In its latest report titled ‘Leadership Development Trends 2019’, Mercer |Mettl, one of India’s leading talent assessment firm, has mapped key leadership practices followed by organizations in the current business landscape. The survey was conducted across industries including AI and Machine Learning, Telecom, Commodities, Trading, Education, Retail, Media and Entertainment, Automobiles, Pharma & Healthcare, Publishing house, BFSI, BPO/KPO, Management Consulting, Human Resource, Energy, Government Sector, Manufacturing, NGO, etc.

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Speaking on the survey, Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer | Mettl, said, “A number of leadership development experts comprising over 500 respondents from more than 200 organizations have informed the findings of our ‘Leadership Development Trends 2019’ report. Through this report, our aim is to underscore the challenges faced by organizations, as well as the best practices that can help them make a difference.” Some of the key insights featured in the report are as follows:

Top leadership development trends:

- 49% of organisations treat upskilling and reskilling of their new and existing leaders as the primary objective of their leadership development programs. 

- 31% of the respondents use leadership development to create a robust internal succession pipeline. 

- Around one-fifth (20%) use it to identify individuals with excellent leadership skills.

- 23% of organizations focus on enabling leaders to become key drivers of business growth.

- Around 18% of organizations use it to enhance the interpersonal and behavioural skills of the participants, to help them to become more effective leaders.

Top leadership development challenges:

- Majority of organizations (80%) are currently facing a leadership talent shortage. While most organizations struggle to develop a team of effective leaders, those that do manage to create strong leadership face the risk of attrition. This is on account of the present leaders either being baby boomers (around 50%) on the verge of retiring or millennials who prefer to change jobs frequently.

- When asked about the most prominent challenge with their leadership development process, 30% of organizations also highlighted the inability/reluctance of their senior management to recognize it as a critical business imperative. 

- Around 25% of respondents reported the long duration of leadership development programs amongst the critical challenges in achieving the optimal ROI. 

- Nearly a quarter (22%) considered the high associated costs as a major issue.

- 42% of respondents revealed that they lack a sustainable leadership competency framework to build their leadership development programs. 

- Some organizations (23%) also pointed to the lack of a competency-based leadership development process as the primary cause behind inefficient leadership development programs.

Top leadership development best practices:

- The implementation of competency-based leadership development emerged as the dominant best practice that organizations are currently using to create great leaders and maintain the leadership success rate.

- The report also highlights some of the key attributes that organizations believe good leaders must possess. 

- As per 23% of the respondents, the ability to drive business growth is the hallmark of a successful leader. 

- 18% of organizations posited the ability to lead people and the ability to align personal vision with the organizational objective as the must-have qualities in a leader.

- Further, 16% believed that good leaders are effective change drivers, while 14% believed that they encourage ethical and environmentally sustainable management practices. 

- More than one-tenth (11%) of surveyed organizations identified successful leaders as those who possess the ability to negotiate and build partnerships.