Introduction

Leadership development has been at the top of corporate agendas since the war for talent first broke out in the late 1990s, but it has taken on an even greater urgency since the global financial crisis. In a Deloitte survey, 77% of employees agree leadership development is very important to the success of a firm^[1]. Financial results affirm such a conviction: in a study of 11 listed financial services firms, companies which had invested heavily in their human capital achieved five times the stock market returns of companies with little emphasis on human capital.

However, there is still a huge gap in the quality of our leaders. 55 percent of executive-level respondents said their firms’ performance was “likely” or “very likely” to suffer in the near future due to insufficient leadership talent^[2].

Technology, especially the use of mobile devices, represents a huge opportunity in Asia. In Southeast Asia for example, smartphone owners spend an average of over three hours per day on their devices^[3]. Smartphone adoption in the region varies widely, from 87% in Singapore and 71% in China, to only 18% in India. These figures are expected to rocket in the next few years as people upgrade from feature phones^[4].

In this article, we examine the various types of technology used to develop leaders and how new advances could help narrow the gap. There are three main roles that e-learning technology plays in accelerating leadership development:

1. Content

2. Coaching

3. Communication

1. Content

“E-learning” has been broadly defined as “learning that is delivered, enabled, or mediated using electronic technology for the explicit purpose of training, learning or development in organisations”^[5]. Universities first started experimenting with e-learning in the 1960s but it became mainstream with the popularisation of the Internet^[6]. In just seven years, the percentage of e-learning in training hours has exploded, from 14% in 1999 to 40% in 2006^[7].

Training content, typically in the form of videos and slideshows, is delivered to training participants through the Internet or pre-loaded into the computers. Their biggest advantages are consistency in delivery, easy accessibility, and low cost, especially in today’s globally-dispersed workplaces. Recent innovations include the use of avatar environments and MOOCs.

Avatars
An avatar is an “online manifestation of self in a virtual world, and is designed to enhance interaction in a virtual space^[8].” While most popular in entertainment such as The Sims computer game, avatar environments are slowly gaining acceptance in educational settings. In 2013, MIT’s Sloan School of Management became the first university to integrate a virtual platform into a live class environment for its executive education programmes^[9]. Participants from around the world learn together in real-time with the physical classroom attendees, allowing them to save both time and travel expenses.

Just like in real life, avatars must be nearby in order to hear others speak, which could make communication difficult. There are also more technical hurdles to overcome, such as dropped connections, laggy performance, and missing audio. Research on the learning effectiveness of avatar environments is scant, though there is some limited evidence that they could help increase the learning motivation of students^[10].

MOOCs
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the next big thing in online education, literally, with upwards of a quarter million students in a single MOOC course. A typical MOOC format consists of multiple short 8- to 12-minute video lectures, followed by discussions in group forums. Assignments are either computer-marked or peer-assessed. LeaderMOOC (www.leadermooc.net/) by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is an example of a MOOC specialising in leadership development^[11].

However MOOCs suffer from low course completion rates, lower than 10% by some estimates^[12]. Without the structured regimentation of classroom training, participants need high levels of self-motivation to benefit from MOOCs. This is likely to discourage many busy executives. The large numbers of participants also make individualised attention from instructors impossible. Instead, many MOOC courses rely heavily on peer feedback, which is of varying quality.

Conclusion
At its core, leadership development is about changing behaviours and not acquiring knowledge. It is the latter that e-learning excels at – the communication and transfer of knowledge in a consistent and efficient manner. Nevertheless, e-learning still has an important role to play, such as delivering pre-course content before following up with live classroom, instructor-led skills training.

2. Coaching

Where conventional e-learning focuses on pushing out standardised training content to groups of people, coaching emphasises individualised attention and tailoring customised feedback to each participant. According to CIPD, coaching is “a development technique based on the use of one-to-one discussions to enhance an individual’s skills, knowledge, or work performance”^[13]. The use of coaching in companies is on the rise, and the top reason is to improve the capabilities of high potential executives^[14].

However, such endeavours are hugely expensive and necessarily restricted to a selective pool of individuals. A 2009 survey of 140 executive coaches by the Harvard Business Review pegged the median hourly cost of coaching at USD500^[15]. How could technology help to make coaching more widely available?

One answer could be inside your pocket. The Hampton hospitality giant (part of the Hilton group) has come up with a smartphone app specially designed to deliver timely personalised leadership tips to its senior managers^[16]. Based on the principle that a leader learns best from other leaders whose strengths match their own, the tips were then customised according to an algorithm. Participants rate each tip on its usefulness and relevance. This helps the algorithm to refine the tips over time.

There are also collaborative platforms that allow trainers to provide individualised attention for the participants, an example of which is CrossKnowledge’s Mentoring-on-Demand platform (www.crossknowledge.com). A online chat system allows mentors to focus on the specific needs of individual learners, and to motivate them to work through challenges they encounter over the duration of the training course. This is a powerful tool that directly addresses the lack of individualised attention inherent in e-learning courses.

3. Communication

If feedback from individual mentors could help develop leaders, how about feedback from entire teams? Beyond developing individual leaders, technology can also play a role in developing the leadership capabilities of organisations. Tools to facilitate organisation-wide communication and 360-degree feedback are spreading with the dramatic improvements in cloud computing platforms.

One example is 15Five (www.15five.com), a cloud-based communications tool built on the idea that each employee should spend 15 minutes a week writing a report that takes their manager no more than 5 minutes to read. The report could include problems, challenges, successes, and even how they are feeling. If necessary, reports could be consolidated and floated up to the next level of managers. Other tools such as TINYpulse (www.tinypulse.com) make conducting regular pulse surveys and gathering anonymous feedback from employees easier.

However, such tools are not a silver bullet for unhealthy corporate cultures. As the founder and CEO of 15Five, David Hassell pointed out, “Just putting this tool in place doesn't mean it would automatically shift the dialog. But it works well for companies that have a great culture of open and transparent communication."

The 4th role? Analytics

Beyond the three roles discussed above, there is a fourth area that technology is starting to make its influence felt. Analytics, the systematic analysis of data to produce valuable insights, has gotten huge buzz in recent years. It is commonplace in guiding business decisions but still relatively rare in HR and leadership development. Talent analytics initiatives can be viewed along a spectrum, ranging from simple information dashboards to targeted leadership development measures.

Where it differs from the first three roles of technology is that by itself, analytics does not improve the quality of leaders. What it does is support and enhance the effectiveness of other leadership development initiatives.

A low-hanging analytics fruit is to simply make HR information more readily available to managers. An example is the EmployeeBoss (www.employeeboss.com) platform which combines multiple HR information systems into a single dashboard. A few companies such as Harrah’s and JetBlue have started taking broad measurements such as employee engagement, well-being, and retention. But very few organisations have the statistical chops to use analytics in developing their leaders.

Example of Google

One notable exception is Google. The Internet giant came out of nowhere in 2007 to grab the top spot in Fortune’s list of 100 best companies to work for the number one place to work, and has been entrenched in the top four positions ever since^[17].

Holding true to its value of data-driven decisions, Google decided to study exactly what set a good manager apart in a special plan code-named Project Oxygen (because good leadership keeps the company alive). The results were eight management axioms such as “Have a clear vision and strategy for the team” and “Empower your team and don’t micromanage”. But wouldn’t many business books contain the same information?

The value of Project Oxygen lay in its specificity: the data came from Google, and was thus much more persuasive to both Googler engineers and managers than generic management advice. Critically, Google also followed up with practical action, assigning coaches to help managers one-on-one with their identified weaknesses. The end results were impressive, registering a significant improvement in manager quality for three-quarters of their worst-performing managers^[18].

However, most companies lack the resources to embark on such a multi-year research study. Google’s data-driven culture is also unusual, especially in HR where intuition is often used to make decisions. Would the management in other companies be able to accept research findings contrary to their personal beliefs?

Limitations of technology

Technology cannot solve all leadership problems - it can only support the process. After all, a food processor on its own will not produce a five-star meal. In fact, the root of poor leadership capabilities may not even be a lack of training and development. It could be a problem of hiring the wrong person for the job or a lack of organisational resources. But when applied judiciously to the appropriate problem as seen from the example of Google above, technology is an effective enabler.

Nonetheless, technology is set to play an even more prominent role in the future. With the nature of work becoming more virtual, with teams working remotely from different locations, leaders need to learn to lead in virtual roles. Developing leaders using platforms that mirror those they work on helps ensure greater transference of learning.