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Russ Rado

Connection With the Customer

As the workplace evolves, so do the demands on leadership. The way we lead, train, and develop people must adapt to shifting expectations and challenges. For 2025, three pivotal leadership development trends stand out. Ignoring them could leave your organization falling behind—but embracing them can propel your team forward. Let’s explore these trends and how programs like Lead In 30 are designed to address them.1. Personalized Leadership DevelopmentGone are the days of one-size-fits-all training. Today’s leaders expect development programs tailored to their unique needs, experiences, and challenges. In 2025, personalization will take center stage in leadership development.This trend mirrors broader shifts in employee expectations—whether it’s personalized benefits, work-life balance arrangements, or development opportunities. Leaders no longer want generic advice; they want actionable insights relevant to their teams and industries. At Lone Rock Leadership, we help leaders install what we call the LeaderOS, a customizable scalable framework which focuses on clarity, alignment, and movement. Think of it as a leader’s own personal operating system for how they lead.These principles allow leaders to identify their personal areas for growth and immediately apply lessons to their real-world scenarios. Programs that offer practical, tailored learning are more effective because they meet leaders where they are. This helps them move forward in an authentic way. 2. Emphasis on Measuring ImpactLeadership development is no longer about checking boxes; it’s about delivering measurable business results. As organizations invest heavily in training, they rightfully demand proof of its effectiveness. In 2025, companies will increasingly adopt tools and methods to track ROI for leadership programs.Traditional training often focuses on theory rather than practice, leading to gaps between learning and application. Lead In 30 bridges that gap with clear, actionable frameworks. By aligning leadership development with measurable business outcomes, companies can see direct improvements in productivity, team morale, and innovation.Tracking results also means leaders must focus on competencies that drive real impact, such as problem-solving, influencing culture, and strategic decision making. Programs that incorporate these elements can show tangible benefits—boosting organizational performance while helping leaders grow.3. Preparing for Hybrid Leadership ChallengesHybrid and remote work aren’t going anywhere. In 2025, leaders must refine their skills to navigate this change more effectively. Hybrid work creates challenges in communication, team cohesion, and accountability—but also provides opportunities for innovation and flexibility.Those in leadership development need to tackle these challenges head-on by teaching leaders how to foster alignment and psychological safety in any setting. Whether a team is remote, in-office, or a mix of both, the ability to manage change, set a clear vision, and create shared accountability is critical.Hybrid leadership also requires stronger social intelligence and empathy. Leaders who can adapt their communication style, engage with diverse perspectives, and build trust in virtual spaces will succeed. Programs emphasizing these soft skills will become indispensable as workforces continue to evolve.Why These Trends MatterLeadership development isn’t a “nice-to-have”—it’s a business imperative. Organizations can create leaders who inspire teams and drive results by focusing on personalization, measurable outcomes, and hybrid leadership challenges.In 2025, the best programs will be those that adapt to these trends while maintaining simplicity. Leaders don’t need more information—they need actionable frameworks they can trust. That’s where you come in: to help leaders focus on what matters most, create clarity, build alignment, and generate movement. It’s leadership made practical, purposeful, and powerful.Are you ready to embrace the future of leadership? These trends aren’t just predictions—they’re necessities. What are you doing to stay ahead by developing your leaders the right way?

3 Leadership Development Trends You Shouldn’t Ignore in 2025

 In my last post, I explored how certain personality differences--described by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment—give rise to an approach to work that is often confused with procrastination. MBTI preferences for either Perceiving (P) or Judging (J) describe how we organize the world, and at what point we want to make a final decision. The tendency of those preferring P to usually wait to make a final decision until close to the deadline—and thus begin the actual production portion of a project later—is often mistakenly labeled as procrastination. This behavior stems from the need to gather as much information as possible before closing off any options, not from a lackadaisical approach to work. Although often misunderstood, their most effective and efficient energy actually comes close to the deadline or end of the project. Those preferring Judging, on the other hand, are most efficient at the beginning of the project, and naturally employ a work style that incorporates making decisions and going into production mode much earlier in the process--a characteristic that our culture more frequently associates with productivity and efficiency. Within teams, simply knowing that these differences exist can pave the way toward a less stressful, more productive work environment that enables individuals to more fully leverage their natural talents. However, intellectualizing J/P differences is one thing, but actually implementing changes that allow team members to deploy both work styles within the same project is quite another issue. Individuals can achieve top-notch results employing either approach, but teams can also encounter major problems if these radically different work styles aren’t effectively integrated. Making Team Tradeoffs That Don’t Sacrifice Individual Effectiveness Often in teambuilding we talk about “flexing” one’s preferences to work more effectively with someone with an opposite preference, which involves operating outside one’s preferred style. For most of us this is a growing experience and a necessary part of career development. However, while flexing works quite well when bridging Introversion/Extraversion differences, for example, it is actually quite difficult to flex your work style between Judging and Perceiving without diminishing your effectiveness. Those preferring J who try to operate within a P work style will perform below their abilities, and vice versa. Rather than expecting individuals to flex their natural styles, teams need to make structural trade-offs that will allow every member of the team to work within his or her own preferences. Agreeing on Deadlines The most immediate area where this can be applied involves deadlines and milestones. Both J and P preferences find deadlines to be a helpful tool in accomplishing goals. Yet the way that those preferring P approach deadlines may be confusing to J-preferring colleagues, and vice versa. Those who prefer P are averse to the kind of arbitrary or fake deadlines which are sometimes imposed by those with J preferences for the purpose of motivating their P colleagues going into production mode earlier in the process. Meanwhile, those who prefer J might use deadlines as a tool to keep a project on track and are usually motivated to complete projects significantly before the deadline to avoid the last minute rush. Those preferring P tend to view deadlines as markers indicating the point at which something truly must be completed. This also helps them determine when they need to start working on the project in order to maximize their productivity—which for them is closer to the deadline. Consequently, if J-preferring team members try to impose arbitrary deadlines on P-preferring colleagues as markers or motivators to keep a project on pace, they’ll know they really have more time, and will view these as “fake” and often won’t take them seriously. Furthermore, this creates a situation that likely forces those with P preferences to complete tasks early in the project, when they’re less productive because they haven’t had sufficient time to explore all the possibilities for the projects direction. You can get better results from P-preferring colleagues by setting deadlines that accurately reflect a project’s realities, allowing them to plan their work in such a way that lets them get most of the project done at the end, when they’re most productive. When negotiating milestone dates, be sure that they are visibly tied to the real-life consequences of not meeting that deadline. If, for example, a client needs a set of blueprints by a certain date, the milestones should reflect the actual steps that need to be taken in order to make that happen--not just the J-preferences need to complete a project significantly before the actual deadline to allow time for revision. Accepting a Larger View of What Constitutes “Reality” On the flip side, those preferring P must appreciate that their J-preferring colleagues operate most efficiently on a more scheduled timeline. What’s more, they must respect the fact that some J preference team members may not do their best work when handed a project at the last minute. So, if you must deliver a set of blueprints to a J-preferring colleague for review or iteration, understand that they really need to do this earlier in the process in order to offer their best, most efficient work. Adopt the point of view that this is not an arbitrarily early deadline, but rather one that is necessary to ensure the quality of the project. Be willing to set and adhere to milestones that accommodate the J’s need for more structure, and earlier project completion. Bottom Line: Don’t Ask a Pea Factory to Produce Carrots Furthermore, a P-preferring manager working with a predominantly J-preferring team must take into account that last minute changes to a project may have a profoundly negative effect on the group’s ability to deliver excellent results. J-preferring individuals tend to work along a more even pace, accomplishing a great deal of a project’s tasks near the beginning of the process. Throwing a last-minute curve ball at a team that primarily prefers P might be okay, because they don’t go fully into production mode until the end of a project. In other words, they’ve been spending their time getting their ducks in a row, and in manufacturing parlance, the “factory” hasn’t yet opened. A predominantly J-preferring team, on the other hand, will have likely gone into production mode much earlier, so significant changes in direction can’t occur late in a project. It’s like asking a factory to produce canned carrots when it’s already started producing peas. If you want carrots, ask for them before the factory turns on its conveyor belts.

Brokering Peace in the War Over Deadlines

Amy Suto is a writer and scripted podcast producer. She founded Kingdom of Ink, a writing services company, with her partner Kyle Cords to help creatives build freelance writing careers. She also runs the company Kingdom of Pavement, which produces scripted and unscripted podcasts, including The Last Station, a podcast about the last radio station to survive the apocalypse. When Suto isn’t running companies, she’s ghostwriting memoirs for people all over the world or working on her novel. You can find more about Suto and read her blog at AmySuto.com.

Amy Suto

Join us for a focused panel discussion where industry thought leaders from NetQuest, Third Term Learning, and Lockton Dunning Benefits will share real-world cases and strategic best practices for responsible AI implementation in e-learning. Moderated by RWS’s Michael Coates, this discussion will explore practical experiences of AI adoption, revealing insights from successes and missteps, and outlining strategies to harness AI’s potential for smarter, more secure, and effective learning programs.

Gain expert insights into building a future-ready e-learning strategy that maximizes efficiency, ensures robust security, and maintains the human connection at the core of all innovation.

During this event, you will learn about:

• How to connect cultural nuance, AI, L&amp;D technology, and learning success
• The role of cultural alignment in improving comprehension, retention, and learner inclusivity
• Ways to incorporate efficiencies into global learning strategies

Hearts, Minds, and Algorithms: Panel Insights on Mastering Human Connection in AI-Enabled e-Learning

Social learning is a fundamental shift in how people work leveraging how we have always worked, now with new, more humanizing tools, accelerating individual and collective reach, giving us the resources to create the organization, and the world, we want to live in.While your effort to implement social learning should not be ALL about the tools, it’s still important to consider the tools that you will use. Too often we try to jump in with a tool first. Resist that temptation. But when it is time to choose a tool, it is a very important decision—one not to be taken lightly.Although social is not about the tool, the tool is a heavy component and careful scrutiny of its capabilities and workings should not be discounted. For example, some of the features most often overlooked by a novice when choosing a tool are the number of clicks it takes to get information, the flow in which that happens, and the ways users are notified of new or changed content.Many attributes have a hidden importance and, until you understand the social element, you very well may not uncover those needed features. So what to do?Make sure the person who evaluates potential tools has experience in this. There are enough people out there, finding someone should not be a prob­lem anymore. Listen to them and weigh their advice. And then know this: No tool or set of tools will give you everything you need and want.Companies are constantly looking to cut corners. When we choose cheap approaches to social tools, we might look for the cheapest, or even free, soft­ware. Maybe we don’t put the technical resources behind it to make sure it runs well, or we fail to hire someone who knows how to help a company adopt it, hoping the “build it and they will come” strategy might work. If you decide to jump into social learning, do it right. Hire good people. Buy the right soft­ware. Put it on the right hardware. Give the team the time and resources they require. You don’t have to be extravagant, but put in the commitment that will lead to success.There is a tendency to go with the cheaper solution. Yet often that solution does not have what is needed. Although being social is not about the technology, the wrong technology will cripple any initiative.There are gives and takes, many of which won’t be discovered until you have purchased and implemented the tool in production. Just go with it and enjoy the journey! The tool should make your job easier. No tool is perfect, and you will never get 100 percent of what you think you need. At the same time, don’t settle for just getting by. Make sure the tool works for you—not you for the tool.Here are some questions to consider:Will the tool we have chosen be able to give us 90 percent of what we need?As we look to contain costs, are we sacrificing needed functionality for cost savings?After this is launched, are we giving enough resources to build this initiative or only maintain?In what ways might we be trying to cut corners and can we justify those? Editor’s Note: This post is excerpted from The New Social Learning, 2nd Edition (ATD Press, 2015). In this newly revised and updated edition of The New Social Learning, Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner dispel organizational myths and fears about social media. By sharing the success stories of socially engaged companies and people, the much-anticipated second edition persuasively makes the case for using social media to encourage knowledge transfer and real-time learning in a connected and engaging way.

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