Meaning And Purpose: The Overlooked Keys To Employee Well-Being

The good news? Companies are finally taking employee well-being seriously. Today, more than half say well-being is a top priority. The bad news? Almost 60% of employees say they are struggling. And less than a quarter of them strongly agree that their employers care about their well-being.

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If your company has a goal to improve employee well-being in 2025, those stats might be discouraging to read. There’s no single, magical solution to this crisis. But as an executive coach and creator of a learning platform, I believe there are two factors in employee well-being that tend to get overlooked: meaning and purpose.

In turbulent times like the ones we’re experiencing, having a sense of meaning and purpose can carry us through difficulties and obstacles. So how can you create an environment where employees feel this way? Here are some strategies I’ve seen companies successfully use.

1. Get to know them.

Meaning and purpose are deeply personal things. What lights you up at work might not be what resonates with your team members. That’s why it’s important to talk regularly with them about what they’re passionate about.

Maybe you can find a meaningful project that can excite them. Since many of us are working remotely, you may have to be more deliberate about planning these conversations instead of waiting for them to spontaneously happen in the hallway or break room.

2. Bring the big picture into focus.

We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. You may understand exactly how important your employee’s particular talents are to your company’s mission, but they may have lost sight of this themselves, especially if your organization has gone through rapid change recently.

When you give feedback, remember to make these big-picture connections for your employees. Here’s an example of what that might sound like: “Because you are so great at identifying potential obstacles and how to overcome them, we were able to launch our mentorship program for new employees early.”

3. Help them focus.

How much energy do you feel when you’re using your skills and gifts on a project you really care about? And how does that compare to your energy levels when you’re at a purposeless meeting or working your way through your email?

I always advise my clients to figure out their “Big 3”: the top 3 areas where they should focus to have the biggest impact on the business, given their role and strengths. This is a great conversation to have with your team members. After you help them identify their Big 3, see if their calendar actually reflects these priorities.

4. Provide opportunities to serve others.

Research backs up what we all intuitively know: Helping other people makes us feel good, mentally and physically. If you have a volunteer program at your workplace, you’ve probably seen this firsthand. But doing something that benefits your colleagues has the same positive effects. (It also helps build relationships across the organization.)

If you don’t have a mentoring or peer coaching program, consider starting one. The employees who teach or advise will get as much from the program as the colleagues who receive their wisdom.

5. Create learning opportunities.

We all love the feeling of making progress or moving forward. Perhaps that’s why employees so deeply value learning and development. Learning programs are a huge factor in employee retention. It’s especially important to note that Gen-Z, who are expected to become the largest contingent in the workforce, craves learning even more than older generations.

Next Steps

Creating an environment where employees find meaning and purpose isn't a "nice to have"—it's essential for their well-being. As you plan for 2025, consider these next steps:

• Schedule one-on-ones focused on understanding what’s meaningful to each of your team members.

• Talk with team members about whether their most important work has the most room on their calendar. If it doesn’t, help them find ways to reclaim some time.

• Identify one opportunity each quarter for team members to mentor or teach others.

• Review your learning and development offerings. Are they accessible and aligned with what truly matters to your employees?

When employees find purpose at work, everyone wins. They're more engaged and resilient. Your organization gets its best work. And you build the kind of workplace culture that attracts and retains top talent.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Forbes.

3 Ways Cohort Learning Can Drive Business Goals

Are your organization’s learning programs in sync with your business goals? Creating this alignment is the highest priority of L&D professionals, according to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report 2024. But ensuring that training drives business results should also be top of mind for executives, department heads and even individual contributors looking to advance their careers.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

As a longtime leader, leadership coach, facilitator and now a learning platform creator, I’ve found that one tool gets overlooked when it comes to using L&D to advance business priorities: cohort learning.

And what a versatile tool it is. No matter what you want your organization to achieve, empowering your employees to learn with and from each other will help you get there faster. Here are three areas where I’ve seen cohort learning deliver big payoffs.

1. Breaking Down Silos

It’s all too easy to get so focused on the success of your own department or function area that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Silos can pop quickly, bringing a passel of problems with them. They hamper innovation, reduce efficiency and damage morale and engagement.

Once silos have appeared, they can be quite challenging to remove. Perhaps you’ve seen this for yourself at cross-functional meetings, where it can feel like different teams are speaking different languages. If one of your organization’s goals is breaking down silos, you’ll need to take things a step further than just having different departments meet together.

That step could be creating a cohort of leaders or rising leaders from across the organization to go through a development program together. This is a very different setting than a meeting where key decisions are being made.

When they’re learning together, participants from different departments feel safer dropping their guard. They stop focusing on who’s "winning" and start actually hearing each other and understanding others’ viewpoints. They learn from each other—not just from the content of the development program. And when that happens, all sorts of positive change can flower. They may identify inefficiencies, share best practices and build on one another’s ideas.

2. Advancing Underrepresented Groups

Despite some high-profile backlash to DEI programs, most companies are maintaining their commitment. No matter what the climate is at your own organization, creating opportunities for cohort learning can be a powerful way to support and increase diversity.

To understand why this is the case, we need to back up for a moment and talk about discrepancies in promotion rates. Women make up less than one-third of C-Suite positions, according to the Women in the Workplace 2024 report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org. But the problems start far below the executive level. The report also found that men outnumber women at every stage of the leadership pipeline. Racial or ethnic minorities have even less representation in the C-Suites, holding just over 12% of those positions.

But analysis by speaker, educator and consultant Rob Cross found that a focus on building relationships early in an employee’s tenure at a company can close the gap in promotion rates. With this in mind, you can shape your organization’s cohort learning programs to encourage relationship building. This is another reason it’s valuable to combine employees from different departments into the same learning cohort.

You can also look for ways to bring employees together with their more senior colleagues for learning. For example, members of an ERG could use a learning platform together, with veteran employees adding context and insight for newer employees.

3. Addressing Manager Burnout

If protecting your managers’ well-being isn’t a corporate priority right now, it should be. After the past few turbulent years, managers are burning out at alarming rates. More than two-thirds said they’re overwhelmed by their workloads. This may be because most new managers are not prepared for the challenges of their new roles.

A cohort learning program for managers can be a much-needed place for them to give and receive support, as well as a chance to share experiences and advice without the pressure of deadlines. It can even foster a sense of shared purpose, which is one of the best remedies for burnout.

Final Thoughts

Cohort learning is one of the most effective ways to ensure that learning and development programs align with business priorities and deliver the ROI your organization is looking for. By bringing employees together to learn, grow and reflect, you create opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas, relationship building and better understanding across departments. This approach doesn't just impart knowledge; it fosters the kind of collaborative problem-solving and innovation that can transform your organization.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Forbes.

5 Leadership Behaviors That Drive Employee Engagement and Retention

How can we improve employee engagement and retention? I don’t know a leader who isn’t focused on that question. There are good reasons for that: Every year, employees who aren’t engaged cause $8.8 trillion in lost productivity globally. In the U.S., voluntary turnover costs companies $1 trillion annually. As a company focused on leadership development, we think about engagement and retention in terms of the effect that leaders and managers can have. We’ve identified five leadership behaviors that have a big impact: 

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1. Promoting wellbeing. When employees are physically and emotionally spent, they can’t fully engage in their work, and they’re more likely to leave.

2. Encouraging flexibility. Employees want to work in a way that fits the rest of their lives.

3. Enabling growth and development. Helping an employee learn shows them that they are valued.

4. Delivering clear expectations. If employees don’t know what success looks like, they have a harder time engaging with their work.

5. Showing respect — always. Demonstrating care for employees is an essential, not a “soft skill.”

Let’s explore each of those behaviors, and how they affect engagement and retention, in more depth.

1. Wellness: The Foundation for Engagement and Retention

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, more organizations are recognizing the importance of employee wellbeing and making it a priority for leaders and managers. And with good reason: Gallup reports that wellbeing is top of mind for employees when they consider whether to look for a new job.

Employee wellbeing isn’t the sole responsibility of managers, of course. In the U.S., 80% of companies with more than 50 employees have wellness programs. But leaders and managers still have a huge impact on employees’ physical and mental health. They set the tone for so much — including how long employees work, whether they take enough breaks, and whether they feel the psychological safety to express themselves, take risks and make decisions with confidence.

Promoting wellbeing can take many forms. Teams can open their meetings by doing a wellness activity together, like a quick mindful breathing exercise. During one-on-ones, managers can encourage employees to talk openly about the employee’s stress levels and what steps to take (like reducing their workload) if their stress is getting out of hand.

2. Flexibility: Leadership Is Different in a Hybrid Environment

It’s no secret how much employees value flexibility, especially after the pandemic showed that many professionals don’t have to be in the office to work successfully. But flexibility can also be a flashpoint between leaders and employees, as we’ve seen most recently with Amazon’s return-to-office mandates.

Managers in companies that allow remote or hybrid work should get up-to-date on the best practices for leading remote teams. For example, employees who take advantage of these flexible schedules should be evaluated the same way as their in-office counterparts, and must be kept in the loop on communications. This isn’t instinctive. Even if managers went through extensive leadership training before the pandemic, they need a new set of skills for our new work environment. According to Gallup, however, 70% of managers have not been trained on how to lead a hybrid team.

Even if a team has fully returned to the office, there are still opportunities to grant flexibility. For example, allow employees who pick up their kids from school to leave early and then catch up later that evening.

3. Development: Learning Opportunities Dramatically Affect Retention

Employees want to work at companies where their leaders and managers care about their growth and development. In one survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn.

Companies can make this investment in their employees’ development even when training budgets are tight. Giving more regular, and more useful, feedback is a great start. Employees want to know how they are doing and expect their leaders to tell them. Even if it might be hard to hear in the moment, most people value getting practical, actionable feedback.

Delegating with growth in mind is another underutilized tool for growth and development. I’m a big fan of this strategy because it leads to learning in the flow of work, which is more likely to stick. I’ve also found that connection strengthens learning, whether it happens through mentorship, cohort learning or ERGs.

At Newberry Solutions, we’re especially excited about the potential for high-tech options, like our New Lens® platform, to make learning and development more affordable and more accessible. As I’ve written before, opening up leadership development to more employees helps companies identify more potential leaders and keeps ambitious, growth-minded employees from jumping ship.

4. Clarity: Communicate Clear Expectations

I frequently hear from the professionals I work with that they get frustrated because their bosses don’t set clear expectations for their work or define what success looks like for their roles. I also hear from employees who get frustrated because their bosses send conflicting messages: They say one thing, but their actions seem to  indicate something completely different.

What I’ve observed is part of a larger issue. A survey by Gallup found that only 44% of respondents strongly agreed that they know what’s expected of them at work. Even worse? That figure is a 15% drop from 10 years ago.

So why are leaders seemingly getting less clear? I believe factors include heavier workloads, more distractions (there are more than four times as many smart-phone users as there were 10 years ago) and managers and leaders who aren’t skilled communicators, especially when working with remote employees.

To give employees the clarity they want, managers and leaders should “connect the dots” between an employee’s work and the big-picture goals of the organization, as well as between the manager’s own goals and actions. It also helps to slow and be a little more thoughtful and deliberate when communicating expectations. 

5. Respect: Engage Employees by Showing Authentic Care

Respect is the theme that unites everything on this list. While so much has changed in our workplaces over the past several years, one thing remains the same as ever: People want to be treated like people. They want to work for leaders who care about them and honor their humanity. In fact, the Center for Creative Leadership has found that “treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most helpful things an individual leader can do.”

Unfortunately, though, employees feel less cared for at work than they did four years ago. With all of us so busy, even the best-intentioned leaders can overlook the important behaviors that demonstrate their respect to employees. However, this is a pattern that leaders can start turning around quickly. Just one meaningful conversation per week with their manager makes a difference in an employee’s performance. That conversation can be a chance to do some of the other things on this list: Check in on the employee’s wellbeing; clarify any questions they have about expectations; ask them about their goals and the development opportunities they need to achieve those goals.

Another way to show respect is balancing results and relationships. “In most situations, this only requires making small exceptions for people (when kids get sick, accidents happen, or someone needs a mental health break), but the impact on satisfaction and engagement will be significant,” leadership development consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman write in Harvard Business Review.

An anecdote that Zenger and Folkman shared in their article has really stayed with me, and I want to leave it with you as an example of how leaders can demonstrate respect. In explaining why he appreciates his boss so much, an employee said, “He calls me when he doesn’t need anything.” 

Isn’t that the kind of leader we all want to be?

Next Steps

If you’re ready to improve engagement and retention at your organization, there are a couple of ways that our New Lens platform can help:

1.  Delivering the learning opportunities that employees crave. New Lens is a Capability Academy built on decades of leadership success and in-the-field learning from proven business leaders. It's designed to be affordable, scalable and customizable, allowing you to expand access to leadership development training, personalize learning, enable growth in the flow of work and even build relationships

2.  Developing leaders that employees love working for. New Lens emphasizes the skills, such as communicating with impact and developing a high-performing team, that managers need to really move the needle on engagement and retention.

Schedule a demo today to see what New Lens can do for your organization. Visit www.newlensleadership.com or contact us at info@newlensleadership.com to learn more and get started.

Bite-size learning can fill employees' craving for development

As someone in the leadership development space for over 15 years, I’ve seen a big gap emerge between how much employees want (and need) to learn on the job and how much they’re able. I believe the solution to this problem will come from thinking small—at least in leadership development content—to bite-size learning.

Image by reallywellmadedesks from Pixabay

The desire to learn isn’t the problem 

One reason I love my work is that I get to fulfill employees’ desires to learn and evolve professionally. In one survey, more than nine of 10 respondents said learning opportunities would motivate them to stay with their employers longer. About the same number believe that learning and development increase engagement. Meanwhile, HR executives say they are feeling the pressure to provide more training 

That pressure isn’t just coming from employees, though.  Executives are losing sleep over whether their employees have the skills and potential to become their organization’s future leaders. 

So if executives believe employees need more development, and employees want to learn more themselves, what’s the problem? 

Too little time, too many distractions 

First, we’re all squeezed for time these days. More than half of workers say their jobs have gotten more intense and demanding. We already recognize that overstuffed schedules lead to burnout. But they also take a toll on learning and development. Over 40% of employees lack time for training and education. Another study found that employees have an average of 24 minutes to spend learning during an average workweek. 

And those minutes probably don’t all come at the same time. We’re only able to spend an average of three minutes on any task before being interrupted or switching to do something else. 

While we joke about our goldfish-like attention spans these days, the reality isn’t funny. Typically, we can only pay attention to one screen for 47 seconds at a time. 

It’s hard to think about taking even a half-day away from work for leadership development in this kind of work environment.

Teach in the way people learn 

When my company was developing New Lens, our own learning platform, we knew we had to design it for busy, distracted users. Our embrace of micro-learning content is part of a larger trend.    

“We have to teach in the way people learn,” leading analyst Josh Bersin says. “People want engaging, bite-size learning that is integrated into everyday work. Twenty minutes feels too long in this day and age. Focus on content that is two to seven minutes long.” 

Priyanka Mitra of the research firm Everest Group is another advocate for “bite-size” learning: “This less-is-more approach often aligns well with the modern learner, who grapples with shorter attention spans and limited time availability.” 

Today’s technology makes it possible for training and development to be available wherever and whenever we can engage with it. Imagine a busy professional who wants to build her leadership skills, but who can’t find room on her calendar for a full-day, offsite development class. However, the same professional has a few minutes between meetings each week she can use to complete lessons on her phone. 

When bite-size learning is better 

It’s important to note that bite-size development content isn’t just a response to our harried schedules. In some situations, shorter, more accessible material is actually a more effective way to learn. 

As you’ve probably experienced yourself, knowledge is easier to retain when you can put it into practice. Let’s imagine two employees, Carmen and Vanessa, who want to get better at leading productive meetings. 

Carmen attends a daylong offsite event that’s packed with information. Vanessa uses a learning platform that delivers five- to seven-minute lessons and that she can access from any of her devices. While the offsite event provides useful advice on meetings, the pace of the training makes it hard for Carmen to remember every point. Back on the job, it’s a pain to dig through the materials to find the relevant information when she needs it. 

But with the learning platform on her phone, Vanessa can easily access relevant information when she needs it—for example, when she’s creating a meeting agenda—and view the material as many times as she needs to for retention. 

“Where bite-size learning excels is that it recreates the ‘spacing’ that learners need because it’s designed to be returned to again and again,” says Ryan Chynces, senior manager of online education at Hootsuite. “(T)he learner’s effort of going back and retrieving that material makes it easier for them to recall it later down the line.” 

Longer-format forms of leadership development are not going away. And, as an experienced executive, consultant, and leadership development expert, I don’t want them to. But I’m also excited about the different forms that learning can take today. By embracing bite-size learning alongside traditional methods, we can create a more flexible, accessible, and effective approach that better serves both organizations and employees. 

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

Don’t just spend big bucks on training. This is how leadership development can happen every day

Take a moment to think about the last leadership development experience you or your team had. How much really changed afterward? 

All too often, the answer to that question is “Not much.” 

Photo by Bakr Magrabi from Pexels

Companies spend a lot on leadership development—more than $80 billion annually. But they’re feeling some doubts about the ROI. Just 15% of L&D professionals rate their organization’s programs as highly effective. And only about a quarter of companies say their leadership development training is valuable and up-to-date. 

As someone who’s worked in this space a long time, I hate hearing figures like these, because they represent missed opportunities. I can tell you firsthand that when leadership development training does work, it delivers payoffs in employee engagement, retention, productivity, performance, and well-being. 

But amid all the options, how do you choose one that will create real change in your organization? Here are a few things to keep in mind. 

Look beyond the surface 

When researchers interviewed HR executives about how they select leadership development programs, most said they were influenced by factors that ultimately are superficial, such as a snazzy website or charismatic instructors. 

Both of those things are great to have, of course. But they shouldn’t be the main influences on your decision. All the bells and whistles in the world won’t make much of a difference if the program doesn’t address the needs of your organization’s leaders with relevant content that’s delivered effectively.

Expand access to development 

For a long time, we’ve thought that the ROI of leadership development depends on choosing the “right” people (high performers and high potentials) to take part. But that thinking is now dated. As companies flatten their hierarchies and worry over the state of their leadership pipelines, it’s clear that we need more leaders, not fewer. And providing leadership development to more of your people can help identify more of those future leaders. Another way to think about this is to consider what an employee has the potential to do—not just what they’ve already done—when deciding who gets leadership development. 

Right now, you may think all of this sounds good, but what about your (probably shrinking) training budget? I don’t want to minimize this concern, but I am also heartened by the rapid innovation in L&D technology that can help make leadership development more affordable and scalable. 

Bring learning into everyday work 

Think about the important lessons that have really stuck with you in your own life. I’m betting you learned those lessons through experiences, not just reading a textbook, listening to a talk, or watching a video. Leadership development works the same way. Choose programs that provide practical experience in using new skills. If you already have a leadership development program, look for ways to integrate the content into employees’ daily experiences. For example, managers and reports could talk about topics from the program in their one-on-ones. 

Promoting “growth in the flow of work” is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your leadership development programs make a real impact. Companies that take this approach are four times more likely to be successful innovators and more than five times more likely to engage and retain employees. 

Combine learning with connection 

One of my favorite ways to magnify the impact of leadership development training is by making learning a group pursuit instead of a solo one. During my experiences facilitating and coaching employee groups, I’ve seen participants feel more accountability around implementing what they are learning. 

A group approach can also increase the relevance of training. For example, a newer employee might not know how to apply a lesson from the program in your organization. A more experienced colleague can help that employee understand the connection between what they’re learning and your company’s business goals. 

I hope these ideas will take some of the overwhelm out of choosing leadership development programs and help you obtain a stronger return on your investment. As you explore the options, look beyond the surface to find a solution that aligns with your culture, challenges, and goals. Your leaders—and your company’s future—are worth the effort. 

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

A Surprising Secret To Leadership Development

When my company recently hosted a webinar on leadership development, I asked several polling questions to make sure I was addressing attendees' key concerns. One question asked attendees to choose their current top priority in their development programs: content, coaching, connection or something else. The big winner? Connection.

Photo by Anna Shvets

Connection Is Key

Surprised? That response actually tracks with what I’m seeing as I work with corporate clients. Leadership today requires a greater focus on collaboration and relationships. Positive connections at work have been shown to make employees happier and more engaged. (With employee engagement at an 11-year low, that’s a pretty big deal.) At the same time, though, the rise of remote and hybrid work is adding an extra level of challenge to creating strong workplace cultures and a sense of community.

While connection is definitely on the radar of most leaders, the potential of leadership development programs to create that connection often is not. But I've found that bringing employees together doesn’t just enhance learning; it also helps them build lasting relationships that support their success and the organization’s.

If you’re involved in selecting a new leadership development program for your company, or even updating your current one, consider how the program fosters the types of connections I've listed below. As my own company developed our digital platform, this was a key consideration in the design, and it has made a big difference in its adoption and employee engagement.

Employee-Peer Relationships

I’m starting here because the value of healthy peer relationships often gets overlooked. If members of a team rarely work in person, or if everyone tends to keep their head down when they are together, leadership development might be one of the rare chances they have to get to know each other outside of their daily routines.

A good training program can help your employees better appreciate each other’s value and understand each other’s perspectives. It can also help employees feel invested in each other’s success, which increases accountability. You could even build peer-to-peer learning into your leadership development program, which helps disseminate best practices, break down silos and stretch your training budget.

Employee-Manager Relationships

When an employee takes part in a leadership training program, that doesn’t mean their development is off their manager's plate. Look for training options that involve managers in their team members’ growth. For example, the employee could have regular check-ins with their manager about goals they set in their leadership development program. Or the manager could help ensure employees get real-world opportunities to use the new skills they’re learning.

Any leadership development program you implement should also align with your organization’s approach to helping employees grow. In other words, don’t select a program that’s at odds with how you train managers to coach employees.

Employee-Executive Relationships

With the rise of hybrid work, there’s a risk of employees’ worlds becoming too small. We all have a lot fewer chances to strike up impromptu conversations in the hallway. Employees may lose sight of the bigger picture beyond their own team. On top of that, they may be missing out on opportunities to interact with the higher-level leaders who make decisions about their advancement.

Effective leadership development programs can restore some of those opportunities. For example, as part of the program, participants could be assigned a special project that they present to higher-ranking leaders. Even better? Build mentorship and sponsorship into your development programs. These key relationships can make all the difference in whether an employee achieves their career goals—and whether your organization will benefit from all they can bring to the table.

Employee-Company Relationships

This is another kind of relationship that often gets overlooked, but employees want to feel a connection with their organizations. Just as they do in their interactions with other people, they want to sense that their company values them, hears them and treats them with respect.

Investing in leadership development can deepen the loyalty your employees feel to your organization, which, in turn, affects engagement and retention. Research by LinkedIn has found that almost all employees would stay longer at an organization that cares about helping them learn and grow.

Ultimately, the secret to effective leadership development lies in its ability to strengthen the bonds that drive organizational success. By selecting programs that prioritize connection, companies can unlock the full potential of their workforce.

This article was originally published by Forbes.

What’s Wrong With Leadership Development (And 5 Ways To Fix It)

As an executive coach and founder of a leadership development learning platform, I thrive on seeing our clients achieve lasting change. Unfortunately, not all organizations see positive outcomes from their leadership development programs, despite the global market exceeding $81 billion a year.

Post-pandemic, it's clear that this investment often fails to deliver expected results. So what's the issue, and more importantly, how can we solve it?

Image by fahribaabdullah14 from Pixabay

Too Many Leaders Aren’t Prepared

One of the biggest red flags about leadership development I’ve seen recently comes from the Josh Bersin Company. Their two-year study of corporate leadership programs found that just one out of four companies believes their leadership training efforts are delivering high value. Additionally, only 24% of companies say their development model is relevant and up-to-date. This is alarming—and also not an outlier.

You don’t have to look far to find other indicators that leadership development programs are falling short. I’ve seen in my own work that far too many managers are promoted not because they’re ready to lead, but because there’s an operational need. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), an international HR association based in London, calls managers who have not had formal leadership training "accidental managers."

It gets worse. CIPD also found that these ill-prepared managers are driving employees away—specifically, one in three employees who quit. And 84% of respondents in a study by the Society for Human Resource Management said poorly trained managers create stress and extra work. Might this help explain why less than one-third of U.S. employees feel they are engaged at work?

I believe that a lack of training and preparation for leadership roles is also damaging managers’ mental health—to devastating effect regarding their performance. More than half of managers feel burned out. It’s time for this to change.

5 Key Steps For Change

Clearly, the leadership development industry as a whole needs a shakedown. We must rethink how we approach our work. That imperative has been top-of-mind for both me and my company as we have responded to pandemic-driven changes in the business environment while simultaneously developing our own leadership development platform. Here are five of our key learnings, based on both our own experiences and current research:

1. Mental health comes first.

Even before leadership development, prioritize enhancing your managers’ well-being. No training program can be truly effective if the participants are at their breaking point with stress, fatigue and burnout.

2. Expand access to leadership development.

As Josh Bersin puts it: "Leadership is now everyone’s job. The new employee or first-line manager who’s leading a project to save money or analyze the sales team is now a leader. What education, training and perspectives have you given this person?"

When only a few employees get access to leadership development, your organization misses out on what others could potentially contribute. Even small improvements across a larger number of employees can have a big impact.

3. Increase the relevance of training.

Leadership development is not "one size fits all." You can’t just throw a huge online content library at your employees and expect them to figure out what they need. Instead, look for programs you can customize according to both organizational goals and your employees’ needs.

4. Leverage the power of connection.

Your employees have so much wisdom to share with each other, but mentorship, sponsorship and peer learning are all underutilized tools when it comes to leadership development. As a bonus, such programs also strengthen connections that may have frayed during the shift to hybrid work.

5. Build learning into every day.

Most of us have had the experience of going to a development workshop or event, learning things we’re excited about—but then never putting that knowledge into action. Studies have found that if we don’t apply what we’ve learned within a day or two, then we’ll forget most of it. It’s more effective to take even a little time every day to learn and then start trying out that new knowledge right away.

Final Thoughts

I’ll end with a call to action. Think about the current state of leadership at your own organization. What’s happening with your leadership development programs? And how effective are your managers and leaders?

Now, more than ever, companies must invest wisely in their leaders and empower them to drive meaningful change in the ever-evolving business landscape. The future depends on it.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. To read more of my contributions to Forbes Coaches Council, click here.

Retain Women Amid ‘the Great Resignation’

I’ve written before about “the Great Resignation” — the record number of people who have been leaving their jobs this year. Now we’re seeing more and more headlines that women are driving this phenomenon.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov from Pexels

The Women in the Workplace 2021 report from McKinsey & Company and Lean In highlighted the growing crisis:

One in three women says that they have considered downshifting their career or leaving the workforce this year, compared with one in four who said this a few months into the pandemic. Additionally, four in ten women have considered leaving their company or switching jobs—and high employee turnover in recent months suggests that many of them are following through. … The risk to women, and to the companies that depend on their contributions, remains very real.

As we look toward the new year, I wanted to share some ideas about how organizations can turn this situation around in 2022. Hopefully, you’ll find at least one strategy on this list that you can bring to your own workplace.

Offer More Flexibility

Remote work and flexible schedules skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now some companies, including tech giants, are making those changes permanent. For example, Microsoft now allows employees to work from anywhere for half of their work week, and even 100% remotely with manager approval.

Flexibility is especially important to women. That makes sense, considering that women make up 75% of caregivers. However, simply offering remote or hybrid work options is not a cure-all when it comes to retaining women. Such changes must be implemented thoughtfully to ensure that women who are working remotely are not penalized for being less visible at the office

Promote Mentorship and Sponsorship

Understandably, women are leaving their jobs when they don’t see opportunities for advancement. And one reason that women don’t move up the ladder at the same rate as men do is that men are sponsored more often. 

What’s the difference between a mentor and a sponsor? While both provide valuable career advice, sponsors also connect you to opportunities and advocate for you.

A program that connects women to mentors and sponsors sends a powerful message. That’s what companies like HERE Technologies have found.

Emphasize Wellbeing

During the pandemic, more organizations began to embrace the idea that employee wellbeing isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s essential for sustainable success. Because women are more stressed and burned out than men are, wellbeing initiatives are a powerful tool for retaining women employees. 

Your company can support employees by offering wellness subsidies, as Deloitte and DocuSign do. Or you could help employees access mental health services, as Starbucks and Target do.

Resources You Can Use

At Newberry Executive Solutions, our focus is providing resources that organizations can use to engage and retain the women leaders that are so crucial to their future. As your company makes plans for 2022, I invite you to explore our programs, books, New Lens app and other offerings that can help you invest in women.