A lot of effort, time, money, and attention go into developing leadership training programs, retreats, classes, webinars, and other formal learning opportunities.

Program designers usually focus on meeting the learning needs of participants and aligning content with corporate strategy and goals. And they should.

But what happens before and after those formal programs has a major impact on the return on training investment — and could be the key to ensuring success: boss support.

Our research on what makes leadership development programs successful has found that people who have support from their bosses get significantly more out of these types of training. In fact, it’s the primary predictor of a leadership development program’s success.

When bosses are more engaged and actively show clear support of their direct reports’ development, participants report they get more value from the training.

To better understand a supervisor’s impact on their participants’ success, we conducted a research study. Our findings revealed that when bosses are involved and supportive of training, participants experience the following outcomes:

• Leaders’ self-awareness, leadership capability, and leadership effectiveness significantly improve.
• Leaders have a greater impact on the teams they lead.
• Leaders receive more favorable ratings on organizational effectiveness, management capabilities, and employee empowerment.

Boss Support for Development Drives Better Organizational Outcomes

We also found that greater boss support drives better organizational outcomes. The data show that bosses rated most leaders participating in our Leadership Development Program (LDP)® with high marks for organizational impact:

• 79% showed increased or significantly increased organizational effectiveness.
• 64% showed increased or significantly increased employee empowerment.
• 75% showed increased or significantly increased management capabilities.

Although the average impact of the program was high, leaders who exhibited the most change in key leadership parameters were more likely to have strong support from their bosses. Those who exhibited no change after their leadership course were more likely to lack boss support. For example, there was a 16% gap in boss support between leaders who made significant improvements in their organizational effectiveness and those who made no improvement. There were similar gaps of 8% and 13% in empowerment and management capabilities, respectively.

So bosses can literally make — or break — the effectiveness of an organization’s leadership development program.

How to Be a Supportive Boss Before & After Your Direct Reports’ Training

So, are your direct reports preparing to take part in an in-person or virtual leadership development program?

If so, plan to have a couple of conversations with them. Meeting with your employees both before and after they attend a leadership training program is a great way to maximize their success and communicate your buy-in. It needn’t require a large investment of your time, but it helps convey you’re a supportive boss and adds considerable accountability to the process.

These types of conversations can happen in person, of course, but can be just as effective if they happen remotely. (Just keep in mind how to craft your persona for effective virtual communication.)

Before the Training: How to Be a Supportive Boss

Ideally, participants would take a 360-degree feedback evaluation tool, like one of our Benchmarks® 360 assessments, that includes input from their boss, which provides further fuel for the leadership development experience. At this stage, a supportive boss will also help their direct reports choose a strategic challenge to work on during or after the program.

During your pre-meeting, plan to ask questions for 20% of the meeting and then listen to each direct report’s responses for the remaining 80% of the time. Don’t feel like you need to memorize these questions — we recommend that you have the questions and topics you plan to cover in front of you. It will keep the conversation flowing and can serve as a checklist.

5 Questions to Ask Employees Before Training

1. What do you hope to get out of the training? Have them articulate their goal, and follow up by asking, “What else?”
2. What developmental areas do you want to work on as you go through the program? This will allow them to admit what they think they aren’t great at. Ideally, participants also take a 360 evaluation that includes input from you. Encourage them to consider that feedback when choosing a strategic challenge to work on after the program.
3. What do you believe are your strengths, and how might you improve upon them? Our research shows that great leaders are known for their towering strengths rather than the absence of weaknesses, so improving strengths is still crucial. Most people over-focus on weaknesses.
4. What sort of support and help do you need in order to apply the learning back at work? You may be surprised what they actually need from you as a manager to keep it growing.
5. During training, what support do you need so that you can fully disconnect from your daily responsibilities? You want participants to soak up the learning in the program so they can implement real changes when they return. If you skip this step, expect them to be distracted during the training.

Before your conversation ends, schedule a follow-up meeting for after they complete their development program. This will help ensure that a follow-up discussion occurs, and it also lets your direct reports know that they have boss support, that you’re committed to their success, and that you’ll be checking in again after the training is complete.

After the Training: How to Be a Supportive Boss

Once your direct reports are done with leadership training, your goal is to help them turn their learning into action items. After all, the new insights and skills gained in a leadership development program are only valuable if they’re applied.

After the program, participants ideally would apply their new skills and insights to the strategic challenge they agreed to with their bosses during the preparation phase. In addition, organizations can provide resources to the bosses of program participants so they understand what the participant learned and how to support ongoing development.

The post-training meeting reinforces boss support for development and creates an opportunity for direct reports to publicly commit to personal goals and allows them to capitalize on their enthusiasm coming out of the training before too much time passes and their interest wanes.

Similar to the pre-meeting, we recommend that bosses spend 20% of the meeting talking — mostly asking questions — and 80% of the time in active listening and coaching mode. Again, some good questions to ask are outlined below.

5 Questions to Ask Employees After Training

1. How was the program? This general question will help the conversation start off on a casual note.
2. What did you learn? Move into discussing both the content and personal insights they came away with. How do they plan to apply their new skills and insights to the strategic challenge you discussed during the preparation phase?
3. How are you going to bring this back to work? Next, discuss implementation. How will they convey what they learned to their team, or talk about their identified strengths and weaknesses? Team members who didn’t attend the leadership development experience are often curious to hear about it and can benefit from your reports’ experience. Encourage them to share insights with colleagues.
4. How can we work together to expand your network? In many leadership development programs, participants have opportunities to build relationships with other people in their organization — often in other functions or “silos.” In open-enrollment programs, participants may meet other professionals from their industry or even different industries. This often develops into a formal or informal support network and sometimes includes peer coaching and accountability. Express your support for these relationships, which can help both employees and their teams.
5. How can I support you? Similar to the pre-meeting, it’s important to ask how you can support them in implementing changes. Not only does it illustrate your commitment, but you may learn something about how you can be more effective, too.

You’ll notice that there’s some overlap between these questions and the topics you covered in the pre-meeting, which is intentional. The first meeting sets the tone and helps prepare your direct reports, while the follow-up is designed to see it through and reiterate your support. You can even turn it into a coaching conversation, reinforcing lessons learned and helping your employees take responsibility for their actions and their development. This is sure to help them see you as a supportive boss.

If your post-training meeting comes fairly soon after the training, you’ll be able to help your direct reports focus on applying what they learned and execute a plan that will make their training — and your time — well worth it.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Be a supportive boss by showing your direct reports that you’re invested in their professional development. Explore our leadership programs, available for leaders at every level, and we can show you how to provide boss support at every stage of their learning journeys.

The post How to Show Boss Support for Your Employees’ Development (& Why Boss Support Matters) appeared first on CCL.

In most cases, your organization will have a number of more seasoned leaders who have dealt with similar challenges and could offer some help and guidance. By using coaching and mentoring programs strategically, you can support your newer managers with access to more experienced leaders, thereby cultivating an organizational culture that prioritizes learning and developing a pipeline of leaders who are resilient, agile, and engaged.Explore our array of published research reports on the latest leadership development trends and topics. Download our insightful reports today.

But how do you get started with organizational coaching and mentoring programs?

First, start with an understanding of how they’re similar and how they’re different.

Coaching and Mentoring Programs: What’s the Difference?

Coaching and mentoring are typically related and sometimes overlap. However, while both may be performed by the same leader, coaches and mentors serve different roles, and it’s important to know the difference between coaching and mentoring:

Coaching typically focuses on enhancing current job performance by helping someone resolve a here-and-now issue or blockage for themselves.

HR leaders often prioritize leadership coaching services, such as executive coaching, because coaching helps individual leaders hone self-awareness and provides individualized challenge and support. But coaching doesn’t always have to be provided by a formal coach; coaching can happen for everyone across the organization when people are skilled at holding coaching conversations.

Mentoring, on the other hand, focuses on career path. Rather than helping someone resolve a current challenge, mentoring at work is usually about a mentor helping a “mentee” to become more capable in the near future. Mentors take time to guide and advise their mentees on issues that will likely arise, but may not have yet.

Mentors leverage their expertise to transfer knowledge and help expand networks. They can also leverage their positions to sponsor mentees for developmental experiences, advocate on their behalf for promotions, and survey the environment for threatening forces and opportunities.

Recommendations for HR Leaders Implementing Coaching and Mentoring Programs

Learning to lead is an intensely personal experience, so it’s particularly important for new and emerging leaders to have access to coaches and mentors who can provide them with guidance, support, and context for their development. Organizational coaching and mentoring programs can be a formal part of an enterprise-wide initiative, or they can be more informal arrangements that are agreed to by both parties.

If you’re designing, initiating, or implementing coaching programs, drive better outcomes by exploring our actionable handbook of coaching in organizations.

Creating a Culture of Coaching and Mentoring

When an organization has a “culture of coaching,” it has a culture that encourages giving feedback and honest conversations across functions and leader levels that amplify collaboration, agreement, and alignment.

Any conversation can become a leadership development opportunity when it’s candid.

Our research with emerging leaders shows that when people are in the early stages of their careers, they often feel it’s risky to speak up. When supervisors and informal coaches throughout the organization demonstrate that they value the thoughts and perspectives of even the youngest members of their teams, they build understanding and glean a more accurate picture of the challenges and opportunities their direct reports face.

Senior leaders and managers can apply the following foundational conversational skills to all of their interactions to coach their people, helping to foster an organizational culture of feedback, coaching, and candor:

Build These 4 Conversational Skills for a Coaching Culture

1. Listen to understand.

When supervisors listen to colleagues, they should be aware of their own agenda. Instead of trying to promote that agenda, listening to understand involves listening with an open mind for facts, feelings, and values.

2. Ask powerful questions.

As 2 people delve into a conversation, they can uncover new insights by making inquiries that stretch the other person’s thinking. Encourage “coaches” to begin their questions with “what” or “how” to tap into feelings and values that encourage reflection.

3. Strike a balance between challenge and support.

Listening to understand doesn’t mean listening to agree. Supervisors can show their support by restating the facts and values they hear. When 2 people have a shared trust built on psychological safety, they are able to ask tough, challenging questions that uncover unexamined assumptions.

4. End your conversation with clear next steps.

Supervisors can establish a sense of accountability by agreeing to next steps. That can be as easy as committing to one small action item that moves the issue forward and demonstrates that the supervisor values the facts and emotions shared by the individual being coached.

Consider What Makes Mentoring Programs Successful

Whereas coaching is intended to address a current challenge, mentoring looks to the future. Therefore, the most successful mentoring programs include careful, strategic planning.

According to our guidebook, Seven Keys to Successful Mentoring, mentoring is an intentional, developmental relationship between a more experienced, knowledgeable person and a less experienced, less knowledgeable person. Often, but not always, this means an older person mentoring a younger one, although reverse mentoring arrangements flip this model around, but work in much the same way.

When creating or improving an organizational mentoring initiative, use these strategies and questions as a guide:

• Be purposeful and strategic. Before you begin pairing mentors and mentees, consider your goals and how these goals fit into your overall development efforts. Think about how your demographics might change in the next 5 years: Who will retire, and who will backfill those roles? How will this mentoring program fit into your overall business plan and human resources strategies?
• Engage leaders. The most effective mentorship programs have buy-in at the executive level. Once you’ve outlined your goals, clearly articulate and communicate those goals. What role can the CEO and senior team play in the process? Who else in the organization will help make the formal mentoring program work?
• Start small. It takes time to recruit and brief the right mentors and mentees, and lessons learned from the beginning of the program can prove beneficial when it’s time to extend it to more people. Be sure your program includes a diverse group of leaders (all genders, people of color, different levels/career stages, etc.) and establishes clear rules about confidentiality to establish trust.
• Train mentors and mentees on skills for developing the relationship and holding mentor conversations. You can’t assume senior people will have the right skills for mentoring. Investing time and resources in training also shows that the company leadership values the program. Along the way, offer support for mentors; this support should be included in the program’s design.
• Measure and share. What is most important for the organization and those participating? Consider the specific needs of the mentoring partners, HR, and business leaders. How can you publicize any early wins in order to build momentum?

Coaching and Mentoring Programs: Especially Key for New Leaders

As noted in our white paper on mentoring first-time managers, when individual contributors are promoted into their first formal leadership positions, many don’t expect the transition to be as difficult as it is. Worse, they often lack the support and development needed to help make that transition successfully. Without support, new managers can suffer — along with their teams and direct reports. By extension, this affects the organization’s retention levels and leadership pipeline, which ultimately can negatively impact the bottom line.

Given the important role that frontline managers play in talent development and succession management, organizations should help ease the transition for new managers by providing them with access to leadership development — especially courses targeted to the needs of new managers — and by exploring formal organizational coaching and mentoring programs to support them.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Give your new leaders the support they need to reach their full potential and help move your organization forward through a combination of coaching and mentoring programs, coaching and conversational skills training, and proven development courses that work for your culture and needs.

The post How to Use Coaching and Mentoring Programs to Develop New Leaders appeared first on CCL.

As news headlines proliferate about what today’s employees want from work and how much organizations can expect from their people, purpose is emerging as a critical success factor. Purpose in leadership supports improved individual and organizational outcomes.

Purpose-driven leadership means helping employees find personal meaning in their work and fostering a deeply committed workforce that thrives on shared goals and aspirations. Purpose-driven leaders model value-based decision-making, take time to learn what truly matters to their employees, connect work to a greater objective, and help employees understand their organization’s mission and find ways to personally connect to it.

But purpose, just like organizational culture change, doesn’t thrive without intentional effort. To create a sustainable purpose-driven culture, managers must embody and promote a sense of purpose in their leadership, daily operations, and decision-making.

Why Is Purpose in Leadership Important?

So, what are the benefits of purpose-driven leadership? First, purpose helps create a shared sense of direction, alignment, and commitment; builds belonging at work; fosters greater organizational performance; and increases persistence through challenges.

In fact, purpose is often one of the main drivers of employee engagement and satisfaction. Our research with emerging leaders around the globe suggests that purpose is one of the greatest predictors of whether young professionals pursue leadership positions and, for those in a leadership role, whether leaders feel empowered to make a difference.

In addition, purpose-driven leaders are more likely to develop and maintain strong relationships with their direct reports. Articulating a clear, inspiring vision that resonates with others is key.

Purpose-driven leadership creates space for alignment of goals and values between individual employees and the overall organization. When employees understand why they’re carrying out their work, they care more about what they accomplish. (Though critical for all employees, value alignment is especially key for younger generations in the workforce. Organizational mission and vision can be an important deciding factor in recruitment and retention — especially among younger Gen Z and Millennial workers.)

Finding purpose in day-to-day work also makes employees better equipped to navigate challenges and persist, even through difficult tasks.

Purpose Is Universal, but Not Uniform

6 Things That Drive a Sense of Purpose

While the desire for purpose is a fundamental human need, what employees value and derive purpose from is not. Research suggests that purpose can arise from a range of sources, such as:

1. Utility: Work is practically relevant to our goals and aspirations, either now or in the future.
2. Personal Development: Work facilitates opportunities for self-growth, developing either skillsets or mindsets in personally meaningful ways.
3. Impact: Work empowers us to make a tangible and positive difference in the world, contributing to the greater good of society, our communities, or those close to us.
4. Identity Reinforcement: Work reinforces our sense of self, aligning with the core elements of who we are.
5. Intrinsic Interest: Work is inherently fun and energizing, offering enjoyable experiences that naturally appeal to our interests.
6. External Rewards: Work leads to a desirable payoff, from a paycheck to a promotion.

As varied as the unique experiences that individuals bring to work are the ways they find meaning in it. Take, for instance, being asked to help start a new Employee Resource Group at an organization:

• One person may jump at the opportunity because it helps display leadership potential (utility) and is accompanied by an additional stipend (external).
• Another might agree because they see themselves as someone who advocates for wellbeing (identity) and wants to support work colleagues (prosocial).

Both employees may be taking the same purpose-driven leadership action, but they have different reasons for doing so. Without exploring their unique drivers, leaders simply cannot know why employees choose to engage at work.

Each Finding Their Own Meaning Is Critical

Why is it important to know what your employees value? Because telling them where to find meaning can backfire. In one study, researchers conducted a series of experiments teaching college students a new mental math technique. They found that telling students why the approach was valuable undermined how well they applied it and how interested they were in using it in the future. Importantly, this impacted the least confident students the most.

Consider a parallel at work. If a sales director tells his regional leads exactly why they should care about a new system for tracking leads, there’s a stronger chance that buy-in and performance will suffer if those reasons don’t personally matter to the employees. If employees have an opportunity to identify why the system is useful to them and make connections for themselves, by contrast, they’re likely to use the program more frequently and effectively.

As a leader, you want each person on your team to be able to determine for themselves why and how their work connects to purpose, rather than dictating to them why it’ll be valuable. When your employees have autonomy to find their own meaning, a culture of purpose is easier to cultivate.

To be clear, this doesn’t imply that leaders should avoid sharing their own reasons why work is meaningful. Modeling conversations about purpose can help employees find their own meanings. The critical piece is to allow individuals the freedom and permission to consider and discuss their own purpose, so their reasons feel relevant and personal to them.

Implementing Purpose-Driven Leadership at Your Organization

2 Keys for Cultivating Greater Purpose in Leadership

It’s one thing to say that purpose is important, and another to create a culture of purpose-driven leadership at your organization. While few people disagree that purpose in leadership is important, it’s not ubiquitous. If leading with purpose was easy or intuitive, everyone would be doing it.

So, how can managers embrace and embody purpose in leadership and their everyday work? Here are 2 essential keys to cultivating an environment where managers and employees can connect and find purpose in leadership and in their daily work.

1. Weave organizational mission, vision & values into your communications.

Remember that employees have to know the organization’s overarching purpose before they can make connections to it for themselves. Values may drive your organization’s decision-making at the most senior levels, but they’re easy for employees to overlook in the midst of projects, deadlines, and day-to-day activities. So, it’s important to speak often about your organization’s mission, vision, and values to give employees ample opportunities to connect and align their own values to their tasks and projects.

Make purpose more salient for them by effectively and intentionally communicating the vision, mission, and values of the organization — and by reinforcing these again and again over time.

TIP: Model finding connections between organizational values and your team’s (or your own) projects whenever possible. Some specific practices to try:

• Seek out opportunities to build purpose alignment into existing structures at work, such as during annual reviews or all-staff meetings. Invite your senior leadership team to provide examples of leading with purpose (both personal and organizational) in public settings, company-wide communications, quarterly retreats, and team meetings. Personal, specific, and meaningful stories are most effective at signaling a commitment to purpose and catalyzing greater buy-in and alignment. Make a point of bringing powerful real-life experiences to the forefront; sharing examples of helping others or bettering a community at large through corporate social responsibility efforts can be particularly helpful.
• Consider asking colleagues directly what parts of the organizational mission resonate most for each of them. You can open the door for deeper exploration by modeling; simply take 5 minutes to think about or list your personal values, current work activities, and note the specific, meaningful connections you see between them. Share as much of this as you like and use it as a discussion-starter to learn more about what matters most to others. When new employees onboard or move into bigger roles, intentionally engage them in team meetings or one-on-one conversations about how their work might fit into the bigger organizational picture.
• At the beginning and / or end of projects, build in time for team members to reflect on how the project contributes to the organization’s overall business objectives and mission. This can be part of the conversations for setting team norms up front, or used as an exercise during an after-action review or “lessons learned” session after the fact.

When weaving organizational purpose and mission into conversations, remember that employees need dedicated time to reflect on the connections for themselves. By building in intentional opportunities to find meaning, purpose-driven leaders signal to employees that finding purpose at work is a valued part of the organizational culture.

2. Understand what drives your team members.

The more you know your employees — and create opportunities for them to connect with one another and the larger organization — the easier it is to help reinforce their sense of purpose. Seek to understand the perspectives of your direct reports through a lens of showing compassion and respect, as each individual brings a different set of experiences and aspirations to work.

Compassionate leadership means being aware of the feelings, thoughts, and needs of others. Compassion enables leaders to understand and respond to the unique needs, perspectives, and emotions of their teams, fostering a more supportive and inclusive environment. Beyond the obvious feel-good value of showing compassion, managers who show empathy in the workplace toward those they are responsible for are viewed as better performers by their bosses. It’s a “win” for all involved.

Purpose-driven leaders also understand and leverage the power of identity. This involves both creating an environment where team members feel psychologically safe at work to share their personal experiences and understanding the way that employees view themselves with respect to work. For instance, our research suggests that simply identifying as a leader is associated with greater confidence and engagement in the workplace and can be cultivated by support from others.

TIP: Help employees recognize and embrace the many different reasons they might find meaning at work. Some specific practices to try:

• Share your own reasons that you find your work meaningful, providing examples of several different sources of purpose. Speak in the first person (using I, we, my, our, etc.), and encourage them to do the same. Include details and examples to help build more specific and meaningful connections and invite them to share their personal “why” with one another (and you).
• Make space for whatever they share about their perspectives and experiences, remembering that purpose is universal — but not uniform. Normalize that there is no “right” way to find meaning at work. As conversations unfold, actively listen for what matters most to your employees. You may want to keep notes for yourself on what you learn about each person’s purpose so you can refer back later, especially if you manage a large team.
• Use this information to help make work more personally relevant for each individual. Importantly, after gaining a better understanding of what drives each of your employees, keep that top-of-mind going forward when interacting with them, assigning tasks, and planning growth and development opportunities for them. That way, you’re motivating employees in a tailored and personalized way.

By working from an understanding of what is individually meaningful to each of your team members, showing compassion for their experiences and perspectives, and using this information to tailor your interactions, work assignments, and development plans for them going forward, you signal support for employee wellbeing and create an environment where colleagues feel valued, respected, engaged, and eager to contribute — ultimately driving your team and organization forward.

A Closing Word on Purpose in Leadership

Organizations that focus on purposeful leadership — with managers who help their direct reports find meaning in their work and connect their personal values to the organization’s — have a better chance of attracting, engaging, and retaining talent and enabling the enterprise to meet business objectives more effectively.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Equip your people managers with the mindsets and skillsets required for purpose-driven leadership. Partner with us to create a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-based modules. Available leadership topics include Authentic Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, Self-Awareness, Team Leadership, Wellbeing, and more.

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