Get exclusive insights in this blog penned by our very own CBO, Jourdan Hathaway…
Every single rung of the workforce right now is going through a lot of transformation, across all sizes of organizations and regions of the world. We’re all experiencing such dramatic shifts in what it means to be an employee today. And leadership roles are no exception, especially what it means to be a leader in this AI era that’s going through its early(ish) maturity curve.
Dealing with the speed to adapt
One of the big challenges leaders are experiencing is how quickly they’re expected to rise to the challenge and adapt. It’s sort of ironic, because oftentimes we have accountability happening without capability.
One of the big bottlenecks we see a lot in enterprise transformation is that the leaders who’re steering the transformation are themselves not developing fast enough. We’re experiencing so much in the realm of responsibility, expectation, throughput, and accountability that we’re looking at all different types of accelerants. Traditional multi-year leadership tracks simply don’t keep pace with where the market is right now.
Thinking beyond the tech
This isn’t about just pouring money into technology, because tech alone isn’t going to develop leaders. It never has.
Leadership is made up of so many different capabilities and attributes, and it’s not tech enablement alone that creates a leader. A leader is made of experience, discernment, judgment, decision-making, and all the different types of soft skills that are amplified or aided by the frameworks and responsibilities sitting around them.
Pouring money into technology to solve the fundamental capability gap fails to yield significant ROI, especially when leaders are quietly struggling, drowning in technical jargon, or fearing they’ll appear incompetent in front of their teams.
The rapid pace of change requires methodology and role-specific training
Shifting from the prior regime of a 36-month timeline to these high-impact, six-month cycles means AI leadership training can’t be a linear academic exercise. It needs to be treated as a dynamic, habit-building cycle that allows the acceleration of hands-on, applied learning and real-world decision-making.
A best practice framework we look to today operates across a condensed journey structured into five continuous phases, done in partnership with our sister brand, EZRA. This methodology is to learn, apply, coach, embed, and scale.
This isn’t theoretical instruction or broad 101 basics. It’s learning that’s tiered, quite surgical, and often contextualized to the functional area the leader resides in. For example, foundational literacy can be achieved in a brief, intensive block but immediately after that, we have to move into applied strategy, applied methodology, and applied working practice.
Making learning stick (quickly)
You make that stick with reinforcement and coaching. Traditional long-term programs often rely on a long-time horizon to build memory, but the data shows that learners who receive spaced reinforcement retain knowledge a lot better with shorter time horizons in between. Utilizing brief, very focused coaching sessions (think of them as microprompts or nudges) forces leaders to actively practice and reflect in real time in the flow of work.
Another big factor is pairing modern learning frameworks with psychological safety and measurable impacts, balanced with a juxtaposition of vulnerability.
One of the keys to shortening the leadership development lifecycle right now is to allow authentic, real, vulnerable conversations where a leader can say, “this is the actual pain point that I’m struggling with, and this is the change management that I’m dealing with.”
Instead of just working through the theory of change management principles, you bring it down to brass tacks regarding what’s happening inside the organization at that particular time. By reviewing analogous case studies and breaking into work groups, you start to pick apart the change underway to develop the muscle of discernment, prosecute the different ways to resolve the issue, and achieve an accelerant of experience even if you don’t have the traditional time horizon to do it.
Of course, we must build accountability metrics, because activity doesn’t equate to successful business outcomes in and of itself. Leadership programs designed to have a distinct business outcome have a better success rate of retainment and true transformation of the leader themselves.
Learning continues beyond the training
Just because the training is done, it can never be “one and done.”
In many organizations, AI training programs (leadership programs included) become a check-the-box exercise, which isn’t going to bring about the change anyone is looking for. On the other side of the training, hands-on application, and micro-moments of continuous coaching, you must allow a space to continuously trial and error, learn, adapt, and navigate.
We’re seeing new types of arrangements across organizations that transition training from a formalized program into spaces for ongoing, continuous learning. This is helping leaders and learners across the org break down their accountabilities and goals into discrete projects and strategies so they can work through them and move on to the next thing. And that is where modern learning frameworks are fundamentally changing.
Looking for AI training that actually produces ROI for your organization? Look no further.