Deanna Foster, Author at Harvard Business Publishing https://www.harvardbusiness.org/author/dfoster/ Thu, 11 Apr 2024 08:48:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 How to Assess Leadership Skills for a Leadership Development Program https://www.harvardbusiness.org/how-to-assess-leadership-skills-for-a-leadership-development-program/ Thu, 11 Apr 2024 08:41:39 +0000 https://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=323795 IN BRIEF: When designing a leadership development program, your audience should feel seen and heard in the assessment process. Their insights and feedback improve program relevance, engagement, and trust. Assessment isn’t just for learners. Examining the organizational capacity for change can help remove obstacles to individual success. Mid-program assessment during a pilot allows L&D teams to course correct and monitor the path to realizing goals and impact. Employers predict that 44% of workplace skills will be disrupted in the next five years, and the rapid rise of AI this year alone might make that a conservative estimate. What we know […]

The post How to Assess Leadership Skills for a Leadership Development Program appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> How to Create a Successful Leadership Development Program https://www.harvardbusiness.org/how-to-create-a-successful-leadership-development-program/ Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:38:12 +0000 https://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=322943   IN BRIEF: Leadership development initiatives are most effective when they focus on performance outcomes that support a key business priority, like revenue increase. Leadership development program content and design should be tailored to different leadership levels for maximum relevance and engagement. Data should be collected before, during, and after the program to measure progress and optimize for impact. As organizations evolve in response to technological advancement, external events, and generational paradigm shifts, it can feel like the only constant for leaders is change. If so, there is no greater leadership asset than the drive to keep learning. And there […]

The post How to Create a Successful Leadership Development Program appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Strategies to Effectively Engage Learners Across the Enterprise https://www.harvardbusiness.org/strategies-to-effectively-engage-learners-across-the-enterprise/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 18:13:16 +0000 https://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=315911 Forward-thinking organizations are increasingly offering employees at all levels, across the enterprise, the opportunity to learn at work. This helps their workforce build the portfolio of knowledge and skills needed to thrive in today’s fast-paced and complex environment. These learning opportunities are available on demand, meeting learners in the moment, enabling them to rapidly acquire new skills that they can apply to their own work, and that support their organization’s strategy, needs, and culture. The best of these learning opportunities acknowledge the time-pressures that today’s learners are experiencing, without disrupting their everyday work life. In a recent post, my colleague […]

The post Strategies to Effectively Engage Learners Across the Enterprise appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Discover How to Harness the Power of Virtual Learning https://www.harvardbusiness.org/discover-how-to-harness-the-power-of-virtual-learning/ Thu, 24 Sep 2020 14:04:06 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=305905 With the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have found ourselves living the majority of our lives virtually. As working from home became the new norm, we at Harvard Business Publishing were curious about how that shift impacted organizational learning. In April, we conducted a survey which revealed that, for 75% of our respondents, virtual learning was not new to their organizations. This confirmed what we have been seeing around the globe—advances in technology have enabled learning professionals to expand the ways to reach more employees with content, and provide the time and the connections that facilitate learning. Virtual learning helps […]

The post Discover How to Harness the Power of Virtual Learning appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Now Is the Time to Instill Habits That Create Lifelong Learners https://www.harvardbusiness.org/now-is-the-time-to-instill-habits-that-create-lifelong-learners/ Wed, 29 Apr 2020 14:38:39 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=185021 The aspiration to make learning a habit is a familiar goal among learning professionals but scaling a learning habit has been a common hurdle for L&D teams. Looking for insight into how to crack the code, I recently read a few books on establishing new habits. When I started this research, I never imagined that we would be experiencing a global crisis that would upend some of our most basic habits. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us many things we would gladly give back, but it has also created the conditions that are needed to spark new habits: it has […]

The post Now Is the Time to Instill Habits That Create Lifelong Learners appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Leading Through Uncertainty https://www.harvardbusiness.org/leading-through-uncertainty/ Thu, 12 Mar 2020 15:35:12 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=150729 VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) has been in the business vocabulary for over 30 years and yet we’ve seldom been confronted with the degree of uncertainty we’re now facing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Where next? How bad? How long? Who can we rely on for the latest and most reliable information? How will our organization – our employees, customers, partners, supply chain – be impacted? How should we respond? The threat is evolving, and leaders are recognizing that they will have to respond and make adjustments in real time. This doesn’t mean that leaders need to become overnight epidemiologists. We’ll […]

The post Leading Through Uncertainty appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Meet the Future of Work Head On https://www.harvardbusiness.org/meet-the-future-of-work-head-on/ Mon, 11 Mar 2019 15:15:22 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=28702 When we gathered over 120 learning leaders earlier this month at our Leadership Development Forum in New York, we were eager to see what the reaction would be to the day’s topic. We’d thought our subject—“Readying Talent for the Future of Work”—might be met with trepidation. After all, when it comes to digital disruption and technological innovation, there are still many unknowns. But our group gave the future of work and learning a hearty welcome. Their attitude? Bring it on. We’re ready for this challenge. As we shared ideas on how to develop our leaders for the workplace of tomorrow, […]

The post Meet the Future of Work Head On appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Mirroring Learning Culture in L&D https://www.harvardbusiness.org/mirroring-learning-culture-in-ld/ Tue, 05 Mar 2019 16:33:12 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=27471 When you hold a mirror up to your organization’s learning culture, do you like what you see? And if not, how do you change the image? It’s a daunting thought. Culture is shaped by values, norms, and behaviors that become entrenched over time, and by written processes and unwritten rules that govern how work gets done. As talent development professionals, we have a unique responsibility to shape our organization’s learning culture, but we didn’t create it on our own, and we can’t change it by ourselves. Shifting the way an organization values and accomplishes learning requires a collaborative effort among […]

The post Mirroring Learning Culture in L&D appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Back To School: Critical Capabilities For The Leaders Of Today And Tomorrow https://www.harvardbusiness.org/back-to-school-critical-capabilities-for-the-leaders-of-today-and-tomorrow/ Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:28:56 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=1157 I recently attended parent orientation at the college my daughter will be attending this fall. The two-day program provided practical information, insights into the student experience, and information on the academic landscape. Most sessions were designed to reassure us that our newly minted high school graduates would not only survive, but also thrive as freshmen, provided we do our part and stay out of their way. Others were designed to shift our mindsets about the goals of a college education in the 21st century, a useful adjustment for an audience whose graduations occurred in the 20th century. One session in […]

The post Back To School: Critical Capabilities For The Leaders Of Today And Tomorrow appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]> Leading And Following: Taking The Backseat When You’re Used To Being The Driver https://www.harvardbusiness.org/leading-and-following-taking-the-backseat-when-youre-used-to-being-the-driver/ Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:19:36 +0000 http://www.harvardbusiness.org/?p=1631 Leadership is a complex concept, but it’s something we all seem to just intuitively “get.” Followership, by contrast, seems less complex, but can be more difficult to grasp. That’s because most of us don’t think of ourselves explicitly as followers. The word tends to get a bad rap. Followers? Those are people who go blindly along; that’s not us. In an interview on HBR.org, Susan Ashford, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, talked about the fluidity of leadership, and the need to be able to move between a leader’s and a follower’s role. Recently, her words […]

The post Leading And Following: Taking The Backseat When You’re Used To Being The Driver appeared first on Harvard Business Publishing.

]]>