A New Era of Leadership Learning

 
 

A NEW ERA OF LEADERSHIP LEARNING

Organizational leaders today are expected to drive success in an environment wrought with discontinuous change - lacking consistent sequence or predictable coherence. They must lead their business while simultaneously disrupting it. While both kinds of leadership capabilities are not new, our current global landscape demands more than just sustaining ambidextrous leadership roles. Rather, we are witnessing entire organizational culture transformations, that cultivate a new kind of enterprise-wide leadership expertise, in the never-ending process of learning.

 The Expertise Economy

As we move through the impact of the 4th industrial revolution - inside the post-pandemic landscape, employees around the world have settled into virtual problem-solving platforms, on-demand access to capability development and a digital adhocracy that reinforces individual initiative. Leaders everywhere are waking up to the ease with which organizations can now close the skills transfer gap. Greater accessibility through virtual/ blended development opportunities in the flow of work, offers a 21st century form of ‘on-the-job’ learning, through real-time execution. Curating a learning economy, where expertise becomes an organization’s greatest asset, positions talent development as a competitive advantage, while supporting democratized engagement for employee-led retention strategies. 

A Better You + A Better Me = A Better Us

Individualized growth needs are actively reshaping the world of leadership development, as learning becomes more personalized, contextualized and socialized. While this new era of on-demand learning must deliver on pre/post ROI measurement of increased business acumen expertise, it must also solve for personal growth and compassionate people-leader kinds of skills - that are often more difficult to articulate, teach and evaluate. This complexity is exactly what’s driving Leaders today, to demand more learner-centric, self-curated development experiences, that align personal needs with the norms, values and assumptions under which their organization functions. It is within these transformational change practices that we are now able to understand the accelerated need for experiential learning practice and real-time feedback within a trusted peer learning community, in order to drive true change.

Transformative Learning as a Gateway to Transformational Change

While change usually refers to an incremental shift in thinking, feeling or behavior, it is the transformative learning process that anchors and sustains transformational change. Focused on fostering a sense of critical reflection, transformative learning communities seek to engage and meet learners where they are at; recognizing they bring with them a lifetime of capabilities, concepts and insights. As leaders engage in meaning-making activities to challenge existing biases, it is through the shared experiences, reflection and dialogue created as a learning community that expands or promotes the discovery of new perspectives.  This further opens a gateway to foster breakthrough thinking and align individual values that drive a self-authoring kind of intrinsic motivation to action change. 

As a transformative learning leadership and culture change community, Canvas makes it possible to meet the needs of learning, unlearning and relearning new skills – quickly for today’s leaders.  We work at the intersection of human growth and organizational needs to ignite transformational change.

 

Ready to explore leadership learning?

 
 
Susan Gray