Amid the pandemic, the company conducted research showing that its leadership programs fostered resilience among participants.
Pittsburgh – A survey conducted in April by leadership development firm Solutions 21 showed that participants in the company’s Next Leader Now program were well-positioned to manage the workplace challenges that occurred as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the United States began to shut down in March, organizations swiftly pivoted to virtual working arrangements, throwing longstanding practices into question.
“For those outside the Next Leader Now programs, COVID-19 was a severe disruption; 81% of full-time employees said that the novel coronavirus caused at least a fair amount of disruption,” Solutions 21’s Jeff Belsky, DBA, and Albert Ciuksza Jr., MBA, wrote in a whitepaper covering the research.
But for participants of Solutions 21 programs, the situation was less dire.
“With remote work a matter of survival for most organizations (61% of the workforce is working from home as of May 2020, with half of those starting in the past two months), we also wanted to understand how next leaders handled the arrangement,” Belsky and Ciuksza wrote. “Not surprisingly, nearly 94% are taking the new reality in stride, either seeing no difference or agreeing that they are adjusting well. Additional context from our follow-up discussions with candidates and coaches showed that the success of these next leaders was related to their abilities to employ emotional intelligence skills to meet the circumstances.”
“These results demonstrate what we’ve long maintained: that preparing your leaders is a strategic decision, especially in times of crisis,” Solutions 21 Founder and CEO Buddy Hobart said. “Furthermore, it puts numbers to the success of our programs.”
The full whitepaper can be viewed at https://s21.us/nlnresearch.
Solutions 21 deploys its elite team to mid-market firms across all industries to ensure they have the tools to strategically develop the next generation of leaders. Solutions 21 has offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Nashville, Tennessee; Kansas City, Kansas; and Phoenix, Arizona. Solutions 21 founder Buddy Hobart has authored six books, including The Leadership Decade: A Playbook for an Extraordinary Era, to be released on August 12.