Turning pressures into opportunities

For our 2023 Leadership Report, we partnered with YouGov to survey 557 business leaders across 12 industries. We asked them about their perceptions of learning in their organizations and, in the report, take an in-depth look at the priorities, concerns, and expectations business leaders share about L&D. At a glance, the data shows that:

• Business leaders believe L&D should be focusing on the people-centric goals of the organization
• The things leaders care about the most (e.g., reducing operational costs and transforming/growing the business) are not necessarily the areas they expect L&D to be involved in
• “L&D lacking a long-term vision” was reported by business leaders as the number one reason organizations are “held back” from achieving what they want to
• Business leaders’ priorities for 2023 aren’t as clearly defined as they were in 2021.

The report focuses most significantly on the relationship between business environments and organizational priorities, and highlights ways in which L&D teams can use knowledge about their surroundings (in a business sense) to their advantage. At a time when leadership teams are most concerned about reducing costs and are having to make difficult decisions about what is and isn’t worth backing, we explore how L&D teams can become better at showing the impact of their efforts and initiatives to build stronger relationships with their leaders.

As a Chartered Psychologist with a strong background in academic research, Anna specializes in skills measurement and evaluation. At Mindtools, she leads primary research projects to uncover best practice guidelines for organizations that care about management and leadership development.

Gent is Head of Insight and Analytics for Mindtools. He’s a mixed-methods specialist focusing on how learning and organizational development can have real positive impact on key business metrics. Gent and his team are responsible for improving decision making through data and analytics, writing research reports, building interdisciplinary research partnerships, and working with clients to solve complex measurement problems.

Our data is collected in partnership with YouGov, and forms part of a longitudinal study we’ve been running for almost 20 years. In the report, we also include insights from our Learning Performance Benchmark, which remains the only free, independent, and confidential benchmarking tool for L&D professionals. If you’d like to know more about the data we collect and how we use it in our research, please take a look at the Methodology at the end of the report.