Insights

With the rise of AI tools enhancing speed and efficiency in the workplace, leaders are facing challenges in ensuring every team member is engaged, finds fulfillment in their roles, and actively contributes to the company's mission.

Particularly in the context of reskilling and upskilling within organizations, a multifaceted approach is essential. This approach encompasses a broad spectrum of skills and strategies aimed at fostering personal and organizational growth, agility, and the capacity to navigate and lead through change.

Looking at what keeps our customers around the world ahead of their game, we notice a list of critical leadership skills that keep leaders at the helm whille navigating the AI revolution. 

In the context of reskilling and upskilling, the role of leadership transcends traditional management, shifting towards a coaching-oriented approach that prepares teams for the fluid demands of the modern workplace. This evolution calls for leaders to not only guide but also empower their teams, fostering an environment where resilience, adaptability, and innovation are at the forefront.

As organizations navigate through the complexities of developing new skills, leaders are tasked with managing diverse team dynamics, recognizing and nurturing positive behaviors while mitigating any negative or toxic tendencies. This balancing act is crucial in maintaining team cohesion and productivity during periods of learning and growth.

Moreover, effective leadership in times of uncertainty means embodying the change they wish to see, demonstrating behaviors and attitudes that align with the new skills and mindsets being adopted. By leading from the front when necessary and stepping back to encourage and support, leaders can instill confidence and foster an inclusive culture where every team member feels valued and motivated to contribute to the organization's evolution.

• Manage team dynamics: Teams undergoing reskilling and upskilling encounter significant challenges. Leaders play a crucial role in navigating various behaviors within their teams, some of which contribute positively to goals while others may exhibit toxic tendencies if not addressed effectively.
• Leadership Effectiveness: Leading through uncertainty requires us to lead by example and positively reinforce when new behavior is starting to show. Effective leaders recognize when they are requiered to lead in front on step to the back and lead through encouragement. 
• Coaching Skills: Coaching as a skill for leaders have never been as relevant as today, by applying even the most essential coaching skills, leaders create resilient, adaptable teams that are well-prepared to meet the challenges of an ever-changing work environment, driving innovation through ownership.

2. Personal Development and Effectiveness

Leaders are constantly on a journey of personal growth to enhance their leadership effectiveness. Time management, personal effectiveness, and critical thinking are foundational to this. Time management involves breaking with ineffective habits and prioritizing actions that align with one’s values and ambitions, ultimately leading to high performance. Personal effectiveness is about leveraging one’s talents towards achieving personal ambitions and enhancing communication styles for improved performance. Critical thinking clarifies decision-making processes, focusing on solving the challenge at hand by putting relevant factors into perspective.

• Personal Effectiveness: Set personal goals aligned with organizational objectives. A leader might set a quarterly goal to enhance their team's productivity by 20% through improved workflow processes.
• Critical Thinking: Evaluate information from multiple sources before making decisions. When faced with a complex problem, a leader analyzes data, seeks expert opinions, and considers past experiences to make informed choices.
• Time Management: Prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance. For example, a leader starts their day by identifying top priorities and allocates specific time blocks for these tasks to ensure they are completed without delay

3. Enhance Communication and Collaboration

Effective leaders show strong signs of self-awareness, empowering their teams to actively contribute to discussions and navigate diverse situations with assurance. In today's context, mastering collaboration skills is paramount as teamwork takes center stage.

Understanding the intricacies of team dynamics and cultivating trust within teams are vital components of effective leadership. Effective leaders show that they constantly drive a shared vision, recognize and leverage the unique strengths and contributions of individual team members to actively encourage innovation and collaboration.

• Effective Communication: Practice active listening during meetings. This involves summarizing what others have said to ensure understanding, thereby fostering a culture of respect and openness.
• Collaboration Skills: Encourage team brainstorming sessions to solve problems. A leader might organize regular cross-departmental meetings to facilitate creative solutions by leveraging diverse perspectives.
• Building Trust: Share successes and failures transparently with the team. By openly discussing challenges and lessons learned from failures, a leader builds trust and encourages a culture of honesty and continuous improvement

4. Encourage Innovation

The business end on Diversity and inclusion means fostering an inclusive environment by addressing topics like psychological safety and unconscious bias drives engagement and creativity.  Creativity and innovation stand as cornerstones of success. Leaders must not only recognize the importance of fostering a culture that values and prioritizes innovation but also champion adaptability as a key trait within their organizations. Encouraging creativity means providing a space where out-of-the-box thinking is not only welcomed but celebrated. Leaders can inspire their teams to think innovatively by setting aside time for brainstorming sessions, encouraging experimentation, and rewarding bold ideas. 

Being adaptable means being open to trying new approaches, pivoting strategies when necessary, and learning from both successes and failures. By instilling a culture of adaptability within their teams, leaders position their organizations for long-term success.

• Promoting Diversity: Implement mentorship programs pairing senior leaders with employees from diverse backgrounds. This behavior demonstrates a commitment to developing diverse talent and promoting inclusivity.
• Fostering Innovation: Organize 'innovation days' where employees can work on projects outside of their regular responsibilities. This initiative encourages creativity and could lead to new product ideas or process improvements.
• Psychological Safety: Create a safe space for sharing ideas and concerns. Leaders might hold regular open forums where team members can voice thoughts without fear of judgment or repercussion.

5. Recognize and respond to new information

Leaders that own the change their company goes through lead from vision and communicate the vision within their team. They involve people through change with empathy, understanding, and strategic foresight.

Balance applying change models to real-life scenarios but also need to consider the human aspect of change, ensuring their teams are supported, engaged, and motivated throughout the transition.

• Adaptability: Adjusting strategies in response to external changes requires a leader to be not just adaptable but also communicative and supportive.
• Anticipating Challenges: Proactively identifying potential obstacles to change and developing contingency plans should involve engaging with the team to leverage their insights and prepare them for possible scenarios.
• Creative Problem Solving: Encouraging out-of-the-box thinking to navigate challenges is essential, but doing so through a collaborative leadership style can enhance the process.

Where do you start?

Leadership in the context of reskilling and upskilling is multifaceted, requiring a blend of personal effective communication, inclusion, innovation, change management, all with the future in mind. By cultivating these essential skills, leaders can ensure that their organizations remain agile, innovative, and well-equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the modern business landscape.

It's clear that the emphasis on the importance of a holistic approach to leadership development is essential, one that integrates personal growth with organizational objectives, ensuring that both leaders and their teams are prepared to face the future with confidence and competence.

Relevance Learning is a proud partner of the world's front-running organizations. Contact us to schedule a free conversation to find ways to start enhancing your leadership of tomorrow. 

Our world is changing rapidly. Sometimes you might feel like you're not keeping up: the knowledge you have today, feels less relevant tomorrow. Know that you can take charge of your personal development at any time! Developing your power skills can start with asking yourself these three questions:

1. What is your view on your personal development?

A problem or challenge can turn into a valuable learning opportunity, if you let it! Are there other ways to look at the situation? What knowledge or skill can help you? Do you want to learn and can you find somebody to help you along? Cultivating a growth mindset will help you feeling less stuck and see opportunities in challenging situations. Critical thinking enables you to move beyond the paved ways!

2. How up-to-date are your skills?

We’re not talking about hard skills only here. Although it's crucial to focus on your technical knowledge, there are many power skills that can help you in numerous situations in your professional life, too. Facing an issue with cooperation? Improve your collaboration skills. Finding your ideas are not being picked up? Optimize your influencing skills. Feeling you’re struggling in managing your working hours?  Review your time management. By consciously taking another look at your power skills, you're able to optimize your performance.

3. How is your vitality at work?

Vital people make vital organizations. When you feel mentally and physically fit, you can perform to your best abilities and feel happy at work. Identifying and managing emotions, work-life balance, resilience, but also inclusivity and psychological safety are factors that impact your wellness. Organizations that facilitate discussion surrounding and improvement of these topics empower their people and stimulate a positive environment. Are you curious to see what vitality at work means? Take a look at our Vitality@work course.

Find out what is relevant for you

We believe everybody can learn, based on your strengths, ambitions and personal values. Whether it’s for yourself, or your organization as a whole: prioritizing learning is an investment that will help everybody to move forward.

After answering these three questions, do you feel more certain of your relevance? Or can we help you get a closer look? We are happy to support you in your personal development!

Training through Teams, Apps and experience platforms. Personalized learning, self-directed learning and life-long learning. These are all developments that were getting there, but came about years earlier due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lead consultant and trainer Amber Lingmont and VP Customized Solutions Anke Baak share five of the newest trends and insights which they identify in the field of learning and development worldwide. How do we learn nowadays? What is different than before? And is, besides the form, the content of our trainings also changing?

1. From event-based to technology-based

Before Covid made its appearance, many people took off to a conference center to follow a training course. Zoom conferences were possible at the time but were not often used. Because of the impediment of not being able to physically gather, technology plays a more central role nowadays. “We experience that not only knowledge can be taught online – long live all apps, platforms and short videos. Training skills and coaching also appears to work well digitally”, says Anke.

“Within many learning organizations and customers, the pandemic has caused a mind shift, and I am convinced that we will not go back to pure face-to-face learning. The hybrid combination of virtual and physical sessions will remain. This comes with all the associated benefits, such as less travel time and international flights. There are also numerous technological possibilities that have yet to (and will) be discovered by many organizations, such as gamification and virtual reality. At Relevance, for example, we work with PQ, which is a learning program in which participants receive a short assignment via the app four times a day. Micro learning is also becoming increasingly important within learning solutions. Watching a short video of a professor is often much more efficient than listening to someone for half a day. A blended learning trajectory? I am all for it. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize that the customization remains. Some organizations are more ready for this change than others.”

"A blended learning trajectory? I am all for it."

2. From independent practice to integrated learning

Back in the day, trainings were physically separated from practice. The boss had to miss you at work and accept your ‘lack of productivity’. Today, learning is becoming a permanent part of the job and even is integrated into it. The same goes for asking for and receiving feedback. “You used to take a separate, complicated course to improve these skills. Now, we prefer executives who give feedback in the moment and not merely elaborate on what can be improved, but also on what is going well,” explains Amber. “The younger generation is already learning this at school in work groups; real-life practice and direct feedback have become increasingly common. Working is a part of learning and vice versa. It is no longer separated from each other.”

Professions are also changing faster, resulting in reskilling and upskilling. “For example, take one of our large international customers in the automotive industry”, Anke continues. “They have 70,000 employees who are experts in the field of petrol engines, but suddenly need to know everything about hydrogen. How are they going to deal with this? How do they guide the development of their people? These kinds of issues will soon no longer be solved by sending people to school en masse but will be tackled on the job. A mechanic puts on their glasses and uses augmented reality to learn how to handle new engines. Companies that might still had doubts about the importance of learning, are rapidly persuaded.”

3. From one size fits all to personalized

“Admittedly, it was a nice business model for us when all the sales managers of a chain store used to go through the same process to learn skills,” says Anke. “Yet, I greatly applaud the development towards personalized training. As HR, we are increasingly moving away from fixed job descriptions and career paths. Moreover, nowadays individuals are facilitated in their development by organizations. What do they want to learn? What is needed for that? After all, everyone learns differently.”

“This trend means that we, as trainers, have to let go more rather than keeping control, which results in freer sessions,” Amber adds. “No more collective, but personal objectives apply. This, combined with individual coaching and own casuistry, causes that what has been learned is memorized better. Of course, with larger learning trajectories, a certain part remains generic, but the personal section of trainings is getting bigger and bigger. The more you let people discover their own path, the more they learn. Although it is a larger investment, companies increasingly feel that it leads to more happiness at work and additional bonding with the organization.”

"The more you let people discover their own path, the more they learn."

4. From pre-programmed to self-directed learning

“In the past, people were told what and how to learn. Nowadays, we have more freedom and responsibility, so in a way, we determine our own learning process”, says Amber. “But the fact remains that completely letting go doesn't work. After all, we can find all the knowledge in the world on the Internet, yet I am not a mathematician or rocket scientist. Therefore, some guidance is necessary, whether it is a kick in the pants, a joint start-up meeting or personal instruction. After that, we will implement the follow-up exercises ourselves.”

So, Amber does not believe in either-or but in both-and. “So learning remains partially controlled, the residual part depends on your own commitment, in order to take root.” Anke adds. “Just look at the primary schools that have abandoned their entire curriculum. This example shows that it is not effective for a large group of students and thus some structure is essential. It is all about balance.”

5. Today's topics: vitality, diversity, agile working & talent development

Besides the form of the trainings, the topics of training change over time as well. “Nowadays, when we look at our training and leadership programs, we see that trainings in the field of vitality and engagement are the most popular. Questions addressed here are; how mindful am I? How do I stay mentally healthy? How do I stay involved with my team?”

Anke also sees other subjects that are gaining popularity. “Diversity and inclusion, for example. And agile working. We want move from a fixed growth mindset to an agile mindset, in which everyone adapts continuously and becomes sustainably employable. And finally, talent development is hot topic as well. We all strive to be an attractive employer that offers people something in their development that makes them stay.”

New role for the trainer

The above developments in the training field have all changed the role of educators and trainers in the last year and a half. “We are getting the hang of Zoom and Teams, we understand the technology and we have now learned how to keep people involved online”, Amber concludes. “Training becomes facilitating and we are no longer the expert, but the coach instead. For us at Relevance, developing learning trajectories is more important than executing them. Because learning is something people do best with a little help, but in their own way.”

Are you interested in learning more about trends in learning and in what we do?

Feedback: it can be a tricky aspect of our professional relations. On one hand, we like to be critical to achieve the optimal result, together. While on the other hand, having our own work criticized can cause frustration. That’s why becoming a master in giving and receiving feedback is crucial to create an open culture within your organization.

VodafoneZiggo noticed this importance as well. To help their employees give and receive feedback, we developed a tailor-made training course, supporting their change management. Together, we focused on openness, behavioral change and teamwork. Nynke Hagen, Culture & Engagement Manager at VodafoneZiggo, and Marianne van Munster, Senior Trainer at Relevance, discuss this wonderful project.

Culture program

VodafoneZiggo starts their journey of opening up their company culture at the first value of three cultural values: ‘Open Up’. This value aims to create a culture of openness and accountability, a place where employees feel free to give feedback and ask each other questions. The other two values are ‘Team Up’ and ‘Step Up’. Nynke says: “Our company culture has been a high priority ever since the joint venture between Vodafone and Ziggo in 2017. From that point, we explored what we stand for as a company in the first year, which was followed by focusing on what we know about our values in the second year.” By taking these important steps, VodafoneZiggo was ready to take off behavior development within the company by the third year. 

Meeting the need for change

The company conducts an engagement survey amongst their employees numerous times a year. The results showed a strong desire among employees for improving (cultural) behavior. VodafoneZiggo wanted to respond to this need. This was certainly a good call, since the Covid-19 pandemic hit simultaneously. The result: a stronger need for clear communication and efficient teamwork than ever. “We started out by asking ourselves what kind of behavior we want to reinforce and prioritize in our company culture. That’s where the value of ‘Open Up’ came in,” Nynke explains.

Marianne proposed to visibly embed all three VodafoneZiggo values into the learning modules. She says: “We believe in making a meaningful contribution to support an organization in their strategically development and shaping partnerships instead of just providing a training.” Nynke agrees: “We collaborate in figuring out ways to inspire and improve behavior. Relevance has been a great sparring partner and source of inspiration to us.”

Feedback in teams

“The training set out to make a clear distinction on what feedback is, and more importantly, what is not! Then, we practice the ‘how,’” Marianne says. “The trainings were done from an individual perspective, but we soon learned that we needed to shift our focus towards creating a feedback culture within our teams. Now, more than 150 teams have followed the training. These teams vary from technicians and store staff, to our HR director and his team. By following the feedback training, employees create the basis for stronger teamwork and feel empowered to experiment. Exactly these skills are what the other two values, ‘Team Up’ and ‘Step Up’ focus on.

“If you're good at giving feedback doesn't matter if the other person is unable to receive it. Once you improve the way you receive feedback, how other people give you feedback is no longer important.”

Marianne van Munster

Major success

“The training was tailor-made for us, by Relevance. Each team had different content, placed into their specific context,” Nynke mentions. “The responses we received have been incredibly positive. The other day, someone told me he had reached his learning goals. He explained he went from feeling like a weak cup of coffee to a strong espresso!” Marianne elaborates. “I also saw a manager being visibly moved after our training. She was genuinely touched by seeing her team opening up.” These wonderful examples were also reflected by the date gathered from the conducted evaluations and effect scans. Upon completing the feedback training, people rated themselves two points higher on average than before following the training. Nynke adds: “I hear people are more comfortable and find it easier to give one-on-one feedback than before. Now, they are much more likely to comment on positive aspects instead of focusing on the negative. This wonderful development is entirely in line with our new mindset of continual learning. We look forward to embedding this mindset in other processes and programs too, such as leadership development and performance management.”

Unlimited learning

Now, employees at VodafoneZiggo think of feedback in terms of “supportive” and “developmental” instead of “positive” and “negative.” “This is a wonderful development, which is fully in line with our new mindset of continual learning,” explains Nynke. “To truly create a culture in which everyone feels safe to speak openly, we are also embedding this mindset in other processes and programs, such as performance management and leadership development. In addition to this feedback training, we still have hundreds of training modules and courses on the Archipel platform, a sister company of Relevance. Our employees have unlimited access to these.”

“Are you working on your company culture? Embed your values in everything you do and involve people from all over the company to create a new norm.”

Nynke Hagen

Safeguarding the future

Because as we all know: the learning process never ends. That’s why, in addition to this feedback training, VodafoneZiggo employees have unlimited access to hundreds of training modules on the Archipel platform, a Relevance sister company. Meanwhile, Nynke and Marianne continue to think of ways to expand the feedback training by organizing additional modules or refreshers. “We’re exploring how to give feedback from every possible angle,” Nynke explains. Managers are facilitated by custom developed practical tools, which help them to optimize their leadership skills, inspire their team members and help to give them feedback.”

To any organization that wants to work on its culture, Nynke would like to say: “Embed your values in everything you do. Involve people from all over the company. Choosing some standalone training module and expect for it to have an effect, doesn’t suffice. Make sure to continue the learning process after the training is over, so that new behaviors become the norm.”

Are you interested in creating a more open company culture?