Frontline leaders crave development opportunities. That’s encouraging for those tasked with developing the capabilities of the people leaders who supervise an estimated 80% of the workforce.[i] The not-so-great news? There’s a gap between what frontline managers want from their leadership development experiences and what companies deliver.
Today’s frontline leaders are highly motivated to grow and learn—about topics that reach far beyond what’s been traditionally served up to them. Companies that don’t respond to the interests of this vital segment of their workforce face an uphill battle in retention, employee engagement, and more. Here are the areas where these frontline leaders want to learn and the implications for organizations that don’t address this gap in developing leaders.
Frontline leaders want to learn, but companies aren’t meeting all the development needs
The workforce is motivated to learn, with 49% of employees surveyed saying they want to advance their skills within the next year.[ii] The desire to grow is especially prevalent at the frontline:
- Nearly 70% of frontline leaders express interest in developing their leadership skills this year.
- Learning opportunities rank in the top five career advancement needs for the population that frontline leaderships supervise—frontline employees—beating out job security, job fulfillment, and flexible schedules.[iii]
It’s likely that many Chief HR Officers and learning development professionals would say they are providing suitable development, with onboarding and supervisory skills training to bring their frontline managerial staff up to speed. While this is undoubtedly true (an estimated $360 billion is spent globally each year on leadership training[iv]), research indicates some organizations may be missing the mark on the topical areas of interest to their frontline leadership base.
Leadership development gaps at the frontline
Harvard Business Publishing’s recent research with global organizations has uncovered a gap in training opportunities for frontline leaders and certain capabilities—many of which are vital to a frontline leader’s success.
When surveyed, both individual contributors and their leaders agreed that key business-centric skills such as understanding the business, leading strategically, and understanding digital and data intelligence are important skills for all leaders, not just those in senior roles. Moreover, these same groups identified people-centric skills such as leading authentically, championing inclusion, and communicating effectively to also be highly important.
[Related: These are the five capabilities critical for new frontline leaders]
Yet, it appears that organizations are more focused on delivering training on these key human-centric skills to senior leaders than frontline leaders—despite general consensus that these leadership capabilities are most relevant to frontline leaders.
Leadership Development Gaps Among Frontline and Senior Leaders
| Leadership Capability | Leadership Level | Relevancy by Level | Received Training in Past Year |
| Develops others | Frontline leader | 64% | 56% |
| Senior leader | 22% | 69% | |
| Leads teams that deliver | Frontline leader | 60% | 48% |
| Senior leader | 28% | 76% | |
| Leads authentically | Frontline leader | 47% | 44% |
| Senior leader | 40% | 80% | |
| Champions inclusion | Frontline leader | 39% | 48% |
| Senior leader | 42% | 66% | |
| Communicates for influence and impact | Frontline leader | 41% | 50% |
| Senior leader | 38% | 68% |
Source: Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, “Leadership Reframed for the Workplace of the Future: 10 Capabilities and 7 Superpowers,” n=2,361 global employees, 2023.
It’s possible this gap exists due to a holdover from a time when these higher-functioning skills were thought to be the primary domain of purely senior-level leaders. Societal expectations regarding interpersonal skills have changed; therefore, so have employee expectations of leadership. In today’s workplace, leaders of all levels are expected to possess more sophisticated people skills as well as business acumen not previously required of frontline leaders.
The new landscape of leadership development
What leadership “looks like” and who “gets” to lead has shifted dramatically over the past few decades. The shift away from siloed work to cross-functional project-based teams has meant that employees are now called upon to lead even if they don’t have a formal leadership title. As a result, the pathways to leadership are more expansive and varied than ever before.
Organizations now recognize that leadership comes in many forms. For some individuals, that may indeed look like the traditional path of a people-leader. But for others, the opportunity to lead presents itself through being a deep-level subject matter expert or project manager.
Furthermore, a generation of younger workers (who came up through secondary and collegiate systems doing project-based work and honing their leadership skills in volunteer and extracurricular activities) now expect to contribute at work via informal leadership opportunities. The opportunity to lead in organizations is tremendous. But the chance to develop the necessary skills to do so may be lagging.
[Related: Leadership Development for Frontline Leaders: A New Offering from Harvard Business Publishing]
What are the implications for companies that don’t deliver?
These shifting elements of what it means to be a leader, along with a workforce hungry to learn, may find L&D professionals wondering if their organization is poised to deliver on providing meaningful, real-time leadership development—to all who desire it. Failing to deliver has many implications. Here are the most likely:
Decreased diversity and representation.
As mentioned earlier, employees are hungry for development opportunities. And they’re willing to walk if they think their organizations don’t provide leadership training. This dynamic is especially true among women, people of color, and Millennials. According to findings of a 2022 survey by The Conference Board, 61% of women and 55% of men would leave their place of work if it didn’t provide development opportunities; 68% of Black, 70% of Hispanic, and 80% of Asian respondents indicated they would leave, compared with 53% of white respondents; and by generation, 66% of Millennials and 63% of Gen X indicated they would leave, while only 47% of Baby Boomers reported the same.[v]
Higher employee turnover in the frontlines.
Sixty-eight percent of workers report that they would stay in their current job if presented with more opportunities to upskill.[vi] Thus, failing to provide adequate development—especially at the frontline—can have significant consequences for employee turnover. Furthermore, frontline managers supervise the largest swath of employees. So if frontline leaders are not developed and trained to be effective, any poor performance on their part can have an outsized impact on retention. In one survey, 82% of employees surveyed said they would consider quitting their job due to a bad manager[vii].
Worsening employee engagement.
With 74% of U.S. companies implementing some form of hybrid work model managers will need to find creative solutions to engage employees.[viii] Employees are acutely feeling the impact of this new work configuration, with 65% of them saying they feel less connected to their colleagues.[ix] Most organizations are still sorting out how to help their managers build capability in creating connections across distances and those who figure it out will have a distinct advantage in the marketplace.
Frontline leaders are ready to upskill their capabilities. Organizations that don’t respond to this desire will find their managerial talent pool taking their skills elsewhere, which will have the ripple effect of workforce turnover due to a lack of skilled frontline leadership. This is an eminently fixable problem if organizations are willing to broaden their thinking about the capabilities this audience needs and the ways they can offer training solutions to those most hungry to receive it.
To help companies deliver on the learning needs of their frontline leaders, we created Leadership Skill Camps, an innovative and engaging solution that transforms frontline managers into successful leaders who get the best from their teams. Download the paper and contact us today to learn more.
Sources
[i] https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-frontline-advantage
[ii] https://www.phoenix.edu/content/dam/edu/career-institute/doc/uopx-career-optimism-index-2022-all-data-appendix.pdf
[iii] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/bridging-the-advancement-gap-what-frontline-employees-want-and-what-employers-think-they-want
[iv] https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/learning-services-and-outsourcing/size-of-training-industry/
[v] https://www.conference-board.org/press/professional-development-survey-retaining-talent
[vi] https://www.phoenix.edu/content/dam/edu/career-institute/doc/uopx-career-optimism-index-2022-all-data-appendix.pdf
[vii] https://www.goodhire.com/resources/articles/horrible-bosses-survey/
[viii] https://www.zippia.com/advice/hybrid-work-statistics/
[ix] https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-leaders-can-build-connection-in-a-disconnected-workplace
