Consider the changes in the health industry this past year, ranging from an increased focus on health equity, to new collaborations between diverse partners and a search for a solution to the burnout problem. It’s clear that massive shifts are taking place in the health ecosystem and beyond, and leaders across industries are experiencing the shockwaves of disruption. 

The one key differentiator of high-performing organizations is their strategic investment in leadership development. This is especially true as more players recognize that investing in their employees’ development is an effective lever to pull when working to achieve organizational goals. 

As we plan for 2023, we’re taking stock of patterns and trends that rose from our client work in 2022. Our insights come from a variety of sources, including our work with top leaders in the health ecosystem and the most frequently cited requests for leadership development across our clients. Here's what organizations focused their investments on over the past year.  

High-Growth Solutions

• Cohort-based Leadership Academies: We saw increased interest in custom-designed leadership academies that apply a structured change process to create a unified culture and leadership mindset. These academies unite leaders around a common set of organizational goals and objectives, equipping them with the skills and competencies necessary to execute strategy and helping them successfully drive forward complex organizational initiatives.
• Executive Coaching: Organizations also prioritized executive coaching, which is one of the most efficient ways to enhance the effectiveness of leaders. Coaches work with executives in a number of ways: helping with transitions into a new role, improving ability to leverage key strengths, and/or building leadership competencies for enhanced well-being and on-the-job performance. 
• Strategic Succession Management: In today’s volatile talent market, organizations are developing future-focused succession management to assess and develop leadership potential. A well thought-out strategic succession management process ensures that organizations have the right people in key leadership positions today, tomorrow, and in the future. 

Top Executive Coaching Development Goals 

We analyzed data from hundreds of our coaching clients’ development plans to arrive at key themes in leadership development. Here are a few of them.  

• Authentic Communication: Ensuring information is shared with appropriate team members and stakeholders in a method and format that they can understand and appreciate. 
• Constructive Collaboration: Taking the time to build relationships with key stakeholders that are invested in the challenge at hand and working collaboratively to develop a definition of success that incorporates all perspectives.
• Alignment to Mission: Acting to align one’s individual and team goals with the strategic direction of the organization. Ensuring all people within a team understand how their work relates to the organization's mission. 
• Building a High-Performing Team: Calibrating a team’s current state of performance and engaging in a process to realign on goals, roles, business results, priorities, norms for working together, and what the team can expect from one another.

Top Leadership Training Themes

Finally, in requests for group leadership training, we saw the following requests to equip leaders with new skills for success. 

• Agile and Adaptive Leadership Skills: With all of the change and disruption around us, it’s no wonder that there was an influx of requests to develop agile and adaptive leadership skills. Our learning sessions on these topics help leaders to more easily navigate a rapidly changing environment.
• Leading Self and Emotional Intelligence: Having a deep understanding of self and how you appear to others is a fundamental building block of leadership. TLD Group’s learning sessions on this topic help leaders develop sensitivity to their own emotions and those of others in order to build stronger interpersonal relationships.
• Resilience and Burnout Prevention in Healthcare Leadership: With burnout rates skyrocketing, it has never been more critical for leaders to learn skills relating to self-care and resilience. We aim to help leaders to recognize signs of burnout, and develop strategies to support and sustain themselves for the long term. 
• Strategic Thinking and Decision Making: Enhancing strategic thinking and decision-making skills enhances leaders’ abilities to use critical thinking to solve complex problems and achieve goals. Our learning sessions in this area focus on tools, approaches, and methodologies for approaching challenges or goals and equipping leaders with skills to continue to move forward despite obstacles.
• Business Acumen and Financial Literacy: New levels of organizational effectiveness and impact are unlocked when leaders at all levels of your organization have an understanding of how their role contributes to the bottom line. 

How to Prepare for the Future

At TLD Group, we believe that no matter what challenges come up in the healthcare industry, the most effective strategy for success is well-trained and confident leaders. Our coaches and consultants have expertise working with organizations across every major sector of the health industry.