• Direction is agreement within your organization on overall goals
• Alignment means coordinated work in your organization
• Commitment is a feeling of mutual responsibility in your organization

Together, these 3 elements are the outcomes of leadership, and they’re essential to tackling any challenge — including the one of integrating AI (artificial intelligence) into organizational workflows and culture.

Strengthening DAC isn’t optional — it’s an imperative for individuals, teams, and organizations to be able to thrive amid complexity, uncertainty, and change.

And our research suggests a strong correlation between high levels of DAC in an organization and high levels of AI maturity or adoption.

The 4 Stages of AI Maturity

To better understand the potential connections between AI maturity and leadership, we turned to MIT’s CISR Enterprise AI Maturity model, which depicts 4 stages of organizational AI maturity:

Stage 1: Discovering (Experiment & Prepare)

At this stage, organizations are curious about AI and have started to reflect on the human implications on AI. Organizations in this stage focus on educating the workforce on AI, establishing acceptable use policies, improving data accessibility, ensuring data-driven decision-making, and identifying where human input is necessary in processes.

Stage 2: Adopting (Build Pilots & Capability)

At this stage, organizations recognize AI’s relevance to their strategy and are starting to experiment and integrate. This includes simplifying and automating processes, creating use cases, sharing data via APIs, leveraging a coaching and communicative management style, and using both traditional and generative AI models to enhance work.

Stage 3: Transforming (Develop AI Ways of Working)

At this stage, organizations are fully aware of how AI impacts their work and are building new workflows and process for effective AI integration. This involves expanding process automation efforts, adopting a test-and-learn approach, designing for reuse, incorporating pre-trained models and exploring proprietary AI models, and investigating the use of autonomous agents.

Stage 4: Differentiating (Become AI Future-Ready)

At this stage, organizations are recognized as leading the way in AI transformation and are imagining and prototyping new methods of using AI. This involves embedding AI into decision-making and processes; developing and offering AI-augmented business services; and integrating traditional, generative, agentic, and robotic AI.

AI Maturity & Leadership: Our Research Findings

For our research, we created a survey based on MIT’s AI Maturity model to create a survey that measures AI adoption /AI maturity and leadership outcomes (levels of DAC) within an organization. We hoped to learn:

• What do organizations seek to gain by using / integrating AI? (This gets at shared Direction.)
• How will organizations and teams work together to effectively leverage AI? (This suggests group Alignment.)
• And how will organizations foster the trust and psychological safety required to achieve the buy-in to integrate AI? (This signals shared Commitment.)

After surveying 406 respondents based in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas, we found that DAC was a strong and significant predictor of higher levels of AI maturity. In other words, it’s fair to suggest that organizations need high levels of shared leadership to progress along their AI maturity journey, from Stage 1 to Stage 4.

Recommendations for Building Stronger AI Maturity With DAC

While the research doesn’t show causation (we can’t say for certain that increasing your organization’s DAC will automatically make AI integration easier), we can say that without high levels of shared Direction, Alignment, and Commitment at your organization, your chances of successfully moving up the stages of AI maturity are much lower.

So, how can leaders help their organizations foster strong DAC, particularly as it relates to improving their organization’s AI maturity?

• To increase shared Direction: Clearly communicate how AI will empower the business strategy through value creation, innovation, and impact across the organization. Seek out ways to help teams leverage both AI and soft skills to help them thrive.
• To facilitate more Alignment: Ensure leaders, teams, and systems coordinate in how to leverage AI, creating shared priorities and eliminating silos. To do this, explore what method of governance would work best for your organization. For instance, you could explore a shared decision-making model where overall AI usage across your organization is governed by a cross-functional team. Or, you could have shared policies but a decentralized AI governance structure, where individual functions oversee their own AI usage but align to shared organizational policies.
• To support greater Commitment: Foster psychological safety, continuous learning, and a growth mindset to empower your organization to embrace AI-driven change. Consider how AI and culture impact each other. By helping your organization embrace a culture that prioritizes continuous learning, you can help shift your organization to one that can best embrace and leverage what AI can enable.

Embracing Leadership for Greater AI Maturity

Leveraging AI within organizations requires more than just technological adoption; it demands robust leadership, characterized by our Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) framework. Our research underscores the critical role DAC plays in progressing through the stages of AI maturity, revealing that high levels of DAC are strongly correlated with advanced AI integration.

Furthermore, MIT found that financial performance generally improves as an organization moves through the 4 stages of AI maturity as well, which further emphasizes the value of strong shared Direction, Alignment, and Commitment in navigating AI transformation.

By clearly communicating AI’s value, ensuring coordinated efforts across teams, and fostering a culture of psychological safety and continuous learning, your organization can not only enhance DAC levels and strengthen the outcomes of leadership, but increase in AI maturity — and thrive in an era of complexity and uncertainty.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Ready to help leaders at your organization understand how to become more effective in setting direction, building commitment, and creating alignment to support greater AI maturity? Partner with us to craft a customized learning journey using our research-based modules. Available leadership topics include Boundary Spanning, Communication, Conflict Resolution, the DAC Framework for Effective Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, and more.

The post Why Leadership Is Important for Organizational AI Maturity appeared first on CCL.

Here’s what our insights show: a single negative relational energy tie cancels out 4 positive relational energy ties. Before we unpack what this means for leaders and its impact on creating a positive work environment, let’s define what “relational energy” is.

What Is Relational Energy? 

Energy is an important individual resource. Personal energy can be conceptualized as physical energy (the objective energy that powers our body and comes from food, exercise, and sleep) and emotional energy (the subjective, affect-based energy related to emotional activation). Relational energy isn’t a third type; instead it represents the idea that social interactions are a source of positive or negative emotional energy. In essence, relational energy is the energy you get from others at work — it can boost your motivation and help you get more done or deplete you and negatively impact your work.

Past research shows that relational energy has an impact even after taking into account workplace social support and the quality of the relationship between a leader and team member. Prior work shows that positive relational energy with leaders is related to higher job engagement and better job performance. In workplace social networks research, de-energizing relational ties are related to reduced thriving, lower motivation, and increased turnover.

Relational Energy: What It’s Not 

Let’s clarify 2 key distinctions:

First, relational energy isn’t about the intrinsic emotional value of the topic — it’s about how people interact while discussing it. Two people can address a topic that may be perceived as negative, such as budget cuts, but still keep a high level of energy during the conversation. Similarly, 2 people can discuss a topic that may be perceived as positive, such as winning new business, but do so in a way that depletes energy.

Second, relational energy is distinct from employee voice, which is when employees speak up to leaders with ideas, concerns, suggestions, and process improvements. Employee voice is a proactive behavior motivated by a desire to improve the organization. Research shows that employee voice is positively related to work process improvements, organizational innovation and creativity, greater organizational learning, and better decision making.

Unfortunately, employee voice isn’t always well received, particularly by certain leaders. Past research shows that leaders with low self-efficacy (such as a low perceived ability to meet the high competence expectations associated with a leadership role) are much less receptive to employee voice. They’re more likely to negatively evaluate employees who speak up and are less likely to solicit input from employees due to their own ego defensiveness. Ironically, our research found that being more receptive to employee voice would likely make these individuals better leaders.

Although it may be tempting to dismiss employees who speak up as having “negative” relational energy, this misconstrues what relational energy really means. We encourage leaders to carefully rethink such judgments and reflect on whether these views are an ego defense mechanism.

Our Research on Relational Energy: What We Did & What We Found

In our Leadership at the Peak program, we collect data in our Team Vantage assessment. Team leaders and members rate how interactions with each person “typically affect” their energy level. This provides us with round-robin ratings of relational energy, which we analyze by rater source and link to team outcomes. We’ve collected data from more than 600 teams of 4–16 members each (an average of 7), totaling more than 34,000 relational ties.

First, the good news. More than 91% of relational ties were rated as either neutral or energizing. In contrast, de-energizing ties were rare — only 9% of all possible relationships.

Some teams had zero de-energizing ties, while others had more than a third of their relationships that drained energy. Overall, the proportion of de-energizing ties within a team ranged from 0% to 38%.

Now, the bad news. Those de-energizing ties tend to have outsized effects. Across the measures of team effectiveness that we examined, the standout finding is striking: removing a single negative energy tie is equivalent to adding 4 positive energy ties. (This is based on comparing the predictive effects of the total number of de-energizing and energizing ties within a team, then calculating the ratio of these 2 values.)

For team leaders aiming to foster a positive work environment, this underscores the significant challenge of counteracting the impact of even one negative energy tie in the team. That’s why a crucial metric is the team’s ratio of energizing to de-energizing relational ties.

Overall, our results reveal that a team’s relational energy is linked to multiple team outcomes. For example, when predicting psychological safety, having more strongly de-energizing relationships affects the team about 4 times more than having more strongly energizing ties. Put another way, as a team leader you would need to cultivate 4 strongly energizing connections among team members to neutralize the impact of one strongly de-energizing relationship — and that only brings the team back to neutral. To propel the team toward positive energy, you’d need to foster even more strongly energizing relationships.

You might wonder whether the impact of negative relational energy depends on someone’s role. Unfortunately, it does, and strongly. A negative energy tie with a team leader has 3 times more impact on team outcomes like psychological safety than a negative energy tie with a team member.

Recognizing Negative Relational Energy 

Before we get to practical advice for leaders, let’s identify what negative relational energy looks like. And, yes, there is some agreement about who brings the negative energy to the team. Below are some behaviors and attitudes that consistently drain the team’s energy and enthusiasm.

Some red flags are:

• Frequent complaining, with a focus on problems rather than solutions
• Viewing most situations in a negative light — win-lose or lose-lose scenarios rather than win-win scenarios
• Stirring up conflict by escalating minor issues and drawing others into the fray
• Often critiquing or blaming others, without taking personal accountability
• Showing little empathy for others’ needs, feelings, or situations
• Unnecessarily taking up significant time, attention, and energy to meet excessive demands

Given this list, you might wonder (as we often do) why anyone would choose to dwell in this negative energy space. While we can’t fully answer that, it may be because even though it doesn’t feel good, it may feel comfortable because it’s familiar. People often prefer comfort over the discomfort that comes with change.

Managing Energy at Work

Tips for Team Leaders

Frustration with others is one of the top leadership challenges, and managing negative relational energy on your team can be difficult. It’s important to be aware of the positive and negative impacts among your team members and look for significant changes in energy dynamics when certain team members are present or absent.

Pay attention to changes in conversational contributions; collaboration rates among team members; and conflict, disengagement, and team morale. Be wary of the inclination to downplay or dismiss the impact of negative relational energy, and realize that it takes significant effort and valuable emotional energy for team members to recover from negative relational interactions.

Although it’s good to have compassion for team members who bring negative relational energy, you also have a responsibility to limit their ability to negatively impact the team and its outcomes. Choosing to do nothing signals acceptance of the behavior.

Here are 3 strategies you can use:

1. Set clear expectations for behavior. Clearly communicate and model the positive, solution-focused behavior and attitudes you expect. Address behavior that doesn’t align with these expectations.
2. Offer support and development. In addition to giving feedback, provide opportunities for team members to develop new skills and strategies for managing problematic behavior. This may include training, mentoring, or coaching. If a team member shows no interest in changing their behavior, this is a clear signal about their self-focused intentions.
3. Take firm action when needed. These decisions are never easy, but if there’s no progress despite coaching and support, protecting the team becomes the priority. Consider structural changes (such as reassignment to a different role or limiting group interactions) to safeguard team psychological safety while continuing to work with the individual.

We recognize that one of the reasons negative relational energy can be so challenging to address is because it’s not clear bad behavior like sexism, racism, or abuse. Instead, it’s like the small, steady drip of acidic water on a rock. Over time, those tiny drops create fissures that can fracture a team and drive valuable members away.

Tips for Team Members

We often have no choice about who we work with, but we can influence how we work with others. If you have an energy vampire dynamic with someone on your team, here are actions you can take (no garlic required):

• Maintain your own positive energy. Keep an upbeat attitude and focus on solutions rather than problems to avoid getting drawn into negativity. When possible, choose to work with teammates who are an energetic match with you.
• Practice self-care and identify practices that recharge you. Ensure you’re mindful of your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing and regularly engage in practices that replenish your energy at home (time in nature, exercise, hobbies) and at work (conversations with high-energy teammates).
• Focus your time. Managing energy at work includes managing your time effectively. If you must interact with negative relational energy, keep interactions brief. Refuse to spend time listening to complaints, blame, or unnecessary drama. When possible, communicate in ways that work best for you, like email, rather than synchronous interactions. Schedule meetings for when your energy is highest.
• Set personal boundaries. Be clear about what behaviors you will not tolerate, and communicate those boundaries directly. Be assertive in holding your boundaries and use “I” statements to explain the impact of someone’s behavior or attitudes on you and your work. If necessary, bring your team leader into the mix.
• Reflect and learn. Rather than ruminating about negative interactions, reflect on them productively to see what you can improve. Try new behaviors such as redirecting conversations to be more productive, seeking support from positive relational energy peers, and finding the humor in such interactions. The strategies you learn at work can likely be useful in your personal life, too. Recognize that the only things you have control over are your own behaviors and attitudes. 

Highlighting Relational Energy Awareness

Our recommendations focus on managing negative, rather than positive, relational energy. This is intentional, given the outsized impact it has in teams.

We hope this work raises awareness of relational energy and inspires a kind of energy consciousness: a habit of noticing what or who energizes or depletes you.

Above all, relational energy is authentic. This isn’t about faking positivity or forcing team members to display energy that they don’t feel. To do so would be merely performative (not to mention exhausting) and requires surface acting, which is related to higher stress and lower job satisfaction.

We’ve all experienced the impact of relational energy at work. Many of us understand it intuitively, even if it’s hard to explain. We hope that our research can help you name and claim your experiences and provide legitimacy for them. These insights and suggestions can help you recognize — and better manage — the profound impact relational energy has on your workplace experience.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Shifting relational energy on your team starts with better conversations. Develop the coaching skills to listen deeply, give effective feedback, and create psychological safety with our Better Conversations Every Day program.

The post Power Cord or Power Drain? How Relational Energy Shapes Your Team appeared first on CCL.

When asked to describe a critical leadership challenge, they show up with technical or task-focused problems (“We need better sales forecasting”) instead of focusing on what they need to do differently as a leader (“I need to build alignment across functions that don’t trust each other”). They frame organizational issues, not personal growth opportunities. And when the application point is unclear, learning transfer suffers.

Our research suggests AI can help, not by replacing human coaching, but by doing what AI does best: providing structured, scalable support that helps leaders think more clearly and lays the foundation for deeper understanding and conversations.

The Challenge: Leaders Can’t Always Define a Key Leadership Challenge 

Leadership development programs hinge on whether participants can identify and articulate a real, work-related leadership challenge (which we call a Key Leadership Challenge, or KLC). This is the anchor that helps translate leadership learning into workplace impact.

Within our leadership programs, we ask learners to articulate a KLC before or during the experience. About 1 in 4 participants typically frame their KLC as a technical or organizational problem instead of a personal growth opportunity. A technical frame points to external fixes, while a growth frame sees the leader’s behavior as the key to applying what they’ve learned. Without the right framing, the KLC falls short in learning transfer.

Our Research: What Happens When AI Serves as a Thinking Companion?

Our randomized controlled trial tested whether an AI thinking companion could help leaders articulate stronger Key Leadership Challenge statements by providing scalable support, which allows more time for reflection and clarification.

The trial focused on leaders in the same development program, randomized into 2 cohorts:

• Traditional control cohort: Given a single open-ended prompt to define their leadership challenge
• AI-supported cohort: Guided through a structured dialogue with an AI chat tool

The AI chatbot didn’t write their challenge for them. It posed relevant questions:

• What’s the challenge?
• Why is it hard?
• Who’s involved?
• What does success look like?
• Who benefits?

The AI chat tool paraphrased answers, asked follow-up questions, and helped leaders refine their thinking until the challenge was clear, complete, and focused on personal leadership growth.

The Result: 100% of Leaders Who Completed the AI Chat Activity Articulated Adequate or High-Quality Challenges

Introducing an AI-supported thinking companion greatly improved Key Leadership Challenge quality, measured by relevance and importance; engagement with others; complexity; growth orientation; clarity; and completeness for participants who completed the AI chat activity. Overall, compared to the control group, leaders using the AI tool:

• Produced higher quality KLCs (average score of 21/24 vs. 17/24)
• Articulated stronger KLCs (71% vs. 20%)
• Were more likely to have growth-oriented, leadership-focused KLCs (90% vs. 55%)

KLC quality improved not just in scores but in substance, shifting from narrow technical challenges to adaptive, influence-driven, systemic leadership work. The largest gains in completeness and clarity came from the AI’s structured dialogue addressing each KLC element.

Here’s how the AI thinking partner helped:

1. Structured Reflection Slowed Leaders Down

The traditional open-ended prompt invited shortcuts: leaders wrote 1 or 2 sentences with missing elements and moved on. The AI dialogue forced them to pause and think through each element. By slowing the process, the AI increased completeness and led to more actionable KLCs.

2. Reframing Prompts Moved Leaders From Symptoms to Root Causes

When leaders began with a narrowly defined issue, the AI prompted them to consider broader, systemic factors. This reframing shifted the challenge from a tactical fix to a strategic opportunity, enhancing relevance, clarifying stakeholder roles, and strengthening the leadership‑change focus of the KLC.

3. Growth-Oriented Questions Linked Challenges to Personal Development

One of the most powerful AI prompts was: “What about this challenge will require you to grow or adapt as a leader?” This nudge helped leaders connect the organizational problem to their own leadership capacity, shifting the frame from “the organization needs to change” to “I need to lead differently.” This reframing made the KLC more development-focused and set the stage for richer follow-up conversations.

4. Immediate Paraphrasing Created a Feedback Loop

After each set of responses, the AI paraphrased and summarized. This gave leaders a mirror in which they could see whether their thinking was clear or muddled. By doing so, leaders reflected on their thinking before involving anyone else.

Why This Research Matters for Your Organization

Learning transfer can be difficult. Programs might feel great in the moment, but behavior change back at work may be inconsistent. Theoretically, when leaders start with a clear, leadership-focused challenge grounded in real work, the challenge becomes the through-line connecting content, coaching, and action planning, making leaders more likely to apply what they learn. AI scaffolding enhances the learning transfer process by helping leaders articulate clearer KLCs. Having clearer KLCs allows for:

• Higher engagement in peer learning. When leaders bring clear, well-articulated challenges to peer consultations, the quality of feedback improves.
• Better coaching conversations (if applicable). Coaches can spend less time helping leaders figure out what they’re working on and more time helping them navigate how to bring their leadership development learning to life when back at their organizations. The depth of coaching increases because the foundation is stronger.

Our research on AI-chat tools suggests that they can meaningfully enhance the leadership learning experience. This aligns with our commitment to human and AI partnerships: using technology to amplify, not substitute, the human elements of leadership development.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Use our AI-powered chats in your custom leadership and online learning programs. They help leaders articulate challenges, reframe perspectives, and accelerate growth. Start today and see how AI can boost leadership development in your organization.

The post How AI Helps Leaders Clarify Their Key Leadership Challenge appeared first on CCL.

Anyone guiding a group toward a shared result will encounter challenges along the way — but what’s most challenging about leading organizations today? What are the top challenges of leadership, and have they shifted since the pandemic?

Our research team has been exploring such questions for decades now to stay abreast of the challenges and issues most commonly faced by leaders at every level. (See our 2023 research brief, 2021 technical report, and 2013 white paper for more information.)

Our Research Into the Challenges of Leadership

Based on the collective challenges reported in over 7,000 organizations around the world, and using anonymized data on individuals collected through our global 360 assessments, our research team has examined what over 48,000 leaders have identified as their most critical leadership challenges over the past several years.

Using an AI-powered language processing model to review and analyze their responses, we identified the most consistent challenges of leadership across many industries and sectors around the world. We further analyzed the data to determine how these challenges evolved in the wake of the pandemic.

The Most Common Challenges of Leadership at Every Level

Here we present what our research has found are today’s biggest challenges of leadership — the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at each of level of the organization — ranked by their relevance post-pandemic. And because development is more effective when it uses data to support the challenges of leaders at different levels, this list of leadership issues can be the focus for training & development efforts in all organizations, everywhere in the world.

For Frontline Managers

1. Frustrations with people and time

2. First time managing people

3. Deficient operational processes

4. Team performance

5. Personal improvement

For Mid-Level Managers

6. Personal limitations

7. Challenging business context

8. Ineffective interpersonal style

9. Cross-functional influence

10. Competing people and project priorities

For Senior Leaders

11. Credibility gaps

12. Limited market / sales growth

13. Process improvement across groups

14. Limited self-awareness

15. Transitioning into a new role

For Executives

16. Dynamic business environment

17. Strategic responsibilities

18. Interpersonal rigidity

19. Organizational readiness

20. Lack of cooperation

The Top Leadership Challenges of Frontline Managers

Regardless of where they live or work, those managing others in supervisory roles reported that their most common leadership challenge is frustrations with people and time — and this issue has only increased in frequency since the pandemic. Here are the top 5 most common challenges for frontline leaders, based on our research:

Frustrations With People and Time

Many frontline managers reported that their top leadership issue is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes challenges with offering guidance to direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, dealing with difficult employees, and adjusting communication and feedback styles to collaborate more effectively with different people. And again, this appears to have become an even bigger concern for leaders at this level since the pandemic.

First Time Managing People

Another common leadership challenge among new managers is learning to juggle day-to-day challenges — such as managing others who were formerly peers, or employees who are older than they are — and just generally gaining respect as a new, first-time people leader.

Deficient Operational Processes

Needing stronger operational processes to address organizational problems was another frequently cited leadership challenge for this group.

Team Performance

First-level leaders also reported challenges with developing teams, giving effective feedback, providing direction, holding coaching conversations, and dealing with resistance from direct reports.

Personal Improvement

Learning to be better at active listening to understand the perspectives of others, improving flexibility, and being less reactive in pursuit of an “ideal self” are other commonly reported challenges for leaders on the front lines, our research found.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges of Mid-Level Managers

Managers who are leading from the middle — with senior leaders above them and direct reports below — face many similar challenges of leadership as well. Our research found that the most common issues for mid-level managers were:

Personal Limitations

A top challenge for leaders at this level is their own personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy, as they often must overcome their own doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead — as well as the doubts of their peers or supervisors. Dealing with the challenge of personal limitations requires overcoming impostor syndrome, humility to seek the input of others, courage to do the right thing, and projecting confidence while communicating effectively.

Since the pandemic, mid-level managers have reported this as an issue even more frequently. With new cultures brought on by remote and hybrid workplaces, overcoming common limitations in order to make an impact as a leader has become even more challenging.

Business Challenges

In a tumultuous work environment, managers (particularly mid-level leaders) may struggle to deliver results. Leading within a challenging business context requires the careful deployment of limited resources, improved processes, and keeping employees engaged and motivated.

Ineffectiveness

When a mid-level leader has an ineffective interpersonal style, they struggle with relationships. This can play out on a spectrum, from dominating interactions to lacking the self-confidence to be assertive. On the other hand, effective interpersonal styles and embodying the characteristics of a good leader allow for open and honest conversations.

Influence

Successful leadership requires the ability to influence others beyond one’s group — often without formal authority. For those leading from the middle, the challenge of influencing others across functions includes building credibility, developing cross-organizational networks, and building and bridging partnerships.

Competing Priorities

Mid-level leaders report that they often find it difficult to balance competing people and project priorities, especially when they’re sandwiched between project-based deadlines and their employees’ engagement. It’s an important paradox that leaders must manage both relationships and tasks effectively. When resources are limited, motivating team members who vary in personality, abilities, and experience can feel at odds with effective project management.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Senior Leaders

We noticed that the pandemic shifted the top leadership challenges for this group somewhat. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was cited as the most frequent leadership issue among senior leaders who head up functions, business units, departments, divisions, and regions, but the frequency of this challenge dropped significantly more recently. The challenge of overcoming credibility gaps, on the other hand, has become more pressing after the pandemic.

Credibility Gaps

This includes the challenge of building credibility as an organizational leader. Examples include gaining the trust of stakeholders and enhancing visibility within an organization. Senior leaders may also need to strengthen their leadership image or presence to be most effective.

Limited Market / Sales Growth

Making strategic shifts to maximize market growth and sales is another top challenge of senior leaders. This may include expanding the organization beyond core products, extending market reach, shifting to a market / customer orientation, and better aligning of sales.

Process Improvement Across Groups

Another key challenge for senior leaders is influencing the organization to improve and accept new processes, which requires being a strategic leader, effective boundary spanning leadership, and developing a broader perspective by taking a systemic view.

Limited Self-Awareness

Understanding how others perceive them and recognizing their impact on others — along with improving their confidence, approachability, and communication style (particularly when delivering difficult messages) — can be especially challenging for leaders at the senior level.

Transitioning Into a New Role

Adapting to changes in responsibilities and managing new people or former peers is a final key leadership issue at this level. This challenge may be brought on by a promotion, a new role, a functional shift, or a geographic move, or simply through preparing for the C-suite.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Executives

Finally, senior executives leading the enterprise told us that their top 5 leadership challenges are as follows.

Dynamic Business Environment

For C-level leaders, the challenge of working in a dynamic business environment topped their list of leadership issues. This challenge can be brought about by new regulations, market and economic conditions, competition, or growth. To be effective, leaders must be able to develop and keep the talent needed to support change and revise their organization’s models and systems as required.

Notably, this challenge experienced the biggest rise in the wake of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, senior executives were already used to leading their organizations in adapting to ever-changing circumstances, but COVID and its fallout accelerated that need even more.

Strategic Responsibilities

Developing strategy for an organization is another top leadership challenge for senior executives. This includes aligning priorities and initiatives across groups and developing teams to support strategic efforts. It’s helpful when senior leaders are able to link business strategy to leadership strategy.

Interpersonal Rigidity

For many senior leaders, shifting the way they interact with others to be more effective and the ability to adapt their style for varying situations or stakeholders is an important challenge. Leaders in C-suite need to have different techniques for flexing their approach, including in how they communicate the vision, manage or influence others, or leverage power over others to get things done.

Organizational Readiness Amid Uncertainty

Preparing their organizations for a turbulent future is an ongoing issue for senior executives. This challenge of leadership is experienced most often when there are organizational mission shifts, significant resource constraints, technology changes, or when new ways of working are needed.

Lack of Cooperation

Lastly, influencing others toward collaboration is a key leadership challenge for senior executives. This is especially common when they’re new to a role, managing former peers or more experienced colleagues, or collaborating with others on the senior team.

How to Respond to These Top Leadership Challenges

Tips to Help Leaders Address the Most Common Leadership Issues

Now that you know the most common challenges of leadership, how do you begin addressing them? One way is by looking at the larger themes that emerged from our leadership challenge research. Across all levels of the organization, we found that the challenges of leadership generally fall into 3 high-level themes, related to:

• Challenges of personal growth,

• Challenges related to managing people and getting work done, and 

• Challenges in managing across the organization and within a larger system.

Here are some recommended ways to respond to these 3 common themes in our overall leadership challenges research.  Many of these suggestions are part of developing the core leadership skills needed in every role, at every stage of a career.

1. To respond to leadership challenges related to your personal growth, work to maximize personal value.

Personal shortcomings and the aspiration to become a better leader define our first theme. Challenges here include learning to be more assertive during interactions, developing confidence, and understanding how others perceive you.

Individuals overcome leadership issues and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions that only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as possible), allows leaders to maximize their value.

It’s important to recognize your own characteristics, behaviors, and habits in order to know what may be triggering challenges for you in your career. This way, you can work toward increasing your self-awareness and strengthening specific skills and growing as an individual leader.

Some internal challenges that many leaders face include a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity during self-promotion, impatience, resistance in responding to new ideas, or struggling to manage conflict in the workplace. All of these can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and maximizing your unique value are part of improving your personal leadership brand.

2. To respond to leadership challenges around managing people and getting work done, focus on delegating more to others.

Our second leadership challenge theme involves the demands of managing both people and tasks. Specific challenges include managing for the first time, building cooperation between people, and overseeing multiple projects that compete for importance and resources.

You’ll be more productive, give your colleagues a greater sense of ownership, and build more trust on your team if you delegate, as well. But effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

1. Understanding your preferences. Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want while the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.
2. Knowing your people. To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to others with the necessary knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand people’s preferences and abilities, using delegation to help direct reports develop, and coach people while allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.
3. Being clear about the purpose of the task. A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become part of purpose-driven leadership and an opportunity for personal growth.
4. Assessing and rewarding. You should engage in collaboration and work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

3. To respond to leadership challenges related to managing across the organization, work to increase boundary spanning and build high-performing teams.

Working within the larger system of an organization is our third high-level leadership challenge. Examples include working in a dynamic business environment, needing stronger operational processes, and creating cross-functional influence.

As a leader, you must be able to create and lead teams effectively. To build high-performing teams, use our team effectiveness framework, which has 4 components:

• Core: Communicate a team’s reason for being so that all team members understand their core purpose and value. (A team charter can help with this.)
• Collective Mindset: Be sure everybody on the team knows what it takes to be a good team member. Teams adopt a collective mindset when they understand all members’ roles and responsibilities, as well as team norms for how team members work together.
• Cohesive Relationships: Ensure team members relate interpersonally by fostering a psychologically safe work environment where everybody feels a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and communicates effectively.
• Connection: Teams can have a broader organizational impact when collaborating across boundaries. In other words, when colleagues who have different backgrounds and experiences connect, innovation and collaboration are enhanced.

A Final Word for HR Leaders on Our Leadership Challenges Research

Focus Development Efforts to Address the Top Challenges of Leaders

Developmental initiatives are more effective when they align with the real challenges that leaders are facing. For those who work in HR or Learning & Development, understanding these common leadership issues can be the catalyst for creating initiatives that truly address real-world needs, growing needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Build your team’s capacity for overcoming common leadership challenges. Our array of leadership development programs are carefully designed to address the leadership challenges faced by leaders at every level. 

The post The Top 20 Leadership Challenges appeared first on CCL.

The Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is the premier professional association for the science and practice of Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology, which focuses on the scientific study of human behavior in organizations and in the workplace. The SIOP Frontiers Series focuses on cutting-edge research in I-O psychology and related fields.

The chapter, titled “Framework for Matching Leaders’ Challenges with Leadership Development: A Case Study of AI in Action,” was co-authored by CCL’s Ramya Balakrishnan and Jean Brittain Leslie alongside Scott Tonidandel of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Stephen Young of Caterpillar, Inc. and introduces the Leadership Challenge Ladder framework.

Using data from 37,000 leaders across 6,000 organizations, the research project used AI to identify 42 persistent leadership challenges that researchers organized into 3 key themes: personal growth, people and task demands, and working within a larger system.

The chapter also discusses how the framework was applied to redesign CCL’s flagship Leadership Development Program (LDP)^®, resulting in a 100% participant recommendation rate, a 98% relevance rating, and a 50% improvement in team performance metrics.

“The inclusion of our leadership challenges research in the SIOP Frontiers Series underscores CCL’s commitment to advancing the science of leadership while ensuring practical relevance,” said Ramya Balakrishnan, co-author and Data Scientist at CCL.

“By applying cutting-edge, AI-based approaches and embedding these insights into our Leadership Development Program redesign, this work demonstrates the practical application of scientific research to real-world needs and the transformative potential of AI in organizational psychology.”

Learn more about our leadership development research or read our Leadership Challenge Ladder technical report.

The post CCL’s AI-Driven Research Findings on Top Leadership Challenges Published by SIOP appeared first on CCL.

HERO (Health Enhancement Research Organization) is a member-driven national nonprofit organization dedicated to identifying and sharing best practices in the field of workplace health and wellbeing. The 2025 HERO forum aimed to bring together like-minded leaders intent on advancing best practices for health and wellbeing into workplace cultures.

For the past 25 years, HERO has been dedicated to turning science into practice in the advancement of employee and organizational wellbeing. Bergeron’s session was recorded and will be available to all HERO members.

Read more about our research-based recommendations for listening skills.

The post CCL’s Diane Bergeron Presents Listening Research at the 2025 HERO Forum appeared first on CCL.

While recognition of opportunities created by crises appears across diverse fields — from business leadership to modern crisis management guidelines — systematic frameworks for capturing transformation opportunities during complex, multi-system disruptions remain underdeveloped.

Consider the extraordinary healthcare transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, telehealth visits accounted for just 0.1% of Medicare primary care visits. By mid-2020, that number had surged to 43.5%. This wasn’t merely a technological upgrade — it represented a fundamental transformation across multiple systems that had previously resisted change for decades.

Before exploring transformation opportunities, we must acknowledge that polycrises exact enormous human costs — lives lost, livelihoods destroyed, communities devastated. The healthcare transformation we examine occurred amid profound suffering. Recognizing transformation possibilities doesn’t diminish these tragedies; rather, it honors them by ensuring that organizational changes create lasting value from necessary adaptations made during crisis.

What made this rapid transformation possible was the presence of a polycrisis — multiple, causally connected crisis disruptions that amplify and accelerate one another’s effects across different systems. These crisis conditions created a unique environment where long-standing barriers to change were temporarily suspended, enabling transformative experiences that would have been impossible under normal circumstances.

For leaders, this creates unprecedented opportunities. As organizations navigate leadership in disruption, those that recognize and capitalize on transformation windows during polycrisis can achieve significant organizational change while others struggle.

3 Ways Polycrisis Creates Transformation Windows

First, it temporarily aligns stakeholder interests that typically conflict. When healthcare providers, insurers, regulators, and patients all faced a shared existential threat, their typically divergent priorities suddenly aligned around survival and continuity of care.

Second, crisis conditions force unprecedented collaboration across traditional organizational boundaries. Departments that had operated in silos found themselves working together out of necessity, breaking down the territorial barriers that typically prevent comprehensive change.

Finally, the immediate urgency disrupts established vested interests. The pressing need for alternative care delivery temporarily overcame the economic and political forces that maintained the status quo, allowing innovation to bypass traditional gatekeepers.

While acknowledging the profound human costs of crisis, we’ve observed this transformation pattern across industries. During interviews with leaders about their polycrisis experiences, one executive noted, “Changes we’d been trying to implement for 3 years suddenly happened in 3 weeks because everyone could see they were essential for survival.” Organizations that had long resisted operational changes suddenly found themselves capable of remarkable adaptation when they had no alternative.

These transformation windows also reveal organizational vulnerabilities. The disruption exposed the myths and narratives used to justify stagnation while simultaneously revealing the true costs of maintaining the status quo. As one leader observed, when traditional workplace boundaries dissolved, some employees “became very self-centric. They only devoted their time to their specific function, and they stopped connecting with other people across the organization.” Another executive pointed out that “the lack of alignment during crisis is what creates waste in energy and resources and potentially results in significant financial losses that you see when you look at the bottom line.”

This dual nature of transformation windows — creating opportunities while exposing vulnerabilities — reveals why understanding polycrisis dynamics is crucial for leaders who want to leverage transformation opportunities rather than merely get through them.

When System-Wide Barriers Suddenly Dissolve

The healthcare transformation succeeded because changes occurred simultaneously across 4 interconnected systems — something that’s typically impossible to achieve under normal conditions, as detailed in our research on telemedicine transformation during polycrisis.

Healthcare organizations rapidly reconfigured their IT infrastructure while government agencies modified policies that had previously limited telemedicine adoption through relaxed HIPAA enforcement, reimbursement parity, and adjusted licensure requirements. Simultaneously, provider–patient relationships shifted as care delivery moved online with new virtual workflows, while financial models evolved through new billing codes, government funding, and expanded insurance coverage.

This integrated transformation approach demonstrates how polycrisis can enable comprehensive system-wide change that addresses root causes rather than just symptoms.

How to Lock in Polycrisis-Driven Gains Before They Disappear

Here’s the crucial challenge for organizations that can responsibly navigate polycrisis conditions: polycrisis-driven change can recede without sustained leadership. As the pandemic’s immediate pressures subsided, many emergency telehealth policies began to be rolled back, and some organizations reverted to pre-crisis practices. The temporary suspension of resistance doesn’t automatically lead to permanent transformation — it creates an opportunity that leaders must actively capture and institutionalize.

The following actions extend established crisis management principles to polycrisis conditions. Moving from reactive innovation to sustainable transformation in polycrisis requires leaders to execute 6 actions that recognize the temporary nature of transformation windows. These interdependent actions often overlap during crisis periods, creating a systematic approach to capturing and embedding crisis-driven innovations.

Recognition requires leaders to actively scan for possible innovations during polycrisis and identify which represent fundamental improvements rather than emergency workarounds. This demands disciplined observation during chaotic periods, distinguishing between short-term adaptations and changes that could provide lasting value. Recognition also requires systematic documentation of choices and innovations as they emerge, enabling later evaluation of which adaptations delivered lasting organizational value.

Mobilization requires leaders to implement decisive changes while transformation windows remain open. This means rapidly deploying resources, adjusting workflows, and making operational changes before barriers reassert themselves. In the healthcare example, leaders mobilized IT infrastructure changes, policy modifications, and new care delivery models while creating regulatory flexibility. Mobilization often includes fast-tracking technology investments that organizations had previously approached incrementally. Leaders who rapidly upgrade digital infrastructure during transformation windows create dual benefits: immediate crisis response capability and enhanced competitive positioning for post-crisis operations, as research on crisis-driven organizational change demonstrates.

Navigation requires leaders to guide teams through the complex multi-system changes that polycrisis transformation demands, coordinating across traditional organizational boundaries and managing interdependencies between internal operations and external systems that don’t typically interact. This requires leaders to support teams as they navigate unfamiliar cross-system relationships and manage the stress of operating outside established workflows.

Formalization of innovation becomes critical as crisis pressures begin to ease — developing systematic processes to document, evaluate, and formalize innovations before they dissipate. Organizations may discover valuable new capabilities during polycrisis but lose them as teams return to familiar pre-crisis routines. Successful leaders create explicit mechanisms to capture and evaluate these innovations while they’re still fresh and accessible. Effective retention includes systematic evaluation of new operational approaches and revenue models that emerge during crisis response. This involves conducting comprehensive assessments that examine crisis innovations alongside traditional response elements, specifically identifying which new approaches could strengthen ongoing organizational capabilities while capturing insights that can drive lasting improvement.

Reinforcement involves embedding successful changes and crisis-driven insights into the organization’s permanent infrastructure through revised policies, technology systems, education programs, and incentive structures. This typically occurs after the immediate crisis but builds on the foundation created through earlier concurrent actions. Many transformation efforts fail here: Leaders assume that successful crisis adaptations will naturally persist, but without deliberate reinforcement, old patterns typically reassert themselves.

Resilience requires leaders to develop organizational capacity for continuous adaptation rather than episodic change. Rather than simply preparing for the next crisis, resilient organizations develop ongoing practices to sense environmental shifts and adapt their operations proactively. Resilient organizations also restructure around network orchestration models, leveraging partnerships and alliances developed during crisis. By moving beyond traditional organizational boundaries, resilient organizations create value through strategic networks and collaborative relationships forged during transformation periods.

These actions help organizations avoid the common pattern where polycrisis leads to temporary innovation followed by regression to pre-polycrisis practices — essentially wasting the window for transformation that polycrisis creates.

Preparing for the Next Transformation Window

As we face an era of increasing polycrisis, organizations that learn to leverage transformation windows can turn disruption into opportunity, while those that don’t may simply struggle to survive each crisis.

The question isn’t whether your organization will face polycrisis — it’s whether you’ll be ready to recognize transformation windows when they open and have the capacity to mobilize quickly to capture the opportunities as they emerge.

The next transformation window is coming. The organizations that thrive will be those that are ready to recognize it, act decisively within it, and sustain the changes long after the polycrisis ends.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Our polycrisis research is ongoing. Stay updated on our latest insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post Windows for Transformation: Seizing Opportunity in Polycrisis  appeared first on CCL.

We’re facing what experts call a “polycrisis” — where challenges like technological disruption, market instability, and geopolitical tensions don’t just pile up but actually amplify each other, creating a much bigger problem than any single issue alone. While some might try to simplify these complex issues by isolating or even denying them, the reality is unavoidably complex.

Organizations are at a critical moment where the decisions their leaders make will determine how successfully we navigate these interconnected problems. What makes these issues so difficult is how they feed into each other: For example, when technology disrupts industries, markets become vulnerable, making them susceptible  to geopolitical tensions — creating a cycle that traditional compartmentalized approaches simply can’t handle.

As a Senior Fellow researching leadership development, I’ve been speaking with leaders across industries to understand how they’re responding to these challenges. One conversation really captured the issue: “The pace of change is so dramatic that even the most capable leaders need outside perspectives and continuous learning. It’s ironic — the more we truly understand, the more we recognize how much we don’t know. We’re constantly balancing competing viewpoints while still needing to acknowledge fundamental realities.”

These problems are daunting, but they also present opportunities for meaningful impact. This is where leadership development plays a significant role. Why? Because leadership development is a vital force multiplier that enables organizations to effectively intervene in the world’s greatest challenges.

In the face of perpetual crisis, leaders must adapt, not just react. Explore our guide to Leadership in Disruption to learn how leading with culture, vision, and collective agility helps organizations thrive through complexity.

Get the Guide

Taking Ownership of the Problems By Overcoming Belief Barriers

To address this web of challenges, organizations and leaders must fundamentally change their approach to systemic problems. Our research shows that the critical first step to systemic solutions is changing leaders’ perspectives.

For organizations to effectively address complex challenges, leaders need to overcome a key mental barrier: they must stop viewing global challenges as abstract external issues and start recognizing them as connected to their organization’s purpose and future.

The most successful organizations understand that systemic crises — whether climate change, social inequality, or economic instability — aren’t external issues, but are directly linked to their long-term success.

This shift from “the problem” to “my problem” requires overcoming 2 types of belief barriers: individual beliefs and collective action.

Addressing Individual Belief Barriers

Individual belief barriers disconnect leaders from systemic issues. These barriers are deeply embedded in ideologies, awareness levels, and confidence in finding systemic solutions:

• The “me first” mentality that puts short-term profits ahead of collective well-being
• The “science will save us” belief that reduces the sense of urgency for immediate action
• The “humans first” mindset that misses our fundamental interdependence with natural systems
• The “nothing can be done” fatalism that shuts down action and innovation

Organizations need leadership development to overcome these limiting beliefs. Rather than just communicating urgency, effective programs create hands-on experiences that transform how leaders understand their relationship to systemic challenges.

Navigating Collective Action Barriers

Collective action barriers present equally tough obstacles, as addressing these crises requires unprecedented collaboration. Even when individual leaders grasp the importance of systemic issues, organizational dynamics can block effective collective response:

• Vested interests that actively push back against necessary changes
• Disagreement on solutions by stakeholders who push conflicting goals and interpretations
• Incentives that reward individual inaction over collective action

The strategic shift needed isn’t just about raising awareness — it’s about creating environments where leaders at all levels can truly own these challenges and collaborate effectively across boundaries. This is where leadership development becomes transformative.

4 Ways Leadership Development Drives Critical Capabilities

In our research, we found that leaders need 6 critical leadership capabilities to navigate a polycrisis:

• Complex problem-solving
• Collaboration and relationships
• Transformative leadership
• Fairness and ethics
• Inner capabilities
• Future orientation

However, even equipped with these capabilities, leaders face significant headwinds when attempting to drive meaningful change. The systemic nature of these challenges means there is no single solution — yet organizations cannot afford to wait for perfect answers.

Leadership development creates the conditions for meaningful change by empowering organizations to act rather than waiting for outside solutions. When integrated into a broader systemic approach, leadership development contributes value in 4 ways:

• It helps transform individual beliefs and mindsets. Leadership development helps leaders cultivate the cognitive flexibility to handle complexity, the emotional resilience to sustain engagement, and the systems thinking needed to understand interconnected challenges. For example, a global manufacturing firm we worked with used immersive learning journeys where leaders visited communities directly affected by their supply chain decisions. After experiencing firsthand the interconnected impacts of their choices, these leaders fundamentally shifted from viewing sustainability as a compliance issue to seeing it as central to their business strategy and personal leadership legacy.
• It creates shared language and understanding across boundaries. By establishing common frameworks and experiences, leadership development enables organizations to better align diverse stakeholders and address the social barriers that typically hinder collective response. We observed this at a healthcare system where leaders from clinical, administrative, and community roles participated in a year-long development program focused on addressing health inequities. The shared frameworks they developed enabled them to transcend professional silos and create an integrated approach to community health that had previously seemed impossible amid competing priorities.
• Leadership development facilitates experiential learning cycles in the face of uncertainty. The most effective leadership development approaches embed learning cycles that help organizations experiment, reflect, and adapt as they navigate complex challenges. These cycles help organizations overcome initial barriers and ensure they don’t slide back into limiting beliefs and old patterns as they face new obstacles. A technology company we worked with demonstrates this principle through their “leadership labs,” where cross-functional teams tackle real business challenges while practicing adaptive leadership techniques. When their initial approach to developing a sustainable packaging solution failed, the structured reflection process helped them recognize and learn from systemic patterns that were blocking innovation, leading to a pivot in approach that ultimately succeeded.
• Leadership development cultivates the capacity to generate and scale small wins. Leadership development helps organizations identify opportunities for small, sustainable, and scalable interventions, rather than waiting for comprehensive solutions. These opportunities accumulate into meaningful systemic progress over time by teaching leaders how to document, share, and replicate these successes. We’ve seen this with a financial services organization that empowered regional managers to conduct small experiments in improving customer experience. One team’s innovation in streamlining loan processing was documented through their leadership development platform, allowing other regions to adapt and implement it, ultimately leading to a company-wide practice.

Developing Your Leaders for Systemic Solutions

Interconnected, systemic issues require not just awareness, but decisive action. Leadership development, when strategically reimagined and deployed, can serve as a force multiplier for organizations seeking to address these complex challenges.

Rather than relying solely on heroic individual leaders with exceptional expertise — an approach that has repeatedly failed to address complex systemic challenges — leadership development’s dual impact on individuals and systems helps create systemic solutions: practical pathways for distributed leadership and collective action.

Our research-based and experience-driven development solutions can help your leaders overcome barriers and build the mindsets, skills, and collaborative capacity needed for transformative action.

1. Transform learning ecosystems beyond organizational boundaries.

The complex problems we face don’t respect organizational silos or sector boundaries, meaning you’ll need to work and influence across boundaries to make things happen. By aligning diverse groups around a common purpose, boundary spanning leaders can drive collective action and mobilize efforts to collaboratively tackle systemic crises. Our research shows that spanning boundaries is important: leaders who effectively collaborated across boundaries were seen as significantly more influential by their teams, but that only 7% of senior executives feel they’re very effective at doing it. Addressing this gap can be a key differentiator in tackling systemic issues.

2. Create shared ownership with a comprehensive leadership framework.

Abstract learning about systemic issues isn’t enough — leaders need to practice applying new mindsets to real situations. Our research-based Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) framework provides a structure for diverse stakeholders to forge shared purpose, clarify their distinctive contributions, and build sustained commitment to addressing complex challenges. This approach directly addresses the “someone else’s problem” mindset by creating shared ownership through collective action.

3. Build collective resilience through continuous learning.

Systemic transformation requires harnessing diverse perspectives and creating environments where innovation can flourish. By creating a learning culture in your organization, you can build psychological safety and learning agility — key differentiators both in individual leader success and in helping those same leaders grow and build the collective capabilities needed for the challenges of tomorrow.

4. Expand cognitive capacity for systems thinking.

Traditional leadership development focuses on what leaders know — but today’s challenges require expanding how leaders think. Vertical development — developing more complex and sophisticated perspectives and mindsets to help leaders achieve greater wisdom and clearer insights — is essential for navigating systemic issues. While integral for all levels of organizations, vertical development is especially critical for senior leaders for whom success requires navigating increasingly complex systems and boundaries.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Our research on polycrisis, systemic solutions, and overcoming belief barriers is ongoing. Stay updated on our latest insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post Leadership Development as a Force Multiplier for Systemic Solutions appeared first on CCL.

Succession planning is no longer a corporate checklist. It’s a dynamic storyline shaping the future of leadership. Join this interactive, communication-focused session to explore insights derived from a comprehensive analysis of 50 years of leadership succession planning, spanning 161 Emmy and Golden Globe–nominated television shows, 190 industry case studies, and 1,000 peer-reviewed articles.

With engaging examples from hit TV shows and a curated list of insights to energize the discussion, you’ll learn the science of anticipating emerging leadership trends and the art of preparing for leadership succession transitions amidst uncertainty.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll:

• Discover groundbreaking research insights into the successes, pitfalls, and emerging trends reshaping leadership succession planning today.
• Understand how cultural storytelling — from HBO’s Succession to Netflix’s Running Point — reflects and influences leadership cultures and succession outcomes.
• Receive evidence-based strategic recommendations to strengthen your organization’s leadership bench in an era of rapid, relentless change.

The post Leadership Succession: Planning Transitions in an Era of Uncertainty appeared first on CCL.