Empathy, AI, and the Leaders of Tomorrow: Revolutionizing L&D at World of Learning 2024"
James Gentle ????????
YOUR Catalyst for CHANGE | Leadership Teams Transformation | High-Performance Teams Facilitator | Competitive Advantage through People | Communications & Motivators practitioner | Learning & Development Lead | Coach
At this year's World of Learning conference, I set out to uncover the trends shaping the future of learning and development. Through numerous conversations with industry leaders, three key themes emerged, each with significant implications for how we approach Leadership and talent development in the coming years.
1. Leadership Succession Planning - Bridging the gap between yesterday’s leaders and the leaders we need tomorrow.
Leadership development remains a hot topic, but with a twist. There's a growing emphasis on succession planning and stakeholder management, underpinned by a crucial realisation: tomorrow's leaders need a skillset that may not be fully modelled by their current superiors!
a) Succession Planning
The key insight here is that the leaders of tomorrow won't necessarily learn all they need from current leaders who honed their skills in a different era.? Combine this with an ever changing technological advancing landscape and many face a perfect storm!? Luckily an evolving L&D industry is rising to serve.
b) Stakeholder Management
The ability to navigate complex relationships with diverse stakeholders is becoming a crucial leadership skill. This reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of modern business, where leaders must balance the needs of employees, customers, investors, and the wider community.? Today challenges often being compounded by Hybrid working which puts physical barriers in the way of building meaningful relationships.
2. The rise of the 'Empathetic Leader'.
There's a growing awareness that tomorrow's leaders need to develop skills not fully modelled by their current superiors. This points to a potential shift in leadership development programmes, focusing more on adaptability, emotional intelligence, and inclusive decision-making.
Some call these ‘soft-skills’ yet l don’t like the term. While there's no consensus on a replacement term, there's widespread agreement that these vital skills are anything but 'soft'!
Some favour terms like 'human skills' or 'essential skills', but these have their critics. This semantic debate reflects a deeper shift in how we value these abilities. As AI and automation reshape the workplace, these quintessentially human capabilities are becoming increasingly crucial.
Regardless of what we call them, there's a clear trend towards prioritising the development of these skills across all levels of the organisation. The challenge for L&D professionals will be to design programmes that effectively cultivate these complex, nuanced abilities.
3. AI: From Disruptor to Enabler
The conversation around Artificial Intelligence has noticeably matured. Rather than focusing on potential job displacement, discussions centred on how AI can augment human capabilities and transform learning experiences.
My perspective on Al was changed when speaking with Andrew D'Souza at Ideas Fest in September. He suggested thinking of AI as a new species with some of our traits, but still very much in its developmental stages. This framing helps shift our thinking from AI as a threat to AI as a powerful collaborator.
The implications for L&D are profound. We're likely to see an increased focus on:
- AI literacy: Helping employees understand and effectively work with AI tools.
- Human-AI collaboration: Developing skills that complement AI capabilities.
- AI-enhanced learning: Leveraging AI to create more personalised, adaptive learning experiences.
Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Future - Learning & development
As these trends converge, two critical areas emerge as priorities for future-proofing our workforce:
1. Enhanced Human Skills: The ability to demonstrate empathy, creativity, and complex problem-solving will become even more valuable. L&D programmes will need to evolve to develop these sophisticated capabilities effectively.
2. AI Integration: Developing the skills to work effectively alongside AI systems will be crucial. This goes beyond mere technical proficiency to include understanding AI's capabilities, limitations, and ethical implications.
A Closing Thought
As we embrace AI's potential in the workplace, an intriguing question arises: How might we leverage AI to support employee wellbeing and mental fitness? Could AI-powered tools help us create more balanced, fulfilling work environments?
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I'm eager to hear your thoughts on these trends. How is your business preparing for this new era of learning and development?
What challenges and opportunities do you foresee?
I’ll end with a quote from Ruby Wax
“Mindfulness sounds too vegetarian”
I’ve nothing against vegetarians - I think she means that maintaining a healthy and present mind should be for everyone, not just a small proportion of the population!
A couple of thank you's: Jill Pennington - for sharing Richard's Story, Simon Dennett - for enabling us to talk to humans not Robots, Zoe Harrison from brining the drama to empathetic leadership, and Cathy Hoy for her candid interview with Ruby Wax.
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This indeed is a great question: How might we leverage AI to support employee wellbeing and mental fitness? AI certainly has some uses here: (1) Access to past public information (2) Available 24x7 (3) Can try to answer most questions and offer help - even ‘I’m feeling low, can you help me’. (4) AI has no emotion and will not judge you. But, I don’t it will ever have true human empathy (it does not really know how it feels to be tired or sick) nor would it really take initiative to proactively help your team (it does what you ask it do based on inputs you give it - these asks can be very complex and it has the ability to learn, adapt very quickly and spot something before a human but this is not independant initiative).
Great points James Gentle ???????? I totally agree with your second point around the rise of the empathetic leader. The more you understand each employee, the greater your business will be.