Cultivating Tomorrow's Leaders: Strategies for Effective Talent Development

In an exclusive interview with Asia Business Outlook, Ching Li Chew, People & Communications Director, Southeast Asia, KONE, shares her views on the critical skills and competencies needed when developing future leaders, how organizations leverage technology to enhance talent development initiatives, digital tools to enhance talent development initiatives, strategies to retain and motivate high-potential employees, and more. She has over 20 years of HR professional experience in outsourcing, shared services, consulting, and corporate HR leadership roles. 

Developing future leaders requires a keen understanding of the evolving business landscape. What are the most critical skills and competencies that organizations should focus on when developing future leaders?

In this dynamic business environment, future leaders will require quite a broad range of skills and competencies. More importantly, two skills are essential for leaders: emotional intelligence (EQ). As a leader, it is vital to manage their own emotions and the emotions of others as well. Hence, with this EQ, it's essential to build a strong team relationship, manage conflicts, and foster a positive working environment. The second skill is adaptability (AQ), which looks at an individual's resilience level and ability to thrive when facing uncertainty, challenges, or adversity. Hence, AQ is crucial for leaders as they must be agile and flexible while making any actions or decisions, able to bounce back from any setback, learn from past mistakes, and move forward. Hence, this is important when business dynamics keep changing and need to navigate change, manage the team, stress, and steer the peer groups to the company's objectives.

Creating a culture that values continuous learning encourages employees to seek growth opportunities. How can organizations foster a culture that supports continuous learning and development for aspiring leaders?

When fostering a culture that prioritizes continuous learning and development, organizations must begin with the leaders from the top. There are a few ways the organization can support this. The first is when leaders prioritize their development; they will set a very powerful example and reinforce the learning throughout the entire organization. Hence, they need to lead this by example by cascading down and having similar priorities in their team. The second is a key strategy can take to get the leaders to promote cross-functional collaboration. 

Moreover, some functions work inside silos, so it is essential to break these silos and take the opportunity to foster collaboration among the different functions. So with that, when leaders allow their team members to work in cross-functional collaboration, it will help the team to be exposed to different perspectives, learn other areas of expertise, broaden their knowledge in terms of how to run the business, and also put themselves in their shoes in other functions as well. Overall, it will help with their learning and collaboration among the organization and the team members.

Eventually, it is important to have a culture that will recognize and reward learning so that the whole culture of learning and development will continue in the organization. Besides, the leaders can recognize them through special recognition programs or by performance evaluation. As a part of learning, leaders can take on additional certifications or additional job rotations, and this has to be put into their KPIs and performance appraisals so that it can be assessed and evaluated for their development work.

Technology and digital tools have revolutionized talent development. How can organizations leverage technology and digital tools to enhance talent development initiatives?

There are a lot of technologies that are currently available in the market, such as mobile learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence (AI), and gamification. The companies that embrace these technologies have integrated them as part of their training programs, and it helps with the engagement and motivation of the employees in terms of learning. So as part of this whole learning, as a participant, the learner would be able to gain as part of the gamification whole process; there's a point system, badges, leaderboards, and challenges that can incentivize participants to enjoy learning. 

For instance, there is one very effective e-learning application called Hox Hunt that teaches you to identify and report suspicious emails via fun and engaging way. Hoxhunt sends simulated phishing emails for you to recognize and report.  When you report a Hoxhunt simulated phishing email, you get the chance to learn more about the simulated phishing attack you received and earn badges and points. The learning is bite sized and we will learn something new each time. 

Mentorship and coaching are critical components of effective talent development. How can organizations establish and maintain successful mentorship and coaching programs to support emerging leaders?

Mentorship and coaching programs are one of the key programs as part of the whole talent management and developing the talent pool in the company. There are certain ways that organizations can perform; for instance, our organization has this program as a part of the talent development initiative designed for identified emerging leaders for nine months. It's an elevated program besides having blended learning and mentoring segments as well. In this segment, we match the mentor and mentee and have leaders that will closely match with the mentee, the participant, or the emerging leaders. So we will match it based on their career aspiration, their skill gaps, and also their personality fit. 

Moreover, before the coaching and mentorship programs get started, leaders get the assigned coaches, whom they go through training so that they know the dos and don'ts and how to lead the whole discussion with the mentees and participants. The other is tracking; with this, the mentee has to take the initiative to lock in time, so they are supposed to arrange time with the mentor, and whatever discussion they have between them is private and confidential. Hence, the human resources department doesn't know what was being discussed, or this discussion does not necessarily need to be shared with their current line manager as well. Furthermore, the mentee has to be fully accountable to seize this opportunity to leverage this mentorship program and have a deep discussion about their career progression and development areas.

Establishing a robust leadership pipeline is essential for long-term success. What strategies can organizations implement to retain and motivate high-potential employees as they develop into future leaders?

For high-potential employees, it is essential to treat them or develop them differently, as there are only a few personnel in the organization who can put them into certain special programs. As pointed out earlier, our organization has a nine-month elevated program for emerging leaders that has blended learning in terms of leadership and also about business. The key highlight of this program is that they will go through a 360-degree assessment, which is part of their fit, and receive feedback from their peers, team members, and bosses so that they're able to come up with their development plans. In addition, the program will pair them with mentors, enabling them to participate in mentoring sessions and complete group stretch assignments. Hence, they will also get assigned to other functions such as finance projects,  quality i.e. lean sig sigma related or product enhancement projects. Furthermore, the organization arranges coffee chat sessions with the leaders so that they have time to network and engage with them as well.