Internal mobility and career development opportunities are imperative to today’s talent strategies as the “Big Stay” (the trend of employees hunkering down in their existing roles) continues to slow external hiring needs. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is supercharging growth and challenging operational norms, making it more critical than ever to have leaders in place who can deftly navigate these shifts and elevate their teams by rallying around a shared vision. Career development priorities should emphasize equipping our next business leaders with the foundational skills needed to shape an organization’s future.
Developing the next class of leaders has proved challenging: According to a recent Gartner report, leader and manager development is the top priority for chief human resources officers (CHROs) heading into 2025. In fact, 70 percent of Gartner respondents believe current leaders and managers are not adequately equipped to develop mid-level leaders effectively.
It can be overwhelming to think about where to start with leadership development. A laser-focused approach to fostering and growing the specific skills leaders need is crucial to ensure employees can navigate their current role and assist them in their own internal mobility journey, perhaps even to the C-suite. Concentrating on the three “Cs”—continuous learning, conscious AI integration, and change management—will empower leaders to manage today’s challenges while building resilience for the opportunities ahead.
Continuous Learning
Some view reaching leadership roles as the pinnacle of their career—they’ve learned what they need to know, and they can live off that existing knowledge and experience base. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Effective leaders must prioritize continuous learning as part of their ethos. Not only does prioritizing a mentality of continuous learning enable leaders to stay nimble and agile in the face of evolving industry norms and trends, it also creates a culture of upskilling and reskilling among direct reports that can lead to more effective and innovative teams.
Climbing the corporate ladder may seem like a straight shot to the top, but the path to leadership roles often has many detours where key skills are learned, and experience is gained. Aspiring leaders must approach those detours with a mindset that is open to learning and challenging their existing beliefs.
Looking at my own career journey, the ability to remain agile and transfer and leverage my existing skill sets throughout my career has elevated me to where I am today. For example, I started my career in HR within the aviation industry, working my way up to the HR director role. That experience provided me with a unique set of skills that I currently use in my role as chief customer officer today. Even now sitting in the C-suite, I continue to push myself to learn and expand my skill set; to lead by example; and to ensure I’m the strongest strategic, people, and operational leader my team and organization needs.
Conscious AI Integration
AI is here, and it’s changing how we work and how we lead. At the same time, the explosion of generative AI (genAI) has led to an over-rotation on leveraging AI for the sake of AI. The next generation of business leaders must learn how to handle the pace of change happening in AI to purposefully adopt and integrate the solutions that will drive a meaningful impact on a business. Superficial AI adoption will not aid in the business transformation organizations are looking for. Leaders who can decipher where and how to apply the technology to extract maximum output that will transform a company will thrive.
It’s imperative that leadership development includes conscious AI learning, discovery, and necessary integration. A thoughtful, strategic understanding of AI will result in strong outcomes both personally and for the entire business. Leveraging the right AI solutions can supercharge a team’s impact and productivity in the long term.
Within leadership development itself, HR can leverage AI to provide more impactful training that enhances the skills and capabilities employees possess. For example, my team leverages Immerse Companion, Cornerstone’s genAI companion solution, to partake in immersive extended reality (XR) training. The AI’s ability to generate virtual human companions that can coach our team on key human skills that require firsthand “practice” to master—such as communication or emotional intelligence—has unlocked greater efficiencies and productivity across the workforce.
Change Management
The only constant in today’s business world is the rate of change. Knowing how to manage these shifts across the human and operational aspects of a business is imperative for leaders in today’s business landscape. Change management enables leaders to meld strategy and execution, build resilience, and ultimately foster the agile mindset needed to position themselves and their organization for future success. Leaning into change management skills within leadership development will play a crucial role in ensuring an organization’s workforce agility or the ability to respond quickly to shifts and exploit those changes as opportunities.
Change management necessitates several foundational human skills that are in high demand in today’s workplace. In fact, a recent report found that in North America, demand for human skills outpaced digital skills by 2.4 times, while in Europe demand is 2.9 times higher than demand for digital skills. From ensuring consistent, clear communication to building a coalition of champions who can advocate for the transformations being put in place, change management requires a strategic, operational, and people mindset that is foundational for leaders.
But perhaps one of the most important skills a focus on change management can instill in a leadership development program is the capacity to receive feedback and pivot strategies to adjust to challenges and maintain momentum in real time. It imperative that leaders can recognize when a project is heading down the wrong path and put ego aside to shift direction to reach the goals the business has put in place.
Leaning Into Leaders Will Drive Top-Down Results
As HR teams invest in developing their managers and leaders in 2025 and beyond, prioritizing continuous learning, conscious AI integration, and change management will enable businesses not just to empower their leaders to be more effective but also to see a meaningful impact across their business and talent that focuses on building a more agile approach to how we work and how we respond to inevitable market changes.
