Full-Immersion Learning: Building Confident and Capable Leaders

Abbey Lewis

October 13, 2025

When you land in a new city, a familiar challenge emerges—how do you see, taste, and experience the most in the little time you have?

For every city, there are hundreds of guides and itineraries, each promising the “best” way to explore. Following one offers structure but also keeps you on rails, walking someone else’s path rather than discovering your own. The experience offers an easier way to explore, but it falls short of being truly transformative.

The alternative is immersion: stepping into the streets, wandering without a script, and experiencing the city in its true state. In those unplanned moments—trying local food, navigating side streets, asking strangers for directions, you begin to understand the city as it really is.

Leadership development is no different. Leaders must master new skills faster than ever. Yet they identify lack of time as the single greatest barrier to mastery. To make the most of scarce time, organizations must shift from traditional learning methods to full-immersion learning.

Full-immersion learning places leaders in business-relevant contexts such as simulations, role play, or real-world challenges where they apply knowledge in real time. It is experiential, contextual, and designed for speed, engagement, retention, and confidence. Among the most effective forms are practice-first learning and action learning projects, which demonstrate how immersion accelerates both skill and impact.

Practice-First Learning: Learning by Doing

Arriving in a new city can feel overwhelming. There are countless streets to explore and hundreds of foods to try. Reading a guidebook may help, but you won’t know which meals you love until you taste them. By exploring first, you discover the city through your own senses—and then deepen your understanding with research.

Practice-first learning creates the same effect in business. Instead of starting with abstract instruction, employees engage directly with real work challenges, experiment, and learn by doing. They recognize their own gaps as they encounter obstacles, then reinforce their knowledge with the applicable research-based concepts. The results are higher engagement, faster skill development, and greater confidence—addressing the issues of low engagement in traditional learning.

Action Learning Projects: Building Skills While Driving Results

When you travel with a group, everyone has different priorities. One person hunts for the best food, another searches for history, and someone else wants art and culture. Without alignment, the group risks a fragmented journey.

Leaders and their teams face the same challenge. Action learning projects solve it by anchoring development in real business issues. Each member brings a different lens, but together they apply knowledge, solve problems, and drive outcomes that matter. The learning is immediate, motivating, and efficient. Skills grow at the same pace as results.

Research confirms this; immersive, contextual, team-based learning doesn’t just accelerate development, it also fuels innovation.

From Wrong Turns to Real-Time Feedback

Even in the best-designed learning experiences, leaders need feedback to know where they stand. Without it, they risk repeating mistakes or overlooking gaps. It’s much like exploring a new city; you may order a dish that looks appealing but doesn’t match your taste. In the process, you learn something new about your preferences.

One of the most persistent challenges in leadership development is identifying and addressing individual skill gaps. Artificial intelligence (AI) now provides the real-time feedback loop leaders have long been missing. By analyzing performance, it not only highlights the gaps but also delivers feedback that is immediate and contextual. Paired with immersive learning methods, AI accelerates the cycle of practice, feedback, and adjustment, enabling leaders to close gaps faster and with greater confidence.

Bottom Line

Travel reminds us that the richest experiences often come when we choose to immerse ourselves in our environment. The meals you remember, the neighborhoods you love, and the insights you carry home come from stepping off the itinerary and plunging into the life of the city.

Immersive learning delivers the same depth in the workplace. When leaders learn in real contexts, it accelerates skill development, fuels engagement, and builds confidence. Leaders are better equipped to apply new skills in ways that spark innovation.

As Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati argues, now is the moment for organizations to lead with courage. By diving into learning head-on and embracing risk, they build leaders with the practical skills to thrive in disruption.

At Harvard Business Impact, we deliver innovative and immersive learning through HBR Spark, combining world-class content, AI-driven personalization, and hands-on experiences such as leadership labs to accelerate growth and performance.  In our blended learning experiences, leaders engage in immersive learning through simulations, business impact projects, and other high-touch methods that connect your business challenges directly and drive meaningful impact.

Full-immersion learning is not just about acquiring new skills—it’s also about transforming leaders into the innovators of the future.

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Six Ways to Scale Corporate Leadership Development Quickly for Strategic Advantage

Abbey Lewis

September 8, 2023

Scaling leadership development across the enterprise is vital to any company’s future success; scaling leadership development quickly is even more imperative. That’s because the pace of change – think COVID, supply-chain upheaval, and the arrival of ChatGPT/AI – has also accelerated.

Readying current teams, particularly frontline managers who supervise up to 80% of the workforce, to manage, inspire, and lead more effectively is one key to success. Done well, the fast, effective scaling of leadership development programs delivers significant organizational benefits:

• Accelerates time to impact by rapidly building competencies at all levels while delivering unified and consistent messaging.
• Deepens engagement by inspiring learners and driving retention through multiple methodologies that optimize learning experience and support how learners want to learn.
• Fosters agility by enabling employees across the organization to respond quickly to market shifts and new opportunities.
• Advances inclusivity by enabling a broad sharing of experiences and tapping into thinking and experiences from across the organization.

The good news is that there are many proven, and emerging, best practices for scaling leadership development quickly in an epoch of rapid change, each of which will accelerate and amplify the impact of an organization’s leadership initiatives.

Six proven ways for organizations to scale their corporate leadership development programs

1. Small group learning at scale

The quickest way to accelerate leadership development across the organization is to offer learning that can scale, such as at large virtual events. But research suggests learners benefit from learning with others; they want opportunities to build connections with and learn from their peers. So, it’s incumbent on organizations to create leadership development programs that deliver both. Integrating small-group learning into larger-cohort learning experiences provides aspiring leaders the best of both worlds – a way to participate in exciting learning experiences en masse, while also getting to explore, share, and practice within the safety of smaller groups.

Small group learning integrated into larger leadership development learning experiences is key, but to execute this effectively requires thinking differently and factoring in the organization’s culture. For example, small groups may be entirely self-organized or could be incorporated as breakout groups in larger live sessions. Providing small groups with materials to have meaningful discussions, giving learners opportunities to give and receive feedback from their group, and encouraging learners to connect their learning back to their work are a few ways to make these sessions both meaningful and impactful at scale.

2. Personalization and learner choice

More and more front-line managers are Millennials and Gen Z, learners that have grown up in a world where applications and content are personalized to their needs.  At the same time, giving learners choices in what they learn and how they learn helps to drive agency and engagement. Today, organizations can offer choices while still aligning learning experiences to organizational priorities and delivering impact at scale. For example, Learning Sprints provide such an experience, offering learners a choice of learning paths on related topics designed for the organization, creating enough differentiation to give learners some agency, yet enough commonality that all developing leaders can come back to larger group-learning formats with similar knowledge for a cohesive learning experience and discussion.

3. Practice with feedback

Practice is an important part of any learning experience, driving impact and engagement, and making new skills truly stick. It also gives new leaders an opportunity to try out new skills in a safe environment. Providing large groups of learners the opportunity to practice and receive meaningful feedback can be challenging, but can be accomplished with a variety of methods. For example, organizing small groups, and building role plays and peer feedback can be very impactful, potentially even more so when paired with video-based coaching tips to model and reinforce skills. Advances in technology have made feedback more scalable as well; consider simulations in which large cohorts of individual learners recieve real-time feedback on their performance.

4. Adaptable solutions

Organizations also need simple ways to adapt learning material to the individual learner’s needs. For example, an organization with 1,500 front-line leaders – 1,000 who work at headquarters, another 500 in warehouses – will likely find that there are fundamental skills that all of these leaders need, but there may be small nuances in terms of skills or context that, when addressed, can make the experience much more relevant, relatable, and impactful for both audiences. Training on how to lead in a hybrid work environment isn’t going to work for, or resonate with this organization’s warehouse leaders, so being able to adapt content or context to meet the needs of different audiences is key. Building leadership development programs that allow for customization can make a big difference in ensuring relevance.

5. Combine synchronous and asynchronous learning

The idea that synchronous and asynchronous learning each have their strengths is not new, but should continually be optimized. Organizations must consider what knowledge acquisition or skill development activities can be accomplished independently – on one’s own time and at one’s own pace  – with synchronous learning where learners have an opportunity to make connections with their peers. And, by including communal large events, large cohorts of learners can come together to collectively share their learning across the enterprise.

6. Facilitated debriefs

Bringing large cohorts together for facilitated debriefs is essential to helping learners connect the experience and their learning back to the organization and its priorities. These sessions should guide learners to reflect on and discuss how the new concepts apply to their work.

It’s essential with large cohorts that moderators energize and engage the group, leveraging knowledge of the content and organization, as well as tools and technology to deepen audience engagement. Live polling, for example, creates a bond between the moderator and learners while infusing the dynamic with live, “lived” data. Another best practice is leveraging a senior sponsor and the “leader-as-teacher” model, where senior executives share insights, stories, and lessons learned, which foster some of the most powerful learning moments in any given program. Breakout groups where learners can discuss topics in a more intimate setting with peers are also effective in keeping learners engaged and giving them an opportunity to connect with peers.

Whatever methods an organization chooses, the goal should be for learners to leave these sessions feeling connected to their cohort of peers and energized by how they will apply what they learned in their roles.

Over the last decade, much has changed in leadership development: the collective understanding of what works and what doesn’t, the tools and technology that facilitate it, and perhaps most importantly the stakes. Developing leaders at all levels used to be the province of only the best, most-forward thinking companies. Today, it’s a must for any company interested in operational agility; inclusion, engagement, and retention; and thriving in a world marked by complexity and constant change. Scaling leadership development quickly has never been more necessary – or more achievable.

Learn more

Organizations are urgently seeking better ways to develop their future leaders in today’s fast-paced world of technology and ever-changing business environments. Harvard Business Publishing conducted a global study to understand these needs and expectations. For further insights on business challenges, future leadership skills, and the organizational goals that companies aim to achieve with the help of leadership development training programs, download our research findings “The Changing Face of Leadership Development: Trends and Challenges“.

Research Findings

The Changing Face of Leadership Development: Trends and Challenges

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New to Leadership? Here’s How to Address Loneliness

Abbey Lewis

February 3, 2023

The adage, “It’s lonely at the top” is often used to describe the isolation that accompanies being at the highest rank of a traditional organizational structure. And while it’s true that over 70% of new CEOs report feelings of loneliness,[i] they don’t have a lock on that human emotion. Leaders, of all levels, experience a sense of aloneness from time to time. And no group feels it more keenly than individual contributors who have been recently promoted to frontline leaders. Given that loneliness, if left unchecked, can have the same negative health impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day,[ii] it’s important for new leaders to recognize and address these feelings as soon as they emerge.

Loneliness at Work

Are we, as a society, more lonely at work than in past decades? Expert opinions vary. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy frames loneliness in the starkest of terms, writing, “At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly.”[iii] Other studies report seemingly contradictory findings, with some arguing that reliance on technology has diminished our social ties, and others discovering that technology can actually help reduce feelings of isolation.[iv]

The jury may be out on exactly how many of us are lonely at work, but medical and mental health experts agree: feelings of isolation are not good for the people experiencing it. “Social loneliness”, which is “felt when we do not have a confidante and are unable to get support from peers, colleagues, family, or friends,” can lead to despair and possibly depression.[v]

And beyond the harmful effects that loneliness imparts to individuals, there are organizational ramifications as well. It’s been shown that loneliness can contribute to rapid turnover, reduced productivity, and burnout.[vi][vii] One researcher even likened the disintegration of our social networks to a fraying crocheted sweater, its threads coming loose and undermining the garment’s structural integrity.[viii]

New Frontline Leaders are Especially Vulnerable to Feeling Alone

People in leadership roles experience a very specific set of conditions that may lead to desolate feelings.

Unclear social norms

One of the biggest surprises new managers encounter after a promotion is how quickly their workplace social circle changes. Casual invitations such as, “Want to hang out and grab dinner?” may now be fraught with ambiguity about whether that type of socializing is appropriate.

Fewer peers

Also, leaders with previously large peer groups are often stymied by the fact that they now have so few peers to turn to for support and advice. It’s simple math: there are fewer leaders than individual contributors, so they will have access to a smaller candidate pool of confidantes. Even though it’s the normal way of organizational life, it can still leave new leaders feeling adrift.

Distance with work friends

Along with having fewer people to get advice from, the social dynamics between new leaders and their former peers have changed. There is a “distancing” between self and former peers that occurs when they move into the management ranks.  This interpersonal distancing cuts both ways: individual contributors may not understand the demands of their newly promoted friends, and new supervisors, not wanting to appear to favor their pals, tend to avoid giving their friends bonuses, even when deserved.[ix]

Antidotes to Frontline Leadership Loneliness

Research has uncovered several ways in which frontline leaders may ease the distance felt in their new role. Here are four ideas that leaders can put to use:

1. Root out the source of loneliness

First off, it might be helpful for new leaders to consider the source of their disconnection: is it due to being truly isolated? Or might that sense of uneasiness also be tied to the new identity that leadership brings? Leaders who reflect by considering, How much of what I’m feeling is tied to the new role I’m learning? may find solace in the answers.  It can be helpful to understand that one’s loneliness isn’t in any way a personal failing, but rather an outgrowth of forming new business relationships and learning new skills.

2. Create new, meaningful social networks

Moving into a managerial role means forging relationships with a new set of peers—other frontline leaders. And although this might seem daunting, there is evidence that gathering with this group can help thwart loneliness. “Cultivating a network of allies. . .can provide mutual support in creating positive change to improve performance,” write psychology researchers Norian Caporale-Berkowitz and Stewart D. Friedman. New leaders should look for ways to form bonds. Examples include intentionally connecting for informal activities, such as lunch, or participating in more formal organizational events, such as peer coaching.[x]

3. Leverage casual interactions

It’s not just the strong bonds we have with colleagues, friends, and family that lead to overall feelings of connectedness. Random interactions can help us feel less lonely as well. Gillian Sandstrom, whose research focuses on “weak ties”—those brief, positive social encounters people have throughout their day—has found that when we have a genuine social interaction with a stranger, we feel 17% happier and more socially connected.[xi]

Leaders can leverage weak ties in the workplace by creating intention to connect. Sandstrom reports that the simple act of smiling and saying “hello” to a stranger increases positive emotions and aids in the feeling of connectivity, so even something as simple as smiling at people passing in the hallways can lesson feelings of loneliness.

This strategy of “intentional connection” is especially important for leaders who find themselves in a hybrid or remote work configuration; they must proactively seek out social interaction in their day, whether it’s when walking their dog or taking a break at their local coffee shop. Some organizations put a structured process into place to aid in creating weak ties. For example, during the pandemic, Google created randomly generated 15-minute virtual “coffee chat” meetings to help employees and leaders connect with people they wouldn’t otherwise meet.

4. Frame missteps as learning experiences

As frontline managers adjust to managing people, they may find themselves navigating new territory with unease—such as managing conflict among colleagues, or communicating a big workplace change. It’s inevitable that new leaders won’t do this all perfectly. Instead of berating themselves and keeping missteps silent, they should see these as valuable learning experiences, discuss them with peer managers, and ask experienced leaders if they have recommended best practices. By framing missteps as learning experiences and discussing them with peers, new leaders can more easily release the tension and isolation that a new leadership identity may bring, and may even start to confidently embrace their role. More structured initiatives, such as lunch-and-learn events and formalized frontline leadership development programs, can help facilitate this social learning.

Feelings of loneliness are common for first-time leaders because a sense of isolation often accompanies their new role. Instead of suffering in silence, new frontline leaders should use their current discomfort as an opportunity to be more intentional about creating connection at work. By understanding the source of their isolation and taking steps to ameliorate these feelings, they can expand their network, feel happier and socially connected, and more effectively tackle their daily work. To learn more about what frontline leaders can do to be successful in their roles—especially those new to the position—download the full paper: Surviving the Trial by Fire: Five Crucial Capabilities for Today’s Frontline Leaders.

Perspectives

Surviving the Trial by Fire: Five Crucial Capabilities for Today’s Frontline Leaders

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[i] Saporito, Thomas J., “It’s Time to Acknowledge CEO Loneliness,” HBR.org, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/02/its-time-to-acknowledge-ceo-lo.

[ii] Cigna Health and Life Insurance, “Are You Feeling Lonely?” 2020. https://www.cigna.com/static/www-cigna-com/docs/loneliness-index-customer-flyer.pdf.

[iii] Murthy, Vivek, “Work and the Loneliness Epidemic,” HBR.org, September 26, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/09/work-and-the-loneliness-epidemic.

[iv] Berinato, Scott, “What Do We Know About Loneliness and Work?” HBR.org, September 28, 2017 https://hbr.org/2017/09/what-do-we-know-about-loneliness-and-work.

[v] Sinha, Ruchi, “How to Be Alone without Being Lonely,” HBR.org, April 17, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-be-alone-without-being-lonely.

[vi] Noonan Hadley, Constance, “Employees Are Lonelier Than Ever. Here’s How Employers Can Help.” HBR.org, June 9, 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/06/employees-are-lonelier-than-ever-heres-how-employers-can-help.

[vii] Pitstick, Hannah, “5 tips for addressing loneliness in the workplace,” Financial Management Magazine, April 5, 2021. https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2021/apr/how-to-address-loneliness-at-work.html.

[viii] Berinato, Scott, “What Do We Know About Loneliness and Work?” HBR.org, September 28, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/09/what-do-we-know-about-loneliness-and-work.

[ix] Shaw, Alex, Shoham Choshen-Hillel, and Eugene M. Carus, “Being Biased Against Friends to Appear Unbiased,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2018. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103117305577?via%3Dihub.

[x] Caporale-Berkowitz, Norian, and Stewart D. Friedman, “How Peer Coaching Can Make Work Less Lonely,” HBR.org, October 12, 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-peer-coaching-can-make-work-less-lonely.

[xi] Sandstrom, Gillian, and Ashley Whillans, “Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much,” HBR.org, April 22, 2020.  https://hbr.org/2020/04/why-you-miss-those-casual-friends-so-much.

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Good leadership? It all starts with trust.

Abbey Lewis

1. Van Voorhis, Scott, “People Trust Business, But Expect CEOs to Drive Social Change,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, October 21, 2022. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/people-trust-business-but-expect-ceos-to-drive-social-change. ︎
2. Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss, “Begin with Trust,” Harvard Business Review, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/05/begin-with-trust. ︎
3. Zak, Paul, “The Neuroscience of Trust,” Harvard Business Review, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust. ︎
4. Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang, and Brian Hall, “Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures,” American Psychological Association, 2019. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Mitigating%20Malicious%20Envy_b763904a-ac7a-4981-8e4e-52da0640efa9.pdf. ︎

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Know – And Use – Your Organization’s Business Strategy

Abbey Lewis

February 22, 2022

One of the hallmarks of a successful organization is having a well thought out and clearly articulated business strategy that informs the day-to-day work of the entire organization. This doesn’t mean that everyone spends every waking hour thinking about strategy. Most of us have too many “got to get it done” tasks for that to happen. But throughout an organization, up and down the ranks, employees should understand what their company’s forward-looking focus is. And when they’re making decisions at the tactical level, they should be holding those decisions up to the light of strategy, and asking themselves how their decisions are forwarding it. When employees know – and use – your organization’s strategy, as well as understand why it was chosen and how it’s going to be achieved, they’ll feel more engaged and responsible – and the likelihood that the company’s strategy will succeed will increase.

So just what is a business strategy?

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to just what we mean when we’re talking about strategy: A business strategy defines what an organization does differently from or better than rivals to create unique value.

Another way to think about strategy comes from London Business School’s Freek Vermeulen. In a digital Harvard Business Review article that appeared in November 2017, Professor Vermeulen wrote:

A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do. Many strategies fail to get implemented, despite the ample efforts of hard-working people, because they do not represent a set of clear choices. Many so-called strategies are in fact goals. “We want to be the number one or number two in all the markets in which we operate” is one of those. It does not tell you what you are going to do; all it does is tell you what you hope the outcome will be. But you’ll still need a strategy to achieve it.

A strategy, then, tells us how we’re going to achieve our goals. There are many different ways in which an organization can pursue their goals and achieve the results they’re after. That’s where choices come into play. Three companies may each be vying to be that “number one or number two in all [their] markets.” One might choose to pursue this goal by providing superior products they can charge a premium for. Another could focus on offering the world’s best customer service and the third company’s strategy might be to acquire their way into dominant market share.

This is, of course, a simplification of a complex concept, but I agree with Freek Vermeulen: strategy is all about the choices you make to reach your goals. Your organization’s strategy will be composed of a number of different components, such as your go-to-market strategy, your product strategy, your people strategy, your digital strategy. And these components will all involve explicit decisions about what you’re going to do and – implicitly if not explicitly – about what you’re not going to do.

Strategy: Not just for the corporate world

I’m sometimes asked whether strategic thinking applies to those who work for a government agency or a not-for-profit organization, where there’s no profit motive driving things. The answer, of course, is yes. A government agency may not need to show a profit, but they do need to demonstrate that they can achieve results. And just like in the business world, if a government agency fails to demonstrate value, eventually the taxpayers will demand that their funding gets cut. A non-profit may not think of itself as being in a competitive environment, but they’re competing for funding with other groups, and need to be able to differentiate their offerings to donors. And just like in the business world, if a non-profit’s expenses exceed its revenue, eventually they’ll be closing their doors. So, yes, if you’re working in the government or non-profit sector, you need to understand your organization’s strategy and how you can contribute to it.

And knowing the business strategy is not just for the C-Suite, either

It can be tempting to cede knowing your organization’s strategy to the leadership team. But the reality is that all employees play a role in their organization’s success, especially given how rapidly and dramatically the world continues to change. Employees at all levels must know what the company’s strategy is, and consistently be asking themselves how they can further it. A product manager should be looking for ways to add product features that build competitive advantage. A salesperson should consider which prospects, given their organization’s strategy, they should be pursuing. If a company is targeting a specific demographic, an HR professional might want to devise a plan to attract and retain employees who are members of that demographic.

Certainly, being well-versed in the organization’s strategy is a requisite for those in senior leadership But it’s an essential element of the business acumen portfolio for employees throughout the organization. Your organization’s success depends on having a sound strategy, and on having employees who know and use that strategy, whatever their role.

If you asked your employees what your organization’s business strategy is, could they answer you?

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5 Key Human Skills to Thrive in the Future Digital Workplace

Abbey Lewis

We often hear that human skills (or soft skills) are important to create thriving and high-performing teams. But the changing nature of work—with fully remote to hybrid arrangements—makes these skills even more crucial to develop now.

What exactly are human skills?

Sometimes known as “soft skills,” they constitute our ability to relate to one another and refer to aspects such as empathy, compassion, and authenticity. People with strong human skills can form deeper connections with colleagues and customers. This ultimately serves as a strong foundation for positive workplace performance in terms of innovation, adaptive thinking, collaboration, and more.

This surfaced as one of the key themes during the 2021 Partners’ Meeting—Learn, Lead, Illuminate. As we sat down virtually with organizational development leaders, the idea that human skills are crucial for a more adaptive, inclusive, and digital future resonated.

For many, this became more apparent than ever during the pandemic. Quickly evolving work arrangements amplified relational issues, as everyone tried adapting to the dramatic changes.

Struggles faced by their teams included:

• New hires feel disconnected from their teams during on-boarding
• Team members have become disengaged with less face-to-face time
• Employees over-connecting online to compensate for the lack of face-to-face time
• Increased burnout as some find it hard to “switch off” online while working from home

Even with most employees returning to the office to some degree, work norms have forever changed. With these challenges likely to remain to some extent in future work arrangements, our participants identified the development of “human skills” as key to navigating these challenges.

5 Human Skills That Will Help Leaders Thrive In The New Age of Work

#1 Empathy
Having empathy and compassion involves genuinely caring for others and being able to understand another person’s situation and perspective. These are qualities that may not immediately come to mind as essential workplace skills. But many are realizing that this is an essential part of cultivating long-term relational harmony and resilience at work.

Especially during these uncertain times, we’re all forced to move out of our comfort zones. During intense change, there is an increased likelihood of conflict and friction. Being able to put yourself in the shoes of another person and feel for others is more important than ever to overcome these challenges and stay connected and united as a team.

What does this look like exactly? Some participants suggested that they’ve been taking extra time and care to communicate with new hires who are looking for a stronger sense of office culture to meet their relational needs. Others are focused on supporting burned-out team members by working with them to develop better boundaries and self-care habits like mindfulness practices.

Participants also highlighted that demonstrating empathy requires effective interpersonal communication, which leads to the next set of skills.

#2 Communication
Strong communication skills have always been important in the workplace. But what makes a good communicator has shifted now that we’re so often talking and collaborating online through video calls and group chats.

Maintaining effective core communication skills whether online or offline is still essential:

• Practice active listening
• Reframe what’s been said to clarify meaning
• Be mindful of body language
• Be clear about the point you’re trying to make

Online working environments warrant paying extra attention to specific skills. For example, some try to be even more conscious of active listening and reframing what’s been said during Zoom calls to prevent miscommunication. There’s also a need to take extra care that everyone’s voices are heard.

#3 Adaptability
The pandemic has served as a good reminder to always expect the unexpected—especially when movement restrictions can be implemented at any time.

Flexibility and adaptability are skills that are essential for staying optimistic about overcoming unexpected challenges, and also help us to be more resourceful and innovative in the way we solve problems as we learn to make do with what we have.

One participant highlighted that emotional and social adaptability is particularly important for leaders managing different personalities and situations frequently. This requires honing emotional intelligence to discern and adapt to what is needed for each circumstance to make navigating work relationships as smooth as possible.

#4 Coaching
Several participants identified that coaching teams is a key skill for drawing out the best in others. Managers recognize that the old-school directive style of management creates stifling environments that do not help develop talent—and this ultimately translates to poor business outcomes.

Participants suggested that managers need to develop coaching abilities like knowing how to ask the right questions (instead of giving answers), listening well, empowering others, and guiding action plans. Creating a widespread coaching culture will help to foster an environment where employees feel supported in their growth. This can lead to long-term benefits to the organization like greater innovation and talent retention.

#5 Trust Building
This was a skill that resonated with many of our participants as an essential part of any team’s success. As one mentioned, “Trust is foundational, and you need to build that first before doing anything else.”

When people are in a team environment where they feel safe and are able to trust others, they’re able to do their best work. It’s no easy task for leaders to create such an environment. But participants suggested leaders can start off by being authentic, honest, transparent, and compassionate.

Leaders can do a lot to set the overall tone of the work environment simply in the way they’re behaving and “being” in a group. And when team members see leaders owning mistakes, looking out for others, and being upfront about challenges, it signals to the rest that it’s safe for them to do the same.

It ultimately shows that work is a place for mutual learning, and where people can feel safe to be who they are.

Human Skills for Creating “A New Better”
We’re all entering a new frontier in the way we work, and human skills will become even more important for people and organizations to thrive in this digital age. The more individuals are supported in developing these skills, the more likely they’ll be able to build a better future for themselves and their organizations.

As a leader, how are you working to develop human skills across your team?

The post 5 Key Human Skills to Thrive in the Future Digital Workplace appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

HCA Healthcare, a leading provider of healthcare services and a front-runner in healthcare transformation, continuously works to deliver outstanding patient care. To do so, the company created HCA Healthcare’s Leadership Institute, a Center of Excellence aimed at developing leaders who embrace HCA Healthcare’s culture, grow the business and lead the industry.

Harvard Business Impact partnered with the Leadership Institute to co-create two innovative cohort-based executive development programs that include face-to-face and virtual learning design—delivered annually—reinforcing the value of the talent management cycle.

Watch the webinar to hear the HCA team discuss:

• The Executive Development Program —aimed at hospital leaders aspiring to reach the C-Suite as COOs, CFOs, and CNOs, and the Leadership Excellence Program —focused on supporting service line and corporate function leaders. These programs combine Harvard’s ideas and expertise with HCA’s executive perspectives, highly contextualizing the learning for each audience.
• The “Know-Be-Do” framework for the needs assessment and design, exploring what learners need to know, who they need to be, and what they need to do.
• The engagement approach for the program’s virtual sessions to keep learning motivating for the participants.
• The impact of both programs and how they help to ensure consistently high standards of leadership to drive colleague engagement and patient care throughout the vast HCA Healthcare network.

Download the slides here.

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