So, you might create something that would be, we’ll call it “learning labs” or, like I said, communities of practice, where you’ve got a peer coaching network where [learners can] gather [and] might use a case study or real-life examples that they bring to the conversation and talk them through with their peers or practice them with their peers. I know everybody hates to say role play, but it is skills practices. We’ll call them “skills practices” because that’s essentially what they are — realistic scenarios that [learners] can apply to their workplace, challenges and to integrate the skills. So, it’s not just about negotiation, it’s also about influencing, listening [and] facilitation. All of those things might mesh to create a more fully-realized practice session that is more practical and more realistic based on what you’re going to experience in the workplace, or what you are currently in the workplace. So, I’m a big fan of those learning labs, or peer coaching networks, which in the modern world, are often being taken online. So, they might be collaborative Zoom sessions, or even using something like a Slack community where people can throw in questions and support each other when they have issues [and say], “Hey, does anybody have a quick opportunity to talk through this particular challenge I’m facing,” and provide the key details and have someone else jump in and say “Yeah, I can give you ten minutes on that,” or, “This is what I’ve tried,” or “Check out this video.” So, something that helps to support, continuously, the learning, not just a one-off [training] event. So, anytime that we can create an environment where we’re facilitating those cross-organizational discussions, information sharing, and peer collaboration and learning is going to get much closer to the mark of developing fully-realized leaders.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
You both pointed out the need for this continuous learning, and Mark, you said that you can’t say, “Well, you’re going to be leading this time next Wednesday, so let’s make sure your skills are brushed up by then,” and I think last year we saw that in a big way, because no one could say, “Well, there’s going to be a pandemic this year and your employees are going to be going home, or you’re going to have to implement these new safety practices, so let’s get you skilled up for that.” So, I think we’ve seen the importance even more of developing agile, resilient leaders who can pivot, who can support a team that’s going through a crisis, so could you speak a little bit to what that looks like? How can organizations build those skills in their leaders, especially considering the fact that there’s constant change in business, and there’s no way you can clearly say, “There’s going to be this situation, you need to prepare for it, and here’s what to do.”
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah. I’ll take this one first Mark, if you’re okay with that. So I think, Taryn, you’re talking about that need to be continuously nimble. We, even looking in the rear view mirror at what’s happened in the last year, I think that it would’ve been very difficult for us to anticipate what happened, and yet we need to anticipate that the world is constantly going to be changing in ways that are going to affect what we’re doing in business. So with that in mind, often as learning leaders we do, say, a once a year or maybe every six months [an] assessment of learning needs in the organization. I think we need to move away from that model. Yes, that can be a more all-in-one endeavor on a periodic basis, and there is a discipline to doing assessments of what the needs are in the organization around learning, around leadership, but it needs to be a much more nimble process. It needs to be a more continuous assessment of what do people need in order to be successful today, or tomorrow, or knowing what we know now or what we might experience. We also need to be really good about providing clear expectations for leaders. Let’s face it: As the world is continually changing, our expectations of leaders in our organizations will also continually change, and so we need to make sure as leaders in organizations we are communicating to others what those expectations are. So, if you think about the executive suite, if we expect people to be managing more effectively in a remote environment, or in a hybrid environment where we’ve got some people on-site and some people off-site, we need to set clear expectations and guidance for them, and that’s not something we probably could have anticipated a year ago. We also need to recognize that leadership training needs to extend well beyond those with the titles, as Mark was alluding to earlier. Effective leadership happens everywhere, and so it shouldn’t just be people with the titles, or people above a certain tier in the organization, who get to access leadership training or get sent to that cool leadership [event] off-site. It’s a continuous process of developing leadership skills among everybody in the organization.
Mark Herschberg:
I think there’s really two parts to this. The first, it begins with, well, think of it as the traditional annual review process. So, that doesn’t have to be formal. And in this process, you don’t simply say, “Okay. Hey Bob, you’ve done well this year. We’re going to give you a 3% raise and keep up the good work.” And even if Bob is doing great, you want to say, “Bob, how do you want to develop? What are the skills you want to work up?” And so we first begin with that assessment, as Laura spoke about, of our employees, which is what are the skills needed? Whether it’s the manager saying “Hey, we want to develop you in this way” or even the employee saying, “I want to develop in this way.” Given that said, you can now focus on certain areas. And then this is where that peer learning comes in and, again to Laura’s point, instead of saying “Well, we’re going to spend $10,000 to send five people to this three-day retreat,” and five lucky people get it, and “the rest of you try harder next time,” [implement peer learning instead]. By doing peer learning, there’s such a lower cost-structure that we can expand it to more people, and so you’re getting more [people] engaged in skills development. You’re also helping your employee engagement, because now people feel [like] “Wow, I’m getting something. I’m developing.” And this, of course, even works over Zoom, where we [might] feel disconnected, because it is discussion-based. When you set this up, I have some guides that talk about different approaches, I like small groups. I like groups ranging from about six to eight people in size, it can be a little more or less, so you get that intimate discussion. You could do it with larger groups. That might be 20, 30 some people, and then you’re closer to a business school class size, and you just have a moderator to facilitate that discussion. Or you could do it at a very large size, kind of department-level or large level of 100+ people. There it’s going to be a little more [of a] formal interaction because you’re not going to get that free-flowing discussion. There are different ways you could do each of them. As Laura pointed out, you can start with the content. You can start with “the sage on the stage” and having a speaker come in. [Or content might be] using a book. It might be [listening to] a podcast series like this one. But you get some source of knowledge, and then everyone gathers [around] knowledge, they all consume it, and then they come together to discuss it and dissect it and get that richer [discussion] feel. And so this can be done at various scales. There are a couple housekeeping things you need to do about ground rules. [For example], how you think about the diversity on the team? Do you want people in the same group [or] in different groups? For smaller companies, how you can actually partner cross-company, because you might not have enough people locally to make this feasible. But it’s all doable, and it’s done at effectively near-zero cost on a per-head basis, which makes this extremely effective and powerful.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
I’d like to look a little bit more specifically at this year. Obviously, there’s a lot that we can’t predict, but how do you see leadership changing this year, and what do organizations need to know to equip their leaders for what’s ahead in 2021?
Mark Herschberg:
I think there are two key trends that we’re seeing. The first, as Laura alluded to earlier, [is that] we need to push down that leadership [training]. Now, she and I are both fans of saying leadership is not positional. We know leadership can come from anywhere, and should come from anywhere, but now more than ever you need people at all sorts of levels, whether [they’re in a formal leadership position] or not, to stand up and be leaders, because the classic … I didn’t really like this term, but I think it does convey the right perception … the “leadership by walking around” [isn’t effective]. I think it was [the idea of] managing by walking around back in ’80s. That feel that you get just from walking the floor, from that water cooler conversation, from just seeing do people look stressed, do they look happy, do they look engaged. We get none of that. Our signaling system, the communication system in a company, I don’t mean the official email send out, I mean just the daily communications we have, that has all been narrowed. We’re losing the number of interactions [and] body language in some cases, and so we need to make up for that by [practicing] more active leadership. Then, the second trend is, of course, coming out of COVID we don’t know will it be over for good, will it be coming back [or] what is the new normal. Even if COVID is absolutely done, if, let’s say, June 30th okay COVID is over and done with, we’re all going to say this can happen again. We know that there will be continuing disruptions within industries as the impact of the pandemic reverberates, and so we know change is going to continue to come and we need leadership that is designed for a dynamic environment where there’s going to be changes and uncertainty. [We need leadership that can create] and enable teams that can actively respond to that environment.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah, and I want to build off that theme, Mark, that need to be nimble and recognizing that there’s likely to be continuous disruption. Often, or at least in the past, we’ve always [thought that] leaders need to have “all the answers,” right? People get promoted to leadership because they’re really good problem solvers, or they have some “virtual crystal ball” and can predict where an industry is likely to go, or where an organization is likely to go, what’s likely to resonate with our customers. That has been completely upended, and so that ties back to what we were talking about earlier about the need for leaders to be really good facilitators, but that aligns with the recognition that leaders aren’t necessarily going to have all the answers, which is a big culture shift in leadership, and it also has required in the last year, and I think this will continue, a recognition that leaders need to be more transparent about their thinking processes and more authentic, recognizing and articulating when they don’t have all the answers which, let’s face it, none of us do these days, and drawing others in so that not everyone is sitting around waiting for some leader sitting in the executive suite, and now their home office, to make a decision that is then going to waterfall effect down through the organization. Being the leaders, they need to be communicating that they don’t have all the answers, and what they do see [may] sometimes be hazy or, call it an “Impressionist painting” versus a clear photograph of the future and where they need others to engage. So, again, drawing out the leadership from lower levels of the organization. [is key].
Mark Herschberg:
A leader today doesn’t need to have all the answers, a leader today needs to know how to get the answers.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Right. And often those answers can exist on their own teams. They just have to know how to ask, and if they feel that they have to have all the answers, they aren’t going to be as willing to ask, so that’s a big shift in mindset and culture in a lot of organizations.
Sarah Gallo:
Those are some great points of you. I think, if anything, one of the positive impacts of 2020 is [that] it showed us that we really are just all human and doing the best we can, so hopefully that’s something we’ll see [with] that transparency and authenticity moving forward. Well, to shift gears a bit, how do you think that leaders roles may change in the future or work? Mark, do you want to start us off?
Mark Herschberg:
I think, as we discussed earlier, we’re going to see a lot more dynamicisim in what is needed by teams. We’re also going to need these organizations that are pushing that leadership across all levels, but to go even further, another almost mega-trend we’re seeing is more, I’m going to say dynamic teams. Not in the way I used it a moment ago in terms of responding to dynamic situations, but the actual composition of a team [needs] to be much more dynamic. Classically, in the 1950s and ’60s we had [teams operating in] silos, right? We have the different departments that each have their function and occasionally they’d interact, but usually [only] through the senior leadership. We certainly see [that] today we have a lot more cross-functional teams. As we look forward into the future, cross-functional teams are not only going to become much more common, but even more, I would say, I’m going to call them “temporary teams,” teams that get put together from current employees, or from consultants brought in, people are going to be put together onto project-oriented teams for a temporary amount of team. Even if it’s an ongoing project, you’re building some new product that will need to be maintained, that initial team is likely to be temporary, at least in its current structure. And so we’re going to need leaders who are very good within this type of environment to say we are constantly creating and destroying teams. Teams are constantly shifting. There’s volatility and uncertainty, and they can both lead the specific teams in such an environment, but also lead the whole organization [so] that people don’t feel like they’re getting whiplash and just tossed about as some cog from one group to another, but that there is some coherency to their experience and their overall engagement within the company, whether they’re a 1099 or a W-2.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah. I totally agree, Mark. I have seen this across a lot of different organizations, that cross, as one of my clients calls it, silo-ventilation. So, it’s in their organization it may not be a complete breakdown of the silos, we still have distinct functions or distinct enterprises within the organization, but there’s a lot more air flowing among the different silos, and, to your point, a lot more cross-functional teamwork. In some cases you might have instances, and not just with this client, but across organizations that I work with, you might have instances where I, as an employee who has a certain area of expertise, might be on three or four cross-functional teams at the same time. And in some teams, I may take the role of the leader because it depends on my institutional knowledge or my technical expertise, and in others I may take a more collaborative role, less of a leadership role, and someone else who has [more] expertise or is driving that particular initiative might have the leadership stick for that particular group. So, not just the groups we’re working with, but our roles within those groups might change from meeting to meeting, which is a whole different set of flexibility in terms of our expectations of how we lead, when we lead, and how we interact with others. So, it takes us all the way back to what you were talking about earlier in the communication skills and facilitation skills.
Sarah Gallo:
Right. So, we’ve talked a bit now about how leaders roles may shift in the future of work. How do you think that training can help prepare them for this shift?
Laura Smith Dunaief:
I’ll take this one first. So first of all, going back to what we were talking about earlier, training needs to be rethinking leadership training. There are a lot of different dimensions of leadership training, so certainly identifying what’s most crucial in your organization [is important]. As we were alluding to earlier, that nimbleness of doing the needs assessment at an organizational level, at a departmental level, etc., [and] bringing that into a much more fluid environment so it’s not just happening at a certain calendar date but continuously [so that you can] develop modularized programs that can help to meet those needs. So, those modularized programs often will need some, well not some, but a lot of [organizational] support. So, it might include things like the peer coaching networks, or formal coaching from an external vendor, for example, someone who has expertise in a particular skill that leaders in your organization need to develop. It could be teaching people facilitation techniques and then giving them opportunities and learning labs to practice those. So, how do they draw ideas and creativity? How do they, out of people who work for them, how do they foster idea sharing among cross parts of the organization? In addition, I think we are recognizing that it is important for people at all levels of the organization to have a broader understanding of not only the business, how their business makes money and the risks it faces, but also the economy. And not just locally, but the global economy. What are different geo-political influencers that can have an impact on our customers, our business, our products [and] our services? So, it’s not just the executive suite that needs that expertise now, it’s moved all the way down to the, jokingly calling it, the “mail room employees,” the people stamping the envelopes. If they can see what is likely to influence how we do business, they’re much more likely to be able to suggest creative solutions to potential problems, or creative opportunities to take advantage of things in the marketplace that are going to position us to be ahead of our competitors.
Mark Herschberg:
I think it’s not just corporate training that needs to change, but our entire educational model. We have come from this antiquated belief that you get trained up through age, roughly, 22, and then you’re ready to go out in the world. Now, we’ve already seen studies that show, well, we’re likely to have three different careers, and so probably what I studied in college isn’t going to help at least one of those careers, if not two or three. But even beyond that domain [of] knowledge, as we get to the skill set that Laura is speaking about, it’s that we can’t rely on traditional corporate models, both because you can’t do this one-off [training event where] you have your three days of training, check the box [and] now you’re ready to do it, but also companies … it’s harder for them to invest in this [continuous reskilling and upskilling]. And that’s because, well, we still have the traditional tenure of about four years on average for an employee. It’s gone down a little, but not significantly since mid-century. But our HR budgets have really been strained, and that HR now has a lot more responsibilities. And so HR just doesn’t have the time or the resources to invest in this training. We have to help people take more initiative and ownership of their own training, and that can’t necessarily come through the company itself. We need to restructure our entire education system such that we’re going to have continuous learning throughout our careers that might some larger chunks [of learning], maybe every ten years or so the expectation is that you some intensive three-month course. You take some personal sabbatical or do something in between jobs, but then you also have on more of an annual basis type of ongoing learning and training, and not just “well, I took a course in the spring [will do] another two days in the fall,” but actual continual engagement, whether it’s the peer learning [like] we talked about or other types of education. This really can’t be done internally be the organization as a whole, except for some of the biggest, and so we really have to expand our training and education industry to make this much more accessible, lower cost, and something that is more even socially acceptable for people to say “oh right, I need to go do this. I haven’t really done anything yet this year, it’s June, I’ve got to make sure I start engaging this.” So, I think it’s a societal transformation we need.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Mark, that’s a great point. What tips do you have for L&D leaders who want to encourage that kind of self-driven learning among their employees? Maybe their budgets are tight, or [their stakeholders] don’t recognize the value of this kind of learning. How can they help support that among learners in their organization?
Mark Herschberg:
Here I think it goes to low-cost learning models, and that peer learning is great. Now, you can being by just saying I’m going to get resources. I’m going to recognize here’s a group of people who in their annual reviews they’ve identified here are certain skills they want to work on. Maybe it’s negotiations, maybe it’s leadership. First, I’m going to compile accessible resources, and that could just be a list of podcasts, that could be books, that could be … maybe it is some low cost programs, but you really don’t want to be a one-off “do this and you check the box.” You want something that has some continuity to it, that’s ongoing. And then ideally, if you can connect them with other people, you can create that peer learning that really [is low-cost but high-value]. Now, if you’re in a big organization, you can do this internally. And so I talked about this when doing peer learning, you can do it where you have, maybe, a group that’s going to, over a course of time, look at a number of different skills, or maybe you have standing groups. This is the leadership group, and someone can say, “for the next six months I’m going to work on leadership. I’m going to join that group, go there for six months and say okay, I’ve hit my goal for now. I’m going to step out of this group. Other people [can] continue, and I’m going to move into the networking group,” or, “I’m going to move into the communication group.” You can have these standing groups. For smaller organizations, there’s a couple things you can do. One, you can just form something locally in the community. It could be as simple as creating a meetup group, and just getting people to show up to it. You can also engage with you peers, local or remote. So, for example, I’m part of the New York City CTO club. So I have access to a whole bunch of CTOs, some at big companies, some at tiny startups. If I wanted to do something where I said, “I just don’t have enough people in my org,” I can reach out to other CTOs I know and say, “Hey, you’re also a company. You only have 50 people. You’ve got 200 over here. Let’s do some joint event so we can get some scaling benefits in cost, or in people, or whatever else it might be, and we’re going together employ this.” So, you can engage with your peers in other organizations to do this cross-organization to get some of that scaling effectiveness and cost savings.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah. So, Mark, I think you’re bringing up a very important point, which is [that] it seems like budgets are about as tight as I’ve ever seen them and are likely to stay that way for the near-term as organizations are trying to wrap their heads around where are we going from here, where are we going to commit resources, and where don’t we need to get resources for the greatest bang for our buck, to use an overused phrase. I do think that the other challenge is time. For a lot of employees they’re being asked to do, here’s another overused phrase, more with less, right? So, often people are working multiple roles in their own organizations, and so we need to be realistic about what we’re asking people to do. I love the idea of continuous learning, trust me, I’m a big advocate, and yet we need to find ways as learning professionals to integrate learning experiences or learning opportunities within what’s already being done. So, for organizations that don’t have a lot of budget, and [whose] people are stretched, it doesn’t mean you can’t do something. I always recommend [that you] start simple, right? Look at where you are now. What can we provide that would have the greatest impact, that low-hanging fruit, right? And develop a plan and build from there, so look for opportunities to either leverage or tweak what’s already being done. So, for example if we have a weekly manager meeting, what about adding a 20-minute structured learning lab to our regular manager meeting that focuses on negotiation skills, or on how to foster creativity among our team members or how to motivate remote workers? Something that doesn’t feel like a just another thing to pile on to the pile we’re already dealing with so that people [don’t] resent [the training]. And that also can help to foster that peer collaboration that we’ve been talking about.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Those are some great points. So, for organizations that have done the needs assessment, and they’ve decided they do need some budget from their organization to implement some programs, what tips do you both have for making that case to the executive team, especially considering that budgets are tight right now?
Laura Smith Dunaief:
So, I’ll just say that this year has been a case study in why you need good leaders in your organization, and even after we pass the pandemic and all of the other things going on in the world that are influencing how business operates, we are always going to be faced with unprecedented and unpredictable challenges, and so we need strong leaders in our organization that are equipped to be successful no matter what the future brings. And that is exactly what I would say. We cannot depend on what we’ve been doing in the past and hope that it continues to build good leaders for our organizations.
Mark Herschberg:
The ROI is actually fairly straightforward, although admittedly it can be a little hard to measure. Let’s imagine you had a couple communication workshops. Let’s say you did one once a month that was open to the whole company, and people regularly went. Now, the fact that you have this happening on a monthly basis keeps it top of mind. And people go. They’re not going to everyone. They might have other major priorities, but they say, “Okay, I’m going to go at least half of them [or] I’m going to go a number of them.” It’s about [giving] an hour to listen, and then an hour of engagement, so two hours a month at a little cost to bring in the workshop provider, right? It’s very low cost. Now, if at the end of this, the employees are 2% better at communications, [it might not seem like] a massive lift. We didn’t transform them into communication masters, [they’re] just 2% better. What is that going to do to your bottom line? How much more effective will your employees be? How much better will your projects be? How many problems will you avoid? How many new opportunities and solutions will you come up with just with that tiny lift? And if you can do this for communication, or leadership, or negotiations, or any of these skills, suddenly you get this massive return [on investment]. And at the same time, look at it from that employee engagement standpoint. Because most places aren’t doing this, they’re saying, “We’re going to select a few lucky winners who get to go on the fast track to training,” and everyone else feels kind of left out, [thinking] “Yeah, I’m not one of the fast track folks.” If instead you created these broad training programs, your employees [may] say, “This is great. I feel like I’m learning, I feel like I’m growing.” Even if their tasks might feel monotonous, even if they’re [saying] “Well, I’m doing the same project I was doing last year, but I’m still growing in some way,” you’re going to improve your retention. And again, if your retention just improves 2% what’s that going to do for your bottom line? So, I think the ROI [is clear]. Again, it can be a little hard to measure. How do you measure 2% improvement in communications? But, if you can feel some way to measure, or just feel that “Yes, I’m getting some return,” the actual delivery to your bottom line? Very clear.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. ROI is a key element of that conversation to convince people in the organizations to invest in training, and that’s really what it is. It’s an investment, and like any investment you would expect a return. A good place to start or a good question to ask at the start of that conversation is, “If we were successful with this, what would we expect to be different?” And look at it from all the different potential dimensions, so whether it’s risk mitigation, whether it’s revenue increase, whether it’s increased efficiency, fewer errors. What would that return for us from a financial standpoint?
Sarah Gallo:
All right, well that wraps up today’s episode. Mark, Laura, how can our listeners get in touch with you for more information?
Laura Smith Dunaief:
I am very easy to find on LinkedIn. I have a unique last name. Laura is the first name and then Smith Dunaief is the last name, and I’m the only one out there, so I’d be happy to respond to any message you might send me through LinkedIn and to have a conversation with you if you’re considering building leadership capabilities in your own organization.
Mark Herschberg:
You can find me at thecareertoolkitbook.com, and on that site you can reach out to me on the contact form, follow me on social media, download the free app I have with a lot of training tips, some of which we discussed today. Or you can go to the resources page, and you can find there some downloads on how you can actually create these programs within your own organization.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Great, thanks very much. And that concludes this episode of The Business of Learning. Laura, Mark, thank you again for speaking with us today.
Laura Smith Dunaief:
Thanks for having us.
Mark Herschberg:
Thank you for having me today.
Sarah Gallo:
For insights and resources on modern leadership, check out the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
And don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.
