Developing leadership skills with e-learning in organisations

Developing leadership skills is an important focus within organisations, not only to achieve an organisation's current goals, but certainly with a view to the future. However, leaders or budding leaders are often already very busy.

Well-designed leadership training increases employee engagement, improve productivity and increase retention levels within the organisation. Most importantly, leadership training helps nurture talent while preparing the organisation to achieve its future goals. This offers both a strategic as well as a competitive advantage for every organisation.

Do we recommend using e-learning only to develop or improve leadership skills? No. This requires more, such as:

• Workplace learning (experiential learning)
• Social or collaborative learning
• Mentoring
• Coaching

However, e-learning is an important building block in designing leadership skills training courses. With e-learning, both the foundation for the skills is laid, but it also creates a “toolbox” from which employees can draw at any time. The focus is therefore not only on transferring theoretical knowledge, but certainly also on developing useful tools and, for example, checklists, that the employee can consult at any time. But e-learning offers much more:

1. Personal before and after measurement

In order to experience optimal intrinsic motivation while learning, it is important that employees' progress is made visual. Where were they before they started leadership training? What were the goals, wishes, desires, and pain points? And where are they after 3 months, 6 months, 1 year? This is not only valuable for employees, but also for the organisation: does the leadership training deliver what the organisation hoped for?

With the Learning Management System (LMS) by Pluvo keep a clear overview of training and employees.

2. Connect with, and learn from, current leaders within the organisation

Integrating videos with contributions from leaders within your organisation can bridge the gap between theoretical content and practical experience. This gives new leaders insight into what to expect, share the thought processes that help overcome everyday challenges, share crucial moments in their own leadership journey, and feel encouraged.

This contributes to providing context and creating a sense of belonging among new leaders within the organisation.

3. Case studies

Case studies are ideal for connecting employees to the teaching material on a personal level. For example, case studies can include facts, statistics, and personal experiences. A popular technique for developing case studies is the cause-and-effect technique. In these case studies, the employee is presented with a certain scenario where the employee then determines the next steps. Each choice leads to a different outcome. This case study works best when the various next steps match daily practice as closely as possible. Not every choice has to lead to a positive result either; after all, it wouldn't do that in real life either.

The employee can learn what consequences a certain step can have and adjust his or her decision to see what other outcome is more desirable and what actions precede it.

4. Personal learning experience by integrating interactive videos

Adding interactive videos to e-learning also offers many benefits for the employee, such as:

• A personalised learning experience: employees can play an active role by selecting their learning paths and preferred actions to get the most relevant information delivered in a way that suits their learning needs.
• Greater engagement: Interesting learning experiences such as interactive videos can capture the employee's attention and help them retain information better. People stay watching interactive videos 44% longer than “regular” videos without interactive elements.
• Gamification: not simply “playing a game”, but rather the effective use of certain game elements to enrich the learning experience and make it more interesting. It ensures that employees stay involved, which leads to an increase in intrinsic motivation.

5. Personal toolbox

E-learning platforms such as Pluvo offer employees the opportunity to use their own personal library of useful information, so that they can use the tools and, for example, checklists that they used/developed during the training anytime, anywhere.

6. Follow up and integration

E-learning makes it easy to see who followed which training and when. This means that automatic follow-ups can take place. These are extra valuable when personal guidance is added. Consider, for example, appointing a mentor or coach within the organisation. The e-learning system can be set up so that this mentor or coach automatically receives a notification when the employee has completed the training, and then, for example, after 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. In the e-learning environment (such as Pluvo), it can also be automatically set to allow the employee to complete an interim evaluation at these times, for example. This can be done in the form of a survey, after which an interview takes place. It is important that the questions in the evaluation survey provide a direct link between the leadership training material and the employee's daily work practice.

• Is he/she able to actually apply what he has learned?
• What is going well?
• What does he/she run into?
• Where does he/she feel like she could use some extra support, coaching, or mentoring?

In this way, the e-learning continues to contribute to the development of leadership skills within the organisation.

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