Is leadership development a top priority for your organisation in 2024?

Several recent reports show that leadership development is emerging as organisations’ top priority in 2024. This latest report from The Hackett Group Inc shows that 65% organisations plan an initiative in 2024 to target this.

The Hackett report ‘The 2024 CHRO Agenda’ says ‘that percentage (65%) is also up from last year’s survey, when only 39% of organizations had a planned initiative.’

So, concern about leadership ability is now shifting into action. Great news.

HR leaders know that leadership maturity is a vital factor in their work to drive positive culture and performance, and therefore profitability.

‘However,’ Hackett say, ‘confidence in the ability to deliver improvement in this area is low.’

I’ve heard about this struggle many times. Getting the leadership team to understand, intellectually, the importance of leadership capabilities is one thing. Getting them – the top leaders themselves – to attend development interventions is quite another.

The alternative (or, ideally, supporting activity) to development programs, is the ongoing coaching that HR leaders and BPs do constantly, most often informally and situationally.

Here’s some data that proves the value of that:

‘Our HR function benchmarking research shows that Digital World Class® HR organizations – those that perform in the top quartile in both business value and operational excellence – spend 27% more HR business partner time focused on organizational and leadership development.’

This brings us back to the work that HR do at every level, every day, to coach leaders, and explore with them how to inspire, align and organise their teams.

It’s great to have some data to prove that too.

How easy is it in your organisation to get attention to – and investment for – leadership development?