Last week the Hawaii Employers Council was fortunate to host Steph Auping (FLPI, SPHR), the Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer at Leadership & Co., an organization focused on building practical leadership skills through impactful learning experiences, to share her insights via a webinar for HEC members.

In a thoughtful presentation supported by data, Steph shared perspectives on the State of Leadership Development. During her session, Steph noted many of the challenges of leaders today, including balancing an unprecedented number of priorities, turnover, engagement, skill shortages, and bench strength that hasn’t recovered since the pandemic. She shared that:

Only half of employees are confident in their manager’s ability to lead their team to success in the next two years.

• 45% of managers are spending more time managing projects than managing people.
• 54% of managers are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue.
• 75% of HR leaders say their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities.
• 73% of HR leaders confirmed their organization’s leaders and managers aren’t equipped to lead change.

She vigorously promoted the concept of true leadership that is both self-aware and inspiring. Steph was able to clearly and succinctly elaborate on the critical skills needed for leadership of the future, the important role of mindset for the growth and development of leaders, and how to accurately assess the state of leadership readiness for an organization.  Additionally, practical and doable solutions were shared to address the development of our next leaders. These included:

• Developing leaders in critical leadership skills.
• Employing people-forward talent practices focused on development and career growth.
• Implementing a common leadership model and strategy across the organization
• Offering high-quality development across their entire pipeline of leaders.
• Focusing on promoting leaders internally more than hiring from the outside.

Lastly, Steph spoke on the necessary skills of the future for leaders and how to develop those skills. She advocated for learning across time instead of all at one time, practical real-world/real-work application, peer learning, effective manager support, and the use of mixed-media, mixed-modal technology to add personalization, convenience, and engagement.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve and develop critical skills for the future, visit our Upcoming Events page to explore our impactful learning experiences and leadership development programs.