Leadership Coaching Talent Development: What matters in L&D and how to overcome common obstacles
A recent survey confirmed that Leadership Coaching Talent Development rank as most important issues in Learning and Development. In this post we will cover, what people said their priorities were, what the biggest barriers to delivering are, and give some advice on how to accelerate initiatives and overcome the obstacles.
We surveyed HR professionals, those in learning and development positions and managers, asking them how important they rated certain key issues including: Leadership, Talent Development, Emotional Intelligence, apprentice Levy, Resilience, Behaviour & Culture, Graduate Development, Coaching and Team Building.
Most Important Areas in L&D
The top 3 areas they rated as very important or important were: Leadership, Coaching and Talent Development
Strategies for L&D
Reassuringly, those we surveyed were on the ball when it came to having strategies in place to address these important areas.
So, it doesn’t come as a huge shock that organisations recognise the key areas and have strategies in place to support focus on these areas. The variations in responses were consistent with organisational size: the larger the organisation, the more likely they had strategies in place.
One could infer that all is well in organisations when it comes to Learning and Development.
However, when we came to ask professionals about the biggest challenges faced in Learning and Development, the same perennial issues were raised.
Biggest Challenges in Business
Time, resources and cultural change were identified as the top 3 challenges for Learning and Development.
Respondents confirmed the problem organisations have with dedicating time for training; often perceived as getting in the way of the day job. The second biggest challenge was that of resources, namely the lack of people available to facilitate learning. Taking these two issues together it is possible to see a connection to the third biggest challenge: cultural change. Perhaps the underlying organisation culture is the root cause: it is the attitude towards learning that sees time and resources as barriers.
Clearly its not so black and white. Organisations exist to deliver services and products to their customers. It is an ongoing tension: knowing that time and resources invested in learning will benefit the organisation (and therefore customers) in the long term, whilst maintaining the time and resources required to deliver for customers in the shorter term.
Advice for Overcoming Challenges
External consultants can help organisations tackle these problems of resources and cultural change. Working with an external provider, organisations can access a larger pool of expert resources. When it comes to cultural change, the one step removed perspective of an external provider can help add valuable context. Working for Dove Nest, as I do, of course I have a vested interest in promoting the case for external learning providers. However, I believe that external providers cannot and will-not replace in house L&D expertise. Rather, when working in partnership, they complement and strengthen each other.
This partnership approach can help overcome the final and most important challenge for L&D: namely the lack of time. If time is short, and it is, then using an external expert can help reduce the overall time needed for learning to take place. One of our clients put it far more succinctly:
“I knew that we (the team) would get there on our own, it was just that, working with Dove Nest, we would get there faster”
– Andrew Stephenson, Group People Director, Lookers
External learning providers do not have the monopoly for overcoming all the challenges facing learning and development professionals. However, when in-house experts work in partnership with external consultants, perhaps together the issues are easier to overcome.
Dove Nest has provided clients with learning and development solutions for over 35 years. For more information about how we can help “get there faster”, call us on 015395 67878, email us at enquiries@dovenest.co.uk or visit our website www.dovenest.co.uk