In a business environment where analytics outdo intuition, and against a backdrop of a dizzying array of program, practice, and technology options to grow stronger leaders, the steadying role of research becomes increasingly essential. Outcome-focused, context-rich leadership research provides the vital data needed to navigate options, foresee trends, and allocate HR resources.

DDI, in partnership with EY and The Conference Board, recently launched the latest survey in one of the largest and longest-running benchmarking and trend research series, the Global Leadership Forecast (GLF). The GLF draws on the perspectives of HR professionals and leaders at all levels and all around the world.

The last GLF, conducted in 2014, revealed that:

• organizations pairing high leader quality and engagement were nine times more likely to outperform their peers financially 

• companies identified as best places to work more often differentiated themselves in their heavy use of internal coaching/mentoring 

• a company's gender diversity in its leader ranks was strongly linked to financial performance (among 22 other findings about the state and impact of leadership).

The just-launched Global Leadership Forecast 2017|2018 research spans four major domains:

Context & Culture 

The Global Leadership Forecast captures key facets of an organization’s culture and context—the environment in which leaders grow and businesses operate. Examples include how embedded the role of purpose is in guiding employee behaviors, how adeptly the company uses data to make decisions, and how strongly influenced they are by digital technology. 

Drivers of Leader Growth 

The research also collects information about leadership practices, including core talent practices such as leadership development and assessment, high-potential programs, and performance management. By deeply diagnosing talent practices, the GLF can identify those with the strongest links to leader and organizational outcomes. It also gathers information from leaders about what types and ways of learning they want most, and from HR about what development methods are actually in place to help spot and gauge the gaps. Leaders across the globe and across generations also share their experiences with career pathing, advancement, manager support, and other key drivers of engagement and retention. 

Leader Readiness 

The GLF will measure leader confidence and readiness on core leader skills such as empathy and execution, as well as emerging skills like digital literacy and leading virtual teams. Mastery and confidence in these skills in turn produces leader readiness to meet broader business challenges like digital transformation, changing customer needs, and managing complexity and ambiguity. By capturing information about skills in both their essence and application, the research will offer a data-driven view of the “recipe” of skills that gets leaders where their companies need them to be—now and over a three-year future horizon. 

Outcomes and Impact

Context, growth drivers, and readiness all culminate in leader and business outcomes. These include metrics that we’ve tracked over more than a decade—leader quality across levels, effectiveness of talent development and assessment programs, and “bench strength” (leaders prepared to step into critical roles over the next three years). Example leader outcomes include engagement and retention, work-life balance, and every day accountability for being a leader. Company-level outcomes include turnover and success rates, gender and generational balance in the leader ranks, and reputation (like “Best Places to Work” and “Most Admired”), the latter showing how companies topping these lists manage their talent differently.

Organizations participating in the research can receive a free comprehensive benchmarking analysis of their leadership practices and how they stack up to global, industry, and financially outperforming peers, along with recommendations for triaging and prioritizing the leadership practices with the strongest links to leader and business outcomes. For more information and to access the survey, visit www.ddiworld.com/glfsurvey.