While the performance and leadership expectations of managers have increased dramatically over the past few years, leadership investment and solutions have fallen behind. This has put HR leaders in a unique position. Companies now broadly recognize that as managers struggle, so do their businesses, sparking a renewed interest in funding new ways to support them.

In a recent conversation with HR leaders at Booz Allen Hamilton, Shippo and Extend we explored their new “playbook” for developing managers. But, as every HR leader knows, great ideas only take you so far, so we asked Shana Yearwood, Human Capital Lead at Booz Allen Hamilton, Ty Pemble, Director of People at Extend, and KJ Jennison, Director of Talent Development at Shippo how they’ve made leadership development a core pillar of their organizations.

Getting buy-in: data, education, and pilot programs

As every dollar of spend is scrutinized, HR leaders need to bring a diverse group of stakeholders along the journey. For Shana, KJ, and Ty this has meant: raising awareness of the challenges facing managers, its impact on and cost to the organization, educating on new and innovative solutions that can drive meaningful impact, and finally a “go-to-market” strategy that makes it easy for people to give it a try.

Leveraging data to solve real problems

Data is key, and the beauty is that we have a lot of it that we can use to our advantage. HR leaders are leveraging their own internal data, such as engagement surveys, performance reviews, OKRs, and retention data, to understand the core people challenges at a cohort level and the impact that it’s having on the organization.

External data is also crucial. Most commonly it’s utilized to help companies understand the cost of their problems and highlight the efficacy and ROI of leadership development solutions. There’s a growing body of academic research from Gartner and HBR on both the cost of ineffective leadership and the leadership interventions that can be used to support your investment decision. This is a massive change from where we were even five years ago, and should be utilized. As Shana said: “The research exists now. It's no longer difficult to point to real data around how new leadership interventions, like coaching, helps managers.”

Educating leadership, program participants and finance

When introducing a new approach to leadership development, you’ll need to run an internal education campaign to get people bought into your new vision. Here’s some tips for how to do that:

Changing the mindset around performance

For Shana, working at a large organization like Booz Allen Hamilton, means working in close alignment with HRBPs and different business units to change the narrative mindset around performance.  “There is still a lingering stigma of coaching for performance concerns versus coaching for performance optimization. We use whatever modes of communication we can, such as working through HR business partners and town halls, to message to leaders that performance optimization is going to be key for us moving forward.”

Introducing a fresh, modern approach

For KJ at Shippo there was some initial resistance based on prior solutions that weren’t particularly effective and carried a big price tag, “We needed to change how people are thinking about utilizing coaching and realizing that there's this modern, fresh way to do it that doesn't involve, a large budget and a large portion of your time.”

Setting the directive

Ty, from Extend, describes how their HR team was deeply involved in the rollout of the programs and “on the front lines” with managers to help them understand the purpose and value, making it clear it was a non-negotiable: “My team has been very involved in getting in front of our managers and making sure that we're clear that we’re providing resources and training for them. It's more of a push than just telling folks about it or trying to encourage it, or both.”

Start with a pilot program

Whether you’re adding a new solution or replacing an existing one, the best way to generate buy-in is to show, not tell. This starts by “lowering” the gradient and starting with a targeted investment in a target population. This gives you the opportunity to build organizational trust.

“As an HR professional, I understand what it means to develop people, and that developing our managers is core to any successful organization, “ KJ told us, “But you have to get people into the door so that they can understand what that looks like. What I found to be the most successful way to do this is to pilot a program with a targeted group. If you give them something that you really believe in, they will love it, too. We are all hungry for and craving support and development.”

Deep Dive: successful pilot programs

One thing that we’ve heard loud and clear is just how powerful pilot programs are to driving organizational adoption of your leadership strategies. Here’s some practical advice to follow, from the experts:

Participant selection

Once you’ve identified your target problems and population, take it a step further to identify who the right people are internally to evaluate the program and drive internal buy-in. Here’s how KJ thinks about selecting participants for a pilot program: “What I found to be successful is to be really targeted about getting a small pilot group together. These might be key stakeholders in the organization, high potential talent or leaders strategic to growth. They usually have great relationships with the organization which further helps to generate buy-in.”

Be transparent with participants

Being clear and intentional with participants upfront can be powerful. Transparency helps increase commitment and establish the importance of the program.  You should also let people know why they were selected, what you expect from them,  what they’ll get out of it, and that you also want honest feedback. At Shippo, KJ provides: “A welcome message from each participant’s executive communicating their excitement and the reason why they’re being invested in. It changes people’s perception and makes them feel connected to what we’re doing.”

Give yourself time to generate the data you need

Ty, Shana, and KJ each initially ran 4-month pilots for leadership interventions, like coaching and mentorship programs, that drove high-impact behavioral change. They started with baseline data and then collected qualitative and quantitative data during the pilot to share back to stakeholders.

Get Participants and their managers to be advocates

This comes back to the selection process and ensuring that you’re selecting participants who are bought in and can go on to help generate buy-in across the organization. Ty believes that it was the feedback from the pilot that made the difference: “The turning point for our coaching pilot program came once we started to hear resounding feedback from folks -- they loved the different perspective, being able to bounce ideas off someone, and felt that they’re getting a lot out of this. And then we also collected feedback from different managers who were also noticing a real impact in their performance. What was key is that folks were speaking up saying this is the kind of support they wanted to see. That's what drove our management team to say that we should invest more in this.”

As KJ said, “It's not you singing the praises. It's the data you get back from the pilot program, and it's also the participants affirming what they've experienced.”

Keeping leadership in the loop throughout

A brilliant tactic a lot of HR leaders use is keeping up the “hype” cycle up with leadership and stakeholders by sharing tangible examples of the impact. It’s also fun for you to be able to share the wins! “Managers have shared really wonderful stories throughout the pilot programs about loving their coach or the impact of joining an onsite manager training. I push those across the organization, making sure that our C-suite and other team members are hearing the impact of these programs and it goes a long way.”

Bringing it all together

HR leaders are hard at work creating a new leadership development playbook. It’s a bit of “building the plane as they’re flying it” -- understanding the new solutions available, educating stakeholders with clear data, and crafting thoughtful pilot programs with clear outcomes to help their managers get the support they need and flourish.

This is the third and final post in our three-part series exploring the biggest challenges managers face and how today’s top HR leaders are creating new and innovative solutions to support them.

For an in-depth review, watch our on-demand Rethinking How We Support Managers in 2024 webinar where HR leaders from Booz Allen Hamilton, Shippo and Extend share their insights.