If you’re a new Learning & Development (L&D) manager, then you may face several challenges when starting your new role.
No matter how many new ideas you bring or successes you’ve had in previous organisations, you still need to get the foundations right from the very beginning.
Here are my top 3 foundations for success.
Culture
Take time to fully understand and relate to all parts of the company culture. Your company's culture plays a significant role in how employees perceive and engage with learning and development.
As a new L&D manager you need to quickly understand the cultural nuances to design programmes that resonate. Misalignment with the culture may lead to disengagement, strategic misalignment, or resistance to new learning programmes.
Ask yourself: What works, what doesn’t work and why?
Stakeholders
Identifying and involving your key stakeholders from the outset of your new tenure starts to create the valuable relationships you’ll need in the long term. You need to understand their needs, priorities and concerns. Conducting a stakeholder engagement plan early on helps identify who the key players are, what motivates them, and how to align the L&D offering to their priorities and strategy.
Ask yourself: What do they and do they not want, and why?
Strategy
A key challenge for a new L&D manager is aligning learning initiatives with the company’s overall business objectives. If your L&D strategy does not support the business goals, it may be seen as irrelevant or a cost burden by your stakeholders. Make sure that you are connecting all the dots by fully understanding the strategy and how your L&D offering will support it in enabling its success.
Ask yourself: Do I understand the strategy inside out; how will my role support strategic success?
When you’re ready, there are 3 ways that we can work together
One-to-one coaching and mentoring – If you’re new to L&D and Talent management or looking to take the next step in developing your career, then email me with the words ‘Talent Leader’ in the subject heading and let’s start the discussion on how we can reach your aspirations.
Leadership development – If you are an HR Director, Chief People Officer or are responsible for leadership development in your organisation, I would love to share our process for creating the most engaging leadership development programmes on the planet. Email me with ‘Transformational Leadership’ in the subject line.
Aligned Talent – When the time is right, and you’re ready to work together to transform your Talent strategy, let’s set up a 45-minute discovery call to see if my approach is right for you.
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