Hi There,
So how do you train your leaders and talents best for the future?
As training has become easier it has also become passive (less interactive) and outdated (not future-proofed). What you must do is combine these two – interactivity & future-proofing – in programs focusing on Future Skills, whether that be in the classroom or online.
Future Skills. These are the skills your people need to be successful in the future – tomorrow and the years after. They include current or future topics trained & practiced to match their future work contexts, tasks & situations.
For example, coaching is not new, but it is amazing to see the journey it has taken until now. In future, it needs to meet the expectations of short-term planning, increased complexity, the gig economy & employee expectations to sustainability, empowerment & well-being.
Coaching is often trained as a skill, but train it as a future skill – putting coaching skills into new challenging cases & your real, future work contexts. This will challenge and develop your people personally and professionally – so they are ready to succeed in the future.
Training Future Skills
We use this model to help us design and plan programs for interpersonal skills training of leaders and talents:
Current work context/Current topics: Backbone leadership development.
Current work context/Future topics: Innovative leadership development. Future work context/Current topics: Perspective leadership development
Future work context/Future topics: Foresight leadership development
Current topics: are those we already know well from leadership courses e.g. coaching, energizing, negotiation, communication.
Future topics: are those we expect to be more important going forward e.g. leading remotely, train-the-trainer, mental wellbeing, utilising data insights.
Current work contexts: are those we recognise e.g. in known situations, with a consistent employee group, long-life strategy etc.
Future work contexts: are those we expect to be prevalent going forward e.g. online, diverse employee groups, gig-economy, early empowerment etc.
This leads us to design leadership and talent programs to suit the transition toward Future Skills – moving further than only from Backbone to Innovative leadership development.
New programs must boldly focus on Perspective and Foresight leadership development – otherwise the impact will just not hit the mark!