Dec 18, 2023
Exemplary leadership starts with you. That is a founding tenet of The Leadership Challenge® and The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. Leadership behaviors can be learned, and as we found in 2023, leadership development is a top priority for leaders in organizations everywhere.
As we prepare for the year ahead, we took time to reflect on 2023 and learned that the most popular blogs on our website were the most foundational to The Leadership Challenge: Exemplary Leadership Starts with You, Inspire a Shared Vision, and From Inspiration to Innovation: How to Challenge the Process. The first three of The Five Practices®, they lay the groundwork for building exemplary leadership at every level. Anyone, regardless of their role or title, can learn these fundamental skills and start unlocking the power of leadership.
As the workplace continues to evolve, with everything from global conflict to organizational change, and rapid developments in AI threatening the stability of the workplace, it is imperative that leadership skills development be a top priority for organizations in 2024.
This month, Wiley Workplace Intelligence surveyed 2,000 people about their top concerns and priorities as leaders over the last year and their focus for the year ahead. What we found points to the importance of developing leadership skills in every organization.
At the foundation of every successful organization are effective leaders who know how to lead their people through, well, anything. Almost half of respondents shared that building leadership skills at every level is a top priority for them in 2024. Effective leaders learn how to strike the balance of well-being and results while caring for their people and keeping a clear eye on how to achieve their goals.
Top Priority as a leader in 2024
As work/life balance continues to be a concern for individuals at all levels, half of managers reported that the most significant leadership challenge in 2023 was managing well-being while achieving results. This balance can be difficult to strike, with workplace flexibility being a high priority post-pandemic. Finding ways to connect with your people and individualize your leadership style (for example, offer flexible work hours as your organization allows for people to tend to their personal responsibilities while still meeting deadlines, or offer personalized and meaningful recognition to incentivize high performance) can go a long way in helping people find balance while also meeting business goals.
As seen by the research, managing well-being and results continues to be a primary issue for survey respondents with over half reporting that they anticipate this to be the biggest leadership challenge in 2024.
Most Significant Leadership Challenge 2023 and Anticipated Challenge for 2024
While these results are not surprising considering how quickly both the workplace and technology have evolved since 2020, they are indicative of how learning (and teaching) leadership skills at all levels throughout the organization can make a big impact on both well-being and results at work.
By promoting leadership skills that help Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart, your organization will have the skills needed to navigate anything that comes in 2024.