Fourth Quarter 2019

In This Issue

Feature
Building Inclusive
Leadership To Enable
Future Success
Page 3

Enterprise Issue
Turning Risks
Into Wins
Page 11
Fourth Quarter 2019

Contents Editor in Chief

Gloria Huangpu
Feature
Building Inclusive Leadership 3 Authors
To Enable Future Success Ivy Harris
Elyssa Klett
Drew Kott
Data Snapshot
Informal Leaders 9 Nikita Ojha

R&A Creative
Enterprise Issue
Turning Risks Into Wins 11 Art Director
Mike Jurka
Designers
Take Action Tool
Filling Leadership Skill Gaps 14 Divya Malkani
Taylor Bell
With Leader Partners
Editor
Meghan Cortez
Leader Partnerships
How Airservices Australia 15
Addresses Urgent Skill Gaps

Quick Wins
Developing Leaders 21
for Collective Success

Suggested Reading
In Case You Missed It 22
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Building Inclusive
Leadership to
Enable Future
Success

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  3

In a recent New York Times profile,1 Indra Nooyi,
former CEO of PepsiCo, recalled arriving at Yale
“They gave me a map and
in the 1980s as a new student from Chennai,
India. After being dropped off, she realized she said: ‘Go register for classes
had little support to help her adapt. here. Go do this there.’ I was
Despite (and perhaps because of) experiencing a vegetarian, so I didn’t know
exclusion early on, Nooyi has become an
advocate for inclusion, and it has played a crucial
what to eat …. The first few
role in her most career-defining leadership weeks were very tough.”
decisions. For example, the push to include
healthier options in PepsiCo’s product portfolio Indra Nooyi, Former CEO, PepsiCo
didn’t originate from another senior executive;
it originated from an employee’s wife who
voiced her concerns during a town hall in Egypt.
Because Nooyi listened, she played a key role
in more than doubling PepsiCo’s net profit from
$2.7 billion to $6.5 billion.2,3 Definitions
Like Nooyi, the vast majority of leaders want their
organizations to go beyond diversity and strive Diversity
for inclusion, but they often falter in practice.
Eighty percent of leaders agree it’s important The collective mixture
to foster a climate where employees know they of differences and
are expected to voice different points of view
and feel comfortable doing so. Yet only 31%
similarities that includes,
of employees agree their leaders promote an for example, individual
inclusive team environment (see Figure 1).4 and organizational
characteristics, values,
beliefs, experiences,
backgrounds, preferences
Figure 1: “The Leaders at My
Organization Promote an Inclusive and behaviors
Team Environment”
Percentage of Employees Inclusion
The achievement of
31% a work environment
Agree
where all individuals
are treated fairly and
respectfully, have equal
69%
access to opportunities
Disagree and resources and can
contribute fully to the
organization’s success
n = 6,066 employees
Source: 1Q19 Gartner Global Labor Market Survey

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  4

Inclusion Is a Competitive
Necessity
This lack of inclusion puts exclusive teams at
a competitive disadvantage. Our research has
found teams that are diverse in gender and
highly inclusive perform 40% better than teams
that are only diverse.3 Diversity isn’t enough on
its own; inclusion is necessary to unlock the
benefits of multiple viewpoints and backgrounds.
HR is working to improve inclusion, but the most
common approach — unconscious bias training
— that 77% of organizations offer is ineffective
at producing the outcomes organizations want
and need (see Figure 2). HR takes this approach
because it hopes helping participants recognize
their unconscious biases (their accidental,
unintended or subtle judgments) will lead to
active inclusion.
However, while unconscious bias training does
give leaders a vocabulary, framework and
authority to talk about complicated issues on
their teams, it’s not enough to drive behavior
change. Results of unconscious bias training are
lukewarm, with 79% of organizations indicating
unconscious bias trainings are only somewhat
effective at actually mitigating bias (see Figure 3).
Figure 2: Organizations Offering
Unconscious Bias Training
Percentage of D&I Executives
10%
We Don’t Offer It, and We
13% Don’t Plan to in the Future
We Don’t
Offer It, but
We Intend to
in the Future 74%
We Offer
3% It and
We Offer Plan to
It, but We Continue
Plan to Stop Doing So
Offering It
n = 39 D&I executives
Source: 2019 Gartner D&I Agenda Poll
Instead of simply focusing on biases, HR should
focus on enabling leaders to adopt and maintain
more inclusive behaviors and showing leaders
what to do in a personally relevant and easy
way. Through our research, we found successful
inclusive leader programs use three key
principles to do this:
• Use organization-specific examples to
increase relevance and receptivity. Show
leaders examples of noninclusive behaviors
that could happen or have happened in their
own organizations and contexts, rather than
giving them one-size-fits-all examples.
• Make inclusive behaviors feel actionable,
not additive. Show leaders prescriptive
examples of how inclusive behaviors can
easily be embedded in general leadership
behaviors, rather than teaching inclusivity as
an isolated skill.
• Embed bias mitigation efforts into existing
processes to sustain behavior change.
Safeguard against leaders’ biases by making
small tweaks to leaders’ processes that
nudge them away from unintentional biases
and prompt inclusive behavior, rather than
assuming training will be fully sufficient.
Figure 3: Effectiveness of Unconscious
Bias Training
Percentage of D&I Executives
3%
Ineffective or Very
17% Ineffective
Effective or
Very Effective
79%
Somewhat
Ineffective
to Somewhat
Effective
n = 39 D&I executives
Source: 2019 Gartner D&I Agenda Poll
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  5
Use Organization-Specific
Examples to Increase
Relevance and Receptivity
Connect inclusion to leaders’ individual
experiences in their daily environments,
rather than providing generic guidance,
to increase receptivity to the need for
behavior change.
Unconscious bias training focuses on
questioning participants’ implicit assumptions
and revealing how they can be inaccurate
or misleading. However, leaders often fail
to ensure participants uniquely relate to the
teachings and feel personally responsible for
changing their behaviors.
Unconscious bias training shows how someone
can be biased but not how a specific individual
can be biased in their daily work routine. By
seeing standardized or uniform examples of
noninclusive behaviors, leaders may struggle
to recognize exclusion is an issue for them —
or that they can improve.
To make inclusion and exclusion feel personally
relevant to leaders, participants should be able
to relate to the content by seeing examples
in their own work context. See how Asda
contextualizes examples of exclusionary
behavior below.
Case in Point: Asda’s
“Close to Home” Scenarios
To make examples of exclusion at work
feel authentic to current leaders, Asda
employed actors to reenact real examples of
exclusive behaviors from different parts of
the organization. These scenarios were made
into a series of videos included in a training
tailored to different business functions —
retail, warehouse and headquarters — to
show how these issues manifest differently.
For example, inequitable scheduling of hours
may be more prevalent in retail locations than
at headquarters, while ignoring an individual’s
input may be more prevalent at headquarters.
As leaders reflected on these videos, they
recognized behaviors they regularly witness
at work and understood how they are
exclusive or unfair to others. This level of
self-realization spurred action throughout
the organization to address these behaviors
and open the dialogue around these issues.
Now, topics such as exclusive behavior,
transparency, accountability and even mental
health are discussed far more openly, and
leaders are much more receptive to fostering
an inclusive work environment.
Make Inclusive Behaviors
Feel Actionable, Not
Additive
To translate realization into action, show
how to embed practical inclusivity into
other leadership activities.
Although recognizing the need for inclusion
is important, it isn’t enough to drive behavior
change. This is where most inclusion efforts
fall short. Efforts focus on building awareness
but not how to act on the job based on that
awareness. Once leaders understand the
need to change their behaviors, HR should
help leaders put inclusion into action.
The first step shows leaders exactly what
inclusion looks like and that inclusion isn’t
difficult to practice. HR needs to show how
inclusive behaviors can easily be embedded
in general leadership behaviors rather than
teaching inclusivity as an isolated skill.
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  6
Behaviors such as actively listening to all team
members and showing interest in members’
career development and well-being are not
only activities good leaders should be doing
already but also are examples of inclusivity
in action. By showing how simple building
inclusivity through these common behaviors
is, HR empowers leaders to build inclusive
habits. See how Visa did it below.
Case in Point: Visa’s Enabling
Behavior Modification Training
Instead of only encouraging inclusive behavior
by explaining what not to do, Visa motivates
and enables leaders to demonstrate inclusivity
by providing simple, positive and practical
examples of inclusionary behavior centered on
action, making it easier for leaders to change.
Four key principles allow Visa’s training to
enable behavior modification:
• Empower inclusive business leaders to
run inclusion training to drive urgency.
Visa selected senior leaders to run
inclusion training and serve as informal
inclusion mentors once the training is
complete, reinforcing teachings and
providing assistance.
• Share simple, specific plug and play
inclusive behavior examples to facilitate
application. Visa breaks inclusion down
into small behaviors leaders can easily
incorporate in their everyday work. Through
discussion, groups discover how these
behaviors provide inclusion and can drive
culture changes at their organizations.
• Guide leaders to tailor inclusive behaviors.
Because inclusive behaviors are used in a
variety of situations with different people,
Visa discusses how to apply behaviors in
different contexts.
• Enable self-discovery of inclusive behavior
gaps to drive motivation. Visa uses tools
such as prequestionnaires and personal
action plans to help leaders discover
inclusion gaps on their own instead of in a
group setting. This helps leaders feel safe
and more candid when they reflect on their
own behavior and on where inclusion fits
in their jobs.
Embed Bias Mitigation
Efforts Into Existing
Processes to Sustain
Behavior Change
Embed inclusion nudges into leaders’
common work tasks, rather than assuming
training will be sufficient, to reinforce and
help sustain behavior change.
No matter how effective and memorable they
are, development offerings struggle to sustain
behavior change over time. As a supplement
to inclusive leadership training efforts, HR
can also target leaders’ behaviors directly by
tweaking existing processes to prompt certain
behaviors and guide leaders’ in-the-moment
decision making.
These process tweaks are also known as
inclusion nudges, or soft, nonintrusive
mental pushes that nudge leaders away from
unintentional biases and prompt inclusive
behavior (see Table 1). Coined by D&I
researchers Tinna Nielsen and Lisa Kepinski,
inclusion nudges make actionable, inclusive
decision making more natural and reduce
reliance on willpower, preventing leaders from
falling back on default behaviors.5
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  7
Contrary to unconscious bias training, inclusion
nudges target behaviors rather than attitudes,
are simple to implement and can be embedded
into leaders’ daily tasks.
The three types of inclusion nudges, along with
examples of each, are listed below.
• Feel-the-Need: Elicits an emotional
trigger for behavioral change by making
the brain feel the need for change, rather
than using rational understanding (i.e.,
Displaying pictures in an organization chart).
• Process: Alters existing organizational
processes to make them more objective
and structurally resistant to the influence of
bias (i.e., Assessing qualifications through
blind resumes).
• Framing: Encourages a more inclusive
thought process by helping the brain perceive
information that prompts more inclusive
decision making (i.e., Using gender-neutral
language in job descriptions).
“Indra Nooyi: ‘I’m Not Here to Tell You What to Eat,’” New York Times.
1 4
2
“Indra Nooyi: Keeping Cool in Hot Water,” Bloomberg Businessweek.
3
“PepsiCo’s CEO Was Right. Now What?” Fortune.
Gartner R e i m a g i n e H R
Our premier
conference for
heads of HR
Discover the take-aways from ReimagineHR 2019
gtnr.it/rhr-key-takeaways
© 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Conclusion
As Indra Nooyi illustrated by gathering input
from all corners of her company, inclusion is
an important key to success. Inclusive leaders
build inclusive teams, and those teams clearly
outperform teams with low inclusion. While most
leaders understand this and want to become
more inclusive, they often find they don’t know
where to start. Unconscious bias training, while
a good start, is insufficient in driving behavior
change, with most employees saying their
leaders are failing to promote an inclusive
team environment.
Instead of overrelying on unconscious bias
training to drive inclusive behavior, HR should
make inclusion feel relevant to leaders’ own
environments, show them how inclusion fits
into their daily activities and tweak everyday
processes to prompt inclusive behaviors. Doing
these three things will support a sustainable
culture of inclusive leadership.
2016 Gartner Leadership Validation Survey
T. Nielsen and L. Kepinski. “Inclusion Nudges Guidebook: Practical
5
Techniques for Changing Behavior, Culture and Systems to Mitigate
Unconscious Bias and Create Inclusive Organisations.” January 2016.
 Data Snapshot

Informal Leaders

Informal leaders take on leadership tasks outside of their

formal responsibility. We report the top behaviors that
differentiate informal leaders so L&D leaders can use data-
driven findings to identify and leverage informal leaders as
well as help them progress and succeed.
Leaders are tasked with a growing number of employee behaviors to identify the four
responsibilities today as organizational needs that define informal leaders and distinguish
change. Yet, they are often ill-equipped to them from other employees (see Figure 1).
take on their expanding roles effectively. In These leaders:
our recent survey, leaders reported the top • Enable the team to succeed.
change to their roles in the past three years
was the need for more skills. Furthermore, • Advocate for digitalization.
organizational structures are changing from • Leverage other informal leaders.
traditional hierarchical structures to flatter • Trust formal leaders.
networks of interconnected teams. The key to
preparing leaders and their teams for the future
is leveraging informal leaders — individuals
who take on leadership tasks outside their Figure 1: Informal Leader Behaviors
formal commitments.
Informal leaders already exist in most
organizations, comprising 22% of all employees.
Although they are 5.8 times more likely to be
high performers, they only spend an average of
two more hours per week working than other Behavior 1 Behavior 2
employees.1 Informal leaders are motivated Enable Team Advocate for
by having the opportunity to influence, to Succeed Digitalization
coach and collaborate with others at work. By
giving informal leaders opportunities to share
knowledge and guide others on the team, formal
leaders can effectively leverage them to boost
performance and business impact.

What Behaviors Distinguish Informal

Leaders From Other Employees? Behavior 3 Behavior 4
Although strong employees often help their Leverage Other Trust Formal
teammates and team leaders, informal leaders Informal Leaders Leaders
demonstrate some specific behaviors that
go beyond ad hoc peer development and
generosity. We analyzed more than 70 Source: Gartner

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  9

Let’s take a closer look at two of these behaviors:
enable the team to succeed and advocate for
digitalization.
Enable the Team to Succeed
To help their teams meet goals, informal leaders
strive to understand their team members’
strengths and weaknesses so they can provide
tailored coaching and development. As peer
developers, they remove productivity barriers
that prevent their team from getting work done
and provide real-time coaching (see Figure 2).
To ensure team members receive coaching that
best fits their needs, informal leaders connect
them to quality development opportunities
outside of their formal networks. Whether
official or unofficial project managers, informal
leaders also balance team project portfolios. This
contributes to team success by crafting a clear
plan for executing their teams strategic goals.
Advocate for Digitalization
As champions for digitalization, informal
leaders incorporate technologically efficient
ways of working across teams when possible
(see Figure 3). They typically display this in
one of two ways:
• Using data and technology to innovate on
products or services
• Taking advantage of digitization to maintain
a competitive advantage
To learn more about who might be an informal
leader at your organization, see our report,
“Who Are Informal Leaders?”
1
2019 Gartner Leader Effectiveness Survey for Employees

Figure 2: Q — “I Remove Barriers Figure 3: Q — “I Incorporate Digital

That Prevent the Team From Getting Ways of Working Across the Team”
Work Done Quickly” Percentage of Employees Agreeing
Percentage of Employees Agreeing

Informal Informal
83% 75%
Leaders Leaders

Other Other
32% 32%
Employees Employees

0% 45% 90% 0% 45% 90%

n = 3,970 employees n = 3,970 employees

Source: 2019 Gartner Leader Effectiveness Survey for Employees Source: 2019 Gartner Leader Effectiveness Survey for Employees

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  10

 Enterprise Issue

Turning Risks
Into Wins

Discipline and confidence are two traits firms desperately

need to win in the turns as economic cycles shift.
Firms need discipline to maintain intense
strategic focus and the confidence to act
boldly and decisively to take advantage of
opportunities or avoid risks presented by the
change. Unfortunately, these are often the first
things to waver. These skills must be consistently
practiced rather than turned on (or up) when
times get tough.
Learning and development (L&D) leaders have
an opportunity to play a large role in shoring up
their organizations today. We are in a late-stage
growth cycle. Take this opportunity, and don’t
wait, to build more discipline into early planning
and ongoing monitoring activities and instill
more confidence in teams before any downturn
that might arrive.
Those firms that do will be rewarded with
sustained advantage over their competitors long
after the next recession passes (see Figure 1).
To do so, they will have to deftly navigate the
increased uncertainty and distraction that 2020
will most certainly bring.
Fortunately, consumer sentiment remains high,
the likelihood of a deep imminent recession
remains fairly low and large global firms enter
2020 well-positioned to weather a downturn.
At the same time, some concerning trends exist
among small and midsize companies that appear
to be taking on debt faster than their larger peers.

Figure 1: EBITDA of Efficient Growtha Companies Compared With Control Peers

2003-2017

500 Average Efficient

Growth Companies

250

Average Control Peers

0
2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017
n = 60 (30 efficient growth companies and 30 control peers)
Source: “Compustat,” Standard & Poor’s
a Efficient growth companies are Fortune 1000 companies that were top quartile for their sector in their 20-year revenue
CAGR and top quartile for their sector in the number of years they achieved simultaneous revenue and margin growth.

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  11

Nonetheless, the guardrails most firms must
operate within are narrowing:
• After a period of prolonged earnings growth,
falling profitability is occurring across large and
small companies in multiple industries. Possible
explanations include rising cost of goods sold,
relentless competition and growth pipelines that
are running out of low-hanging fruit.
• While the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
had a positive effect on overall growth capital
expenditure — spending is up for all indexes
in the U.S. — the increases are modest and still
considerably below the long-term median. This
hesitancy to invest may even increase given
the timing of the current economic cycle,
rising cost of capital, the fact that new growth
ideas tend to be in new markets and that M&A
is harder to justify and execute.
Distractions Are
Already Here
This year also promises many more external
threats to strategic focus. A few of them are
already here — escalating trade wars, the U.S.
partial government shutdown, Brexit. Even the
sustained drumbeat of recession discourse itself,
whether it arrives or not, serves as a distraction.
Leaders can’t just pump the brakes in response.
Doing so will likely have a lasting negative impact
on your firm’s industry standing:
• Largely driven by still-present competitive
pressures (e.g., the fear of being “Amazoned”),
many firms pursued big changes to their
business models in 2018. This often took the
form of a digital business transformation
initiative, most of which are still in progress.
• Slowing, pausing or killing these initiatives
represents a big threat to firms. The last
recession provides some useful insight here. In
a nonrecessionary year, the likelihood a large
firm drops or rises a full industry ranking quartile
is 6%.1 That chance rises by three to five times
during a recession and can be correlated with
industries where digital business transformation
initiatives are most urgently needed. Outside of
financial services and banking, the industries
that experienced the most firms dropping in
industry ranking during the last recession were
those where emerging digital technologies had
the greatest influence (telecommunications and
media, consumer products and retail, and IT and
electronics).
• Several opportunities exist in this environment
that firms can’t afford to miss. Smaller or less
profitable companies that find themselves on
the precipice of a recession in the next few
years may make for solid acquisition targets
that will become cheaper and deliver more
upside when asset prices fall. Or they may
simply serve as new sources for scarce talent.
step, they should set guardrails that clarify for
function staff how to make the best decisions
in real time. The following options can help:
Why Boards Are Paying
Attention to Execution
Even if leaders make the right strategic decisions,
achieving sustained execution of enterprise
strategy will be harder in 2020:
• Strategies organizations need today tend to
be more complex than they were in the past,
which makes execution particularly tricky, as
firms continue their pursuit of multidimensional
business model change. Many organizations
are pursuing simultaneous changes to more
than one aspect of the business model, such
as value proposition, profit model, business
capabilities and customer base.
• Cross-functional critical strategic initiatives
amplify that complexity, relying on shared
resources (such as scarce data scientists) and
coordination for success. It is hard to get more
people throughout more organizational silos
to pull in the same direction on a good day as
group size often affects the speed and quality
of decision making. And it’s even harder when
faced with the many distractions of this year.
• And, the individuals most critical to strategy
execution are more constrained than ever.
Beyond the natural accumulation of initiatives
as discipline lags during good times, changes
stemming from business model transformation
have already taken their toll, and years of M&A
have piled integration-related work on already
change-fatigued staff. Unsurprisingly,the
percentage of employees reporting high levels
of discretionary effort is down 35% globally
over the past 5 years.2
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  12
• Help is probably not on the way. While
economic clouds may indeed be forming, the
labor market remains very tight for the critical
talent firms need to deliver on their strategies.
Convergence on critical talent pools continues
to intensify: 37 roles were recruited for by at
least 90% of S&P 100 organizations (analysis
of other indexes such as the FTSE100 show the
same pattern). And, productivity-enhancing
automation has yet to really make a difference.3
Boards view increasing oversight of strategy
execution and risk management a top
improvement priority for themselves in 2020.4 At
the same time, this context sets a clear path for
L&D teams. It’s imperative employees develop
the skills their organization needs and know how
to apply them as change continues to affect the
organization.
Answer Three Questions
to Prepare for Maintained
Focus on Key Bets
1. Have you revisited early planning and
ongoing monitoring activities to ensure
existing discipline is sufficient to maintain
strategic focus during more turbulent times?
For example:
• Does your annual risk assessment need
updating to account for new risks your firm
might face in 2020?
• Have you considered how you will cascade
enterprise strategy to employees so they are
aware of it and buy into it?
• Does your workforce know how to contribute
to business strategy in their roles and
development goals for the year?
2. H
 ave you tested your team’s current
preparedness to make decisions and act
confidently and decisively as opportunities
or risks quickly materialize?
For example:
• Have you scheduled a scenario planning
off-site in 1Q to validate the scenarios
your firm will most likely face in 2020 and
agree on the appropriate response from an
L&D perspective?
• Do you have initiatives in place to build trust
on teams to help them act decisively and
confidently amid continued change?
3. Have you reexamined key leadership
messages and talent positioning to ensure
organizational climate and resourcing
supports the added discipline and
confidence you need to see from teams
as they execute in 2020?
For example:
• Does your leadership team’s messaging need
to change to avoid conflicting signals or to
ensure clarity and engagement?
• Consider how you can ensure your leaders
are taking a complementary leadership
approach and sharing responsibilities
to ensure they’re equipped for new or
challenging situations they might face?
Those firms that start 2020 in sync and
continuously test scenarios, the validity of their
plans to navigate them and the alignment of
their execution will have the best shot to win
in the turns.
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  13
 Take Action:
Filling
Leaders’
Skill Gaps
With Leader
Partners

A leader partner is a formal leader’s peer with complementary

skill sets who the formal leader can share responsibilities with.
A partnership between a formal leader and a leader partner can
help fill capability gaps among leaders.

Instructions: Create the ideal leader profile by matching your leaders with potential
leader partners.

Step 1: Understand whether the leaders are missing any of the skills
needed for the role.

After identifying the leader for a new business initiative, understand that leader’s
critical skill gaps using performance reviews, development plans, skills assessments
and other tools.

Skills Needed for the Role = Skills Leader Has + Skills Leader Is Missing

Step 2: Identify a potential leader partner who can help fill the gaps.

• Identify potential leader partners who possess the required skills.

• Assess whether a potential leader partner could fill the leader’s skill gaps by using
the tool below to compare the skill sets.

Potential Leader Partner 1: Potential Leader Partner 2:

Criteria
Ricardo
Skill Gap 1: Innovation Yes No Yes No
Skill Gap 2: Yes No Yes No

Step 3: Assess potential leader partners for suitability.

Continue to assess each potential leader partner, using the results from the previous
step combined with the results from this step, to arrive at the final choice for an
appropriate leader partner.

Assess the shortlisted leader Assess the shortlisted leader

partners’ influence. partners’ ability and willingness
Using inputs from internal business to switch roles.
partners, HRBPs and people familiar Conduct conversations with HRBPs
with leader partner candidates, or the potential leader partner to
answer these questions to identify determine their ability and willingness
whether a potential leader partner to switch roles.
has the necessary influencing skills.

 oes this person connect

D  oes the potential leader partner
D
with others throughout the have the ability to switch roles?
organization? Is this potential leader partner
Is this person a go-to decision interested in changing roles?
maker?
Is this person often called on for
gut checks?
Does this person build skills
throughout their team?

Source: Adapted From Airservices Australia

© 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 712726
Innovators

How
Airservices
Australia
Addresses
Urgent Skills
Gaps

When businesses have

urgent skills gaps to
fill, hiring externally or
upskilling internally can be
time-consuming and risky.
Airservices Australia pairs
internal leaders to fill these
gaps. This article offers L&D
leaders a view into how
leader partnerships work.

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  15

When businesses have urgent skills gaps to “We were dealing with
fill and the perfect candidate can’t be found
internally or upskilled in time, HR functions
immediate business
typically look for a candidate who has all the needs and while we were
skills outside the organization. However, hiring comfortable with more
externally comes with some risks:
traditional leaders in some
• A long lag time for senior leaders to acclimate
to the organization
of our workstreams —
• The possibility leaders won’t fit naturally
aviation, firefighting — we
into the culture also needed a whole cohort
• The likely lack of institutional knowledge of leaders who were more
Airservices Australia felt this pressure as its innovative, could manage
business needs were changing rapidly, but it had risk and could be agile.”
focused leadership development on a limited skill
set, which would not be enough in its current HR, Airservices Australia
context. At the same time, the organization knew
hiring externally or upskilling internal leaders
would prevent it from capitalizing on those
changes as rapidly as it needed.
Instead of looking for the ideal leader for a
certain role, Airservices Australia’s learning and
development (L&D) function takes a different Figure 1: Leader Partnership Model
approach. To fill essential skills capabilities
while preserving institutional knowledge and
leadership expertise, it pairs experienced formal
leaders, who have many of the necessary skills
with more junior informal leaders (called leader
partners), who can supplement the senior
Imperfect Imperfect
leaders’ skills gaps (see Figure 1). Ideal Leader
Formal Informal
Profile
Airservices Australia sets up successful leader Leader Skills Leader Skills
partnerships using three key steps:
1. Select best-fit formal leaders.
2. Select informal leaders for skills and influence.
3. Hold a discussion to set expectations and
identify barriers. Source: Adapted From Airservices Australia

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  16

Step 1: Select Best-Fit
Formal Leaders
Airservices Australia wanted to preserve its
valuable internal knowledge and culture when
deploying leaders to high-impact projects or
roles. This meant it needed to find leadership
candidates within, rather than outside, the
organization. Airservices Australia also realized
instead of looking for the ideal leader for a
certain role, the L&D function should look
for internal candidates who might not be a
perfect fit but have most of the necessary skills
(see Figure 2).
Step 2: Select Informal
Leaders for Skill and
Influence
To find an informal leader with a skill set that
complements the formal leader, Airservices
Australia uses data from its extensive 360-
degree performance reviews and assessments
of leaders’ strengths and weaknesses. This
data ensures HR knows which leaders have the
technical skills needed to complement the formal
leaders’ skill set and accounts for roughly 80% of
informal leader selection.

Figure 2: Leader Profile for Transforming Role

Illustrative

Ideal Leader Profile

Leader Leader Skills New Role Match

Digital communication, ability to set up new business

Leader X 4/4 Critical Skills
units, innovation, promotion of company values

Actual Leader Profiles

Leader Leader Skills New Role Match

Digital communication, ability to set up new

A.B. 3/4 Critical Skills
business units, promotion of company values

C.D. Innovation, ability to set up new business units 2/4 Critical Skills

Digital communication, ability to set up new

E.F. 2/4 Critical Skills
business units

Source: Adapted From Airservices Australia

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  17

But Airservices Australia’s L&D team realized
technical skill proficiency is only one important
element of the informal-formal leader
partnership. Informal leaders must be highly
capable at the skills in which they complement
the formal leader and demonstrate they can
effectively promote and teach those skills to
others throughout the organization.
To identify informal leader candidates with high
levels of influence, the L&D team at Airservices
Australia identifies whether leaders connect with
others throughout the organization, are a go-to
resource for help, are called on for colleagues’
“gut checks” and naturally build skills in their
teams. This ability to spread skills accounts for
roughly 20% of the informal leader selection
decision (see Figure 3).
These skill-building capabilities are important;
if informal leaders don’t have them, the formal
leaders will become dependent on their
expertise. While formal leaders use informal
leaders for immediate skills support, they should
Figure 3: Informal Leader Selection
Illustrative
Candidates’ Technical Skills
Technical Skills Strongest Employees
Needed in Skill Area
+
Innovation Jim, Denise, Philippa
Risk Management Pete, Jim, Raj, Philippa
Commercial
Pete, Philippa, Anna
Acumen
… …
Choose the Right Technical Skills (80%)
Source: Adapted From Airservices Australia
gradually learn those skills to become more
prepared for their new roles. Airservices Australia
wants its leaders to become independent and
fully skilled for their roles, and informal leaders
must effectively transfer their skills to formal
leaders for that to happen.
Step 3: Hold a Discussion
to Set Expectations and
Identify Barriers
On paper, leader partnerships fill crucial skills
needs. In practice, these different-in-kind
partnerships require a new working dynamic that
can be jarring to formal and informal leaders.
Most informal leaders are leaders in their own
right, as they are only a level or two below the
formal leader. For partnerships formalized by a
change in reporting structure, not all informal
leaders may understand initially why or how they
are being reassigned.1
Candidates’ Influence Connections
Raj
Pete
Jim
Philippa
Denise Anna
Analyze Ability to Spread New Skills (20%)
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  18
In most cases, Airservices Australia aims to
prepare leaders ahead of time. L&D converses
with formal leaders and informal leaders to
ensure they understand the expectations, the
goals, the nature of the new relationship and
what support is available (see Figure 4). This
allows each leader to become more familiar
with the relationship dynamics before entering
the partnership.
These discussions serve three purposes:
• Acclimate each leader to changes. By
holding separate discussions with each leader,
L&D prepares them for a role they’ve likely
never held before.
• Identify unobvious barriers. These
conversations aim to uncover barriers — from
disrupted future career goals to interpersonal
concerns. This allows L&D to prevent poor
matches early and provide each partnership
with the information necessary to obtain
future success.
• Make an action plan that includes L&D
support. The conversations allow leaders and
L&D to determine where they need support
and how to get it. This includes learning
resources and coaching support.
During discussions, the L&D facilitator defines
each leader partner’s role by providing the
parameters to help staff navigate the complex
relationship:
• The formal leader takes on the main
responsibilities and decision making for the
new business area or initiative.
• The informal leader reports to the formal
leader unless the partnership is only for a
short-term project.
• Upskilling happens organically through
projects and assignments the formal and
informal leaders work on together; upskilling
is not a formal responsibility.

Figure 4: Discussion Guide for Leader Partnership Conversation

Illustrative

How This Helps Formal How This Helps

Sample Questions
Leaders (Required) Informal Leaders
Ensure informal leaders
Speed to  o you think we can build
D Shift leaders’ mindsets
understand their
Upskill proficiency in six months? on urgency of upskilling.
responsibilities.
• What will be helpful Help informal leaders
New Reporting Help leaders accept
about this relationship? define boundaries for the
Dynamic upward coaching.
• What might be awkward? relationship.
Understand and provide
Available  hat support can HR
W Identify other forms of
coaching support to
L&D Support provide? development support.
leaders.
Source: Adapted From Airservices Australia

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  19

By setting these boundaries, formal leaders “This program has enhanced
know they are responsible for final outcomes,
while informal leaders are not overburdened by transparency and alignment
upskilling responsibilities. Upskilling happens of executives on senior leader
naturally and without challenging formal
leaders’ authority. capabilities. We have a better
idea of what capabilities
Results senior leaders have, and that
The leader partnership program has had some means that we have more
early successes, though it’s still quite new. The
new business areas where the partnerships have
opportunities to effectively
been implemented the most are on track to meet deploy them. This has also
their goals for the quarter. Airservices Australia
is working to roll out the program to additional
increased performance
hard-to-fill leadership roles in the coming year. and better outcomes in
new business areas and
Not all informal leaders will be reassigned to a new reporting structure;
1

they will only be reassigned for new businesses or larger-scale initiatives.”

initiatives for which leader partnerships are needed. For shorter-
term projects with leader partnerships that don’t require a change in
reporting structure, these steps aren’t necessary. HR, Airservices Australia

Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  20

 Quick Wins
Developing Leaders
for Collective Success
L&D leaders can use these quick wins to ensure their
leadership development offerings enable leadership teams’
collective success, not just individual leader success.
As L&D invests in reskilling leaders for the future,
organizations communicate a broad array of
priorities to leaders. When we surveyed leaders,
over two-thirds of leaders responded that 32
different responsibilities, from innovating on
product and service offerings to coaching
and developing team members, were all
highly important to their success. But the
support leaders receive from L&D does not
always contribute effectively to leadership
success. Only half of leaders agreed leadership
development offerings at their organizations
prepare them to lead in the future.
Leadership development is more effective
when it is closely linked to the reality of
leaders’ day-to-day roles and needs. Rather
than developing leaders toward an ideal model,
L&D can better target leaders’ development
needs by focusing on their individual reality
and context. Use the following quick wins
to better align development programs with
leaders’ context:
1. Develop leaders for what matters in the
context of their roles, not against a broad
competency model for every leader in the
organization. To do this:
– Ensure leadership assessments don’t evaluate
every leader against the same criteria but
instead can account for leaders’ needs in
different contexts.
– Evaluate leadership bench strength against
the specific objectives of the business unit,
using the “Leadership Confidence Mapping
Evaluation” as a template.
2. Involve team members in identifying
leaders’ development priorities to ensure
leaders develop the behaviors needed to
best enable their teams’ productivity.
– Help leaders prioritize developing the most
important behaviors for their teams’ success.
– Using the “Leader Development Team
Discussion Guide,” lead a discussion between
leaders and their teams to gather the team’s
input on what behaviors are most important
for the leader to prioritize.
3. Build a culture of openness around leaders’
strengths and weaknesses to ensure leaders
can operate as a cohesive leadership team.
– Encourage leaders to participate actively
in discussing their own strengths and
development areas to create a more open
culture of skill sharing and collaboration.
– Facilitate a discussion to enable skill sharing
within leadership teams, using our “Guide to
Discussing Collective Leadership Capabilities.”
4. Enable leaders to draw on their networks
for development and project support.
– Make sure your leadership culture allows
leaders to feel comfortable calling on one
another for support on key projects or
development areas when they need it.
– Help leaders identify connections they will
need to draw on for support to accomplish
their business objectives by giving them our
“Grounded Business Planning Tool” as a template.
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  21
 Suggested Reading
In Case You
Missed It
To find these and other publications for
L&D professionals, search our website
or contact your account manager.
What’s New?
• “Developing Digital Dexterity:
How to Prepare Your Workforce
for the Future of Digital”
• “Motivation-Informed Mentoring
(Coca Cola Hellenic)”
• “What Will Gen Z Expect From HR?”
• “Driving HR Impact in the Era
of Digital Transformation”
• “2020 L&D Innovations Bullseye”
Training Your Managers
to Be Connectors
There are four types of managers – Teacher
managers, Cheerleader managers, Always On
managers and Connector managers. Do you
know which type of manager you are? It turns
out, the Connector manager approach is most
effective and can triple the likelihood employees
will be high performers.
We have a new series of trainings to help
your managers take a Connector approach to
developing their employees. Download this
off-the-shelf, customizable training to use in
manager training sessions at your organization.
Learning Quarterly | Fourth Quarter 2019  22