How to better support your managers: learnings from HR leaders at Booz Allen Hamilton, Shippo and Extend

As highlighted in the first part of our series, the expectations of managers have increased while investment has decreased. The result? Managers, and their teams, are struggling.

To better understand this problem —  and more importantly, what to do about it — we convened HR leaders from Booz Allen Hamilton, Shippo, and Extend to understand how different companies are approaching leadership development in 2024. Here’s what we learned.

Setting the stage: we are in the midst of a generational change in management

Today’s manager is facing a much different environment than those of even just a few years ago. As KJ Jennison, Head of Talent Development at Shippo explained: “Hybrid environments are unstable environments from which to lead. On top of that, you have managers in dual IC and leadership roles, needing to move fast, and leading teams of varying size. It’s hard to stay on top of what you need to do while also leading people effectively. Effective people leadership is high touch: every person on your team is a unique individual who has different hopes, dreams, aspirations, motivations, etc and really effective managers have to look to understand that — and that takes time that managers rarely have.”

With new challenges, new environments and a new generation of managers, we need a new leadership development playbook. As Shana Yearwood, Human Capital Lead at Booz Allen Hamilton, sharedt: “the bar is incredibly high, and the only way to meet this moment is by giving people more resources and support. Organizations depend on it.”

We raised the bar for managers. HR leaders are raising the bar for how we support them.

HR leaders, similar to the managers they support, are in uncharted territory. Leadership development in hybrid and remote environments for an extremely busy manager population has required HR Leaders to rethink their playbook. KJ described the change:  “We used to have captive audiences in multi-day training and regular workshops. This just isn’t the case anymore.” Instead,  it’s about meeting managers where they are and empowering them with the resources they need when they need it,” says

So, what does that look like in practice? Here are the principles KJ, Shana, and Trevor are using to guide leadership development strategies:

1. Mostly virtual: in-person training, workshops and offsites still have tremendous value, but are more infrequent and need to complimented with evergreen learning
2. Very personalized: generic content just doesn’t drive consistent engagement; instead, learning and development needs to be specific to the function and seniority level
3. Bite-size, on-demand and flexible: managers need fast, on-demand, real-time answers that they can immediately apply.
4. High-Impact, Low-Lift: partnering with external vendors to deliver high-impact programs without major internal lift helps scale busy HR teams
5. Intentional and curated: with manager bandwidth at an all time low, programming and resources need to be highly curated, intentional, and immediately valuable

As managers become more important and critical to the success of every organization, so does the role of the people teams working hard to unlock their performance and potential. Ty, talent development lead at Extend, summarized it perfectly:  “The modern manager requires us to put together intentional training and resources to make sure they can truly thrive.”

The new leadership development playbook

The new leadership development playbook is an intentional blend of high investment programming and scaled solutions with a focus on continuous learning.

Effective leadership development bridges the gap between theory and application by both teaching the theory, and investing in programming and tools that enable managers to move beyond frameworks and empowers managers to integrate and develop skills over time and really hone an effective leadership style and practice. Unlocking an increase in performance through long-term behavior and mindset change requires a different approach to leadership that both meets people where they are and also creates an opportunity for appropriate challenge.

Here’s what the leadership development playbook looks like in practice at each of these organizations, in the words of their own HR leaders:

Shippo’s new leadership development Playbook

Described by KJ Jenison, Director of Talent Management

“What I have found to be more successful over the past few years is giving managers focused attention. What that really means is: are they able to talk to somebody who's skilled or experienced in this field? Who understands what they’re going through? Who they can bounce ideas off of? Then it's also about giving them some asynchronous, self guided materials that they can grab and go. This is why we’re invested in Mento coaching. Connecting managers with external experts, who they can talk to in real time, who can focus on them, and has experience operating in similar roles, has been the catalyst for success and their ability to be better managers. In turn our managers are building better relationships and helping their teams function better.”

Shippo has invested in connecting their managers with Mento coaches, who bring relevant industry experience, to provide them “focussed attention” and hands on support. They couple this high-touch investment with scaled solutions like asynchronous, self guided materials that managers can access on their own time, aligned with their busy schedules. This combination of resources has resulted in better managers, building better relationships, and ultimately  — better functioning teams.

Extend’s new leadership development Playbook

Tyler Pemble, Director of People

“Back in early 2023, we rolled out internal manager training, and we found that it just didn't create the same level of trust or credibility because our managers interact with those providing the training on a daily basis. Being able to bring in someone externally for onsite training and then also use a program like Mento for 1-on-1 coaching and mentorship has created a lot of trust and buy-in from our managers that we're really investing in. It allows a different perspective that goes a really long way with our organization. It's been refreshing and really good for the organization and we’ve heard resounding positive feedback from our managers. They say: we want more of this.”

Extend has found that investing in internal training wasn’t building trust and credibility within their organization. They adapted their approach to bring in external experts for onsite training and couple this with Mento to give their managers access to 1-on-1 coaching and mentorship. These external experts, with relevant experience, created meaningful trust and buy-in that previously wasn’t attainable from their internal programming.

Booz Allen Hamilton’s new leadership development Playbook

Shanah Yearwood, PH.D., Human Capital Lead

“A lot of our learning around new managers has been meeting them where they are. This means a variety of things: in-person meet ups for new managers. LinkedIn Learning, which they have access to for an entire year, helps upskill quickly but also is digestible. A manager can consume or pick what they need based on what's been curated for them by our team. We've also always been a proponent of mentoring and coaching programs. Internally, mentoring is still very much in full swing across the organization. And now, we're starting to bring back coaching and mentorship together through Mento to support our managers and leaders in the future.”

Booz Allen Hamilton has found success in meeting their managers where they are. In practice, they’re combining high-touch investments like in person meet ups, internal mentoring, and Mento coaching to provide their team with personalized, hands-on support with scaled, on-demand programming like Linkedin Learning.

As the bar has been raised for managers, today’s top HR leaders are crafting a new leadership development playbook to support them. This is the second in a three-part series exploring the new playbook for modern leadership development. Next, we’ll share strategies for program buy-in and implementation.

If you want to continue learning about the state of managers and what you can do about it, check out our recent Rethinking How We Support Managers in 2024 on-demand webinar here.