HBR resources focused on leadership development and growing the next generation of leaders.

Harvard Business Review is a fantastic resource for research grounded articles that can help you grow professionally and develop your organization. As a leader in an organization, one consistent challenge you probably face is how to develop your own skill and effectiveness as a leader in your field or industry…which is probably changing at an accelerating pace. Another leadership development challenge is to foster employee growth and leadership across the organization at all levels…and to develop the next generation of leaders to guide the organization into a changing future. These Harvard Business Review (HBR) leadership development articles are focused just on that, and may serve as inspiration for your organization:

  • Educating the Next Generation of Leaders
  • The Fundamentals of Leadership Still Haven’t Changed
  • How to Get High-Potential Employees Interested in Leadership Development Programs
  • Turning Potential Into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development
  • Your Leadership Development Program Needs an Overhaul

Learn more about each of these Harvard Business Review leadership development articles below.

Educating the Next Generation of Leaders

This three-piece series focuses on the future of leadership development and the ideology of learning through peer and mentor programs. Personalization and individualized learning will improve how organizations think about development and growth. Likewise, programs focused heavily on employees learning from each other and through shared experiences will flourish.

Read the full article here.

The Fundamentals of Leadership Still Haven’t Changed

While new ideas and frameworks have helped the leadership development industry thrive in recent years, some fundamentals will never change. This article covers the tried-and-true practices fundamental to creating a leadership program at your organization, including:

  • Uniting employees around a unified, aspirational vision
  •  Developing a strategy for achieving that vision with what and what not to do
  • Attracting and nurturing top talent
  • Focusing on results
  • Creating ongoing innovation to reinvent and improve the vision and strategy
  • Improving yourself to effectively lead others and carry out the strategy

For employees to become empowered leaders of the future, they need to be able to work together to achieve a common, actionable goal with management support and guidance.

Read the full article here.

How to Get High-Potential Employees Interested in Leadership Development Programs

This research study found that the way in which you frame leadership education affects employees’ interest in pursuing it. Participants who saw a course focused on “becoming a leader” were less inclined to take part in it than those who saw a course description focused on “learning leadership skills.” This is perhaps because learning specific skills seems more doable than the daunting and less clear-cut task of becoming a leader.

Therefore, consider how you frame your leadership programs, and focus on leaving employees with the skills and experience necessary to display leadership – in a focused, safe environment in which they can be motivated to learn.

Read the full article here.

Turning Potential into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development

While over 60% of companies invest in high-potential employee programs, only 24% of senior management believe them to be a success. Low engagement and high turnover are costly for organizations and hinder management and leadership development. So how can companies create better programs? This article shares that organizations need to:

  • Determine the skills and competencies necessary for their leadership roles
  • Assess the potential of their aspiring managers and employees
  • Create a growth map highlighting a person’s strengths in each of these required skills/competency areas
  • Give high potential employees the right opportunities, from job shadowing to targeted coaching

Read the full article here.

Your Leadership Development Program Needs an Overhaul

This Harvard Business Review article posits that organizations need to be more forward-thinking with identifying and growing leaders in the everyday. Rather than keeping leadership development as a separate entity in an organization’s culture, it needs to work with and connect to larger business objectives and goals. Here’s a few tips from the piece:

  • Start by looking for employees who care deeply about your organization. Focus on creating an environment where they can pursue innovation to address business problems that are personally meaningful to them.
  • Let these employees improvise. Give them the space to develop and innovate in their own way.
  • Let them lead. When management develops employees while they are working on projects of their choosing, they are both more valuable to your organization and less likely to leave.

Read the full article here.

These Harvard Business Review leadership development articles may help you develop an actionable leadership training program at your organization. For even more top article collection resources, see our post on HBR learning and development and HBR design thinking.
Check out our design thinking and innovation resources blog for more articles, tools, and tips.

Contact us today for help designing or facilitating leadership development workshops, events or even a conference at your organization.