What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

70% of learning happens through on-the-job experience, 20% through feedback and 10% through formal training according to traditional leadership development. Research conducted over the past three years points to an alternative framework for the process that emphasizes three actions: sensemaking, understanding how the business world and the organization works around you, experimenting, or testing ideas. The framework was implemented at HSBC. The experiment pointed to new best practices for hybrid leadership development, such as iterative and experimental, embedded in day-to-day work, supported by coaching, and span all modes of delivery from all-virtual to fully in person.

We are learning more about the opportunities and risks of hybrid work as organizations and individuals around the world settle into a blend of in-person and virtual work. Leadership development is a concern. Some of the vital ways in which executives learn on the job, such as serendipitous interactions and informal feedback, suffer in virtual and hybrid contexts. Improvements in technology have expanded program design possibilities. This might be the right time for leadership development to move away from the week-in-a-classroom model and towards something more applied and virtual.