 Good morning everybody and welcome to the latest in our leadership webinar series. Today we're looking at the role of leadership development in the 21st century. And I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome some fantastic speakers who are joining us today. And also to welcome all of you, I believe we have 200 people who are registered on this webinar and obviously we will be having many others who join us for the recording afterwards. So firstly, my name is Zoe Arden and I'm an associate director here at CISL. And I'm delighted to welcome Elsbeth Donovan who is Deputy Director of our South Africa office who is joining us from Cape Town. Desiree Shark who is the head of leadership development at Anglo-American. And Sasha Watson who's a leadership and engagement specialist. Most recently spent the last six years at ARM and at the end of this month is joining Moompig as the head of people. So welcome to all our speakers. Absolutely thrilled to have such a fantastic lineup. And so just a quick note in terms of what we're going to be covering today. So firstly, as usual, please feel free to comment and ask questions throughout the webinar using the chat function. We have ensured that there will be lots of time at the end for your questions. So please keep the questions coming and we will be sure to answer as many of those as possible during the hour. Secondly, for those of us who are joining us post the webinar welcome, there will be a recording of this webinar alongside all of the other webinars in our Introducing Leadership webinar series and you can access those through the CISL website. Our next webinar, the final one for the year is on collaborative leadership for change. And that's taking place on the 10th of December and we look forward to having you join us then. And just a reminder that a couple of the resources that we mentioned during this hour include our rewiring leadership paper and also some recent research that we did on the role of learning and development at HR in building leaders for long-term business success. So both those papers are actually available on the CISL website. So with no further ado, firstly, just a comment on the leadership gap which we'll be considering during this webinar. And in particular, the really important role of leadership development professionals in working to ensure that we have leaders that can thrive in the volatile, uncertain, complex and difficult environment in which we're operating. So this is a really, really important question to address and we're delighted to welcome on to this webinar in terms of listeners, both audiences from sustainability professions and also from L&D. And when we addressed this in our leadership research, we found that there was certainly a need for better cooperation between these different roles. And some of the key takeaways that we found in the research was certainly a few key aspects. So firstly, with regard to innovation, we're seeing that L&D professionals are creating innovative programs working in partnership with sustainability folk. And that includes changes both to processes and frameworks as well as the programs that are created. Secondly, unfortunately, there is no silver bullet when it comes to leadership development. And what we found was that a multi-pronged approach works best and we'll be hearing some examples from all our speakers in terms of what they've used when it comes to leading practices. Finally, thirdly, one of the key points that we found is that leadership development works best with regard to building sustainability leaders when it comes to actionable learning. So how can we deliver learning that is actionable, teachable and learnable in chunks, so relevant to day-to-day job, applicable to current spheres of influence and where there's the opportunity to sort of iterate the learning. And the final point, which we'll also be covering and Elspeth in particular will be speaking to, is how do we build in reflection? How do we build in the time to actually reflect on our learning and apply the learning so that we've got this continuous process, if you like, of relearning, unlearning and learning again? So final key point I wanted to make and then I'm going to introduce Sasha to reflect on this is key takeaways that came out of this piece of research, both for L&D professionals, HR professionals and sustainability professionals. So as you would expect, it's how do these three groups work together to ensure that they're building on each other's expertise. So firstly from an L&D perspective, how do we create programs that build awareness of the external context? And on the sustainability side, that means how do we make sustainability relevant to HR and learning and development? And on the HR side, how do we ensure that we're making our processes forward-looking as well as looking back in terms of past performance? So a few key other takeaways there and we'll really bring those to life when we start to speak to our speakers. Right, so with no further ado, Sasha, I'd like to introduce you to comment on this actually and we're very lucky to have you joining us for this webinar because I know that you've worn many of these hats. So in your career, which started in communications, so you looked at the world from that perspective, you've very much looked at learning, development and employee engagement from your roles with organizations like Barclays and Dell, and also built in sustainability and the experience piece, particularly in the last six years working at ARM. So it would be really interesting, your key takeaways when it comes to how do we build leaders for long-term business performance and how do we ensure that our businesses can thrive on a liveable planet. So key interest in your thoughts, Sasha. Thank you, Zoe and good morning everybody. So I think one of my first tips is you don't expect your colleagues across all these other disciplines to completely understand what you do, but it's so powerful if you can integrate activities as much as possible. Like you said, Zoe, with there being no silver bullet, a multi-pronged approach from my perspective is all of these groups and individuals and knowledge centers coming together to co-create content. And even if you just agree on some key outcomes and build pieces of work together, I've seen an experience and real shifts in business and in leaders just from working like that. And I was fortunate in my role at ARM to create with colleagues the ARM Leadership Conference. And what that meant is from a communications perspective, we looked at the strategy and the messaging and the development from a learning perspective. We looked at the actual leadership development pieces. The sustainability team helped us think about the sustainability of the business and the business context we're operating in. And then some of our HR team helped us look at learning interventions and what new frameworks activities we would introduce. So I've actually seen this work really powerfully in practice. You talked Zoe about actionable learning and I totally agree that unless you make the learning real, and it loses its impact. So again, I recall being on the leadership development training myself, looking at difficult conversations. And the theory was amazing. But only when I had to sit with my colleagues and practice difficult conversation did the learning and the shift really kick in. I think some top tips as well is around accountability. So rather than there just being a learning intervention and meeting or a piece of work is how do you hold people accountable for the learning and the work, you know, how can HR teams in particular build into performance management or, you know, what other places can you intervene to really make sure that people are accountable. And the last piece is around focusing the long term. And I've been doing a lot of work recently looking at organizational capability. And I think that is how you build on the longer term. It's not just about building skills. It's about building capability and the look and look at the difference between those two. Yeah, that's wonderful Sasha. Thank you so much. Really, really good summary. I think as you said leadership on sustainability requires a different set of interpersonal skills. Skills such as anticipation storytelling listening and learning. And I'd now like to introduce Elspeth Donathan, who is going to give us the sort of the foundational pieces if you like of leadership development. I'm going to introduce you and I know that you're going to cover sort of four key aspects which are going to be firstly. What do we mean by the global leadership mindset that we're trying to build to what what particular tools do you use and I know you're going to give us the example of one in particular. Three, where do we start when we're building leadership, particularly sustainability leadership and you're going to talk us through the leadership practice framework that you use. And finally, just a thought on technology and how we need to bring in that so so welcome Elspeth and particularly thrilled to have you join us. Elspeth has been with CISL for for some time and it's very much our go to leader when it comes to building a global leadership mindset so so Elspeth over to you and what are the key aspects of that would you say. Thanks and hello everybody. It's quite strange I can't see you but I know you're out there. Yes, and I just want to say everything I say is actually in the rewiring leadership it's sort of I'm just doing a very summary of the things that I think are really important and. And I pretty like what Christiana Figueras who used to be the executive secretary of the IPPC, when she spoke about a global leadership mindset she spoke about really very important that you that there's a moral compass there's values and that you are as a leader willing to get support and ask for help and not just think you have to go it alone. I think other aspects she spoke about was the importance of seeing connections and understanding who you need to speak to. And then the time that it takes to build trust and knowing that you have to meet people where there are and you need to take the time to build trust. She speaks about exercising what she calls stubborn wisdom and anybody who works in the field of sustainability in particular and I think leadership journeys you have to be patient and tenacious. And then she also talks about this inner wisdom and which is that ability to just stop. Try and reflect try and think about quietly about what you're feeling when you're hearing something in order to make decisions and not always let your ego and your knowledge get in the way but to be able to actually sort of just unclutter your mind in order to be able to to see and feel things differently when you're making decisions. So if you take that into what sustainability leadership skills look and what we try to develop through our programs. It's really important that that when you design a program that you have you have these practices embedded in it. And one of the things that is really important is understanding the importance of reflection and and to understand yourself to build your own self awareness. There's also understanding the importance of how you behave how you show up that you're curious you engage you ask questions and you practice. This notion of willingness to be disturbed to sit with discomfort because often that's when change happens and that comes sort of out of the work of Margaret Wheatley where you really understand how important it is to to sit with discomfort and understand why you're feeling uncomfortable. I always talk about going slow to go fast and how important it is for you to do the the sort of upfront work before you do anything so ready to think deeply about what's going on what you're noticing how you're feeling before you start to take action. Your relationships to yourself to others and to the context in which you operate are really important so that that awareness of what's going on around you which is also obviously linked to be a system thinker where actually we need to understand there's an interconnectedness of all things. How do I then take this and apply it to how I design a program and one of the key things is. I think what we've lost is this ability to pay attention attention we're so busy in our works and behind our devices that we actually not necessarily know noticing what's going on around us and so it's really important that we able to really think deeply about what it is and what it is that what what's happening and what we're seeing. So I use Otter Sharma's you theory as a sort of underlying pedagogy of the way I design a program and I start every program I run with quiet and your cleverness so that you can hear new things which is really talking about your internal wisdom. And so what Otter Sharma did when he did research into who are successful leaders and what is it that they do that makes them successful it was he came up with this youth theory where he said successful leaders really pay attention to what's going on around them. They're able to suspend their voice of judgment and by doing by opening their mind they're able to see things with fresh eyes and you'll notice you're going down the left hand side of this this this picture in front of you. And then you take a deeper dive and go into the field which means go out and actually walk around and notice so called sensing from the field and that also requires you to suspend that voice of cynicism that gets in the way of us seeing connecting to things in an empathetic way and really understanding how other people do you see things and getting to that place where you let go which requires you to suspend your voice of fear, which obviously gets in the way of change and this requires you to open your will this notion of where there's a will there's a way. And that we talk about you get to the bottom of the you where you sort of sit in quite an uncomfortable place thinking about well gosh what is my role in this it's not those other people that have to do something me as me as a leader I must do something so what's my work. And you start to allow a whole lot of new ideas come to you and you have this ability to sort of crystallize your vision and your intention which is really important that people understand what your intention is. You then in act you try things you prototype obviously things sometimes failed initially but you keep trying and you reach your goals so the idea is that, instead of seeing something or hearing information and immediately reacting to it which is called jumping across the you, you take a deeper dive and go deep into thinking about so what does this actually mean for me and the work that I do. And where I've used this in, I'll just give one example in a women's leadership program was a global company that wanted to retain their women leaders and they found they often left because they didn't understand the value of the work they were doing and the purpose of their work and so we created these sort of experiential what we call learning journeys where they're able to go into communities and different places which they didn't even occur to them that they would be having an impact in such places with the kind of products they produce, and the services they deliver and created a whole new freshness in the way these women in this organization felt about their role in their work in the company as well as in society so it was just an example of how that can be quite a powerful experience. That's a great example, thank you Elspeth. And as you said, certainly our research identified the importance of having a multi-pronged approach but actually highlighted that experiential learning was really effective as well so it's brilliant for you to actually talk us through that theory you and how you actually use that in designing your programs. Great, thank you and then I'll talk about one of the things I also get in programs that I run is to get people to develop what I call a leadership practice framework which is a really important part of understanding yourself because if you want to understand others you need to understand yourself so if you want to walk in other people's shoes you need to understand the shoes that you're walking in yourself so this is why it's a really important thing to do so it's about thinking about your belief system and understanding why you think the way you do and also gives you an opportunity to inquire about how other people are feeling. It also helps you to understand where your discomfort lies and why you might find certain situations more difficult than others and also where there's possibilities for opportunities and helps you with your decision making so I know what your triggers are. It also makes you become more thoughtful in the way that you do things instead of being complacent, particularly good at building your capacity to work across disciplines and disciplinary work because this ability of understanding what is the value that you bring but what are the things that you need from others and then also if you understand your own assumptions it's much easier for you to do that if you want to engage and understand other people's assumptions so this is why you would develop a leadership practice framework and then it's really important key points about a framework because there's no right or wrong way to do it. It's it's it does no one size fits all it all depends on you personally what works for you it's an iterative type of thing so you constantly working on it and going back to it and checking if anything's changed. You can't actually know where where you're coming from not where you are going. And I think it's a really useful tool because it's not about you want to be but it's who you are right now and often this helps you and discover leadership development things that you think are required particularly if you're moving into a new job. And there's no one particular way to develop a framework it depends what works for you. I'm going to share a picture of a wonderful practice framework of a hand that was the community worker. Sorry that hasn't been included in the slides but one of the community worker that is working in India was asked by by Oxfam and people that she was working with how do you sort of hold yourself together how is it that you're able to do this really difficult work in poor communities. And she said, I just look at my hand and each of my digits represents something that reminds me how important it is the work that I'm doing and I can't. I won't go into the detail of each digit but I just saw that was such a simple methodologies to have a hand, and that each of your digits represented something that she said I constantly look at my hand and know what I'm doing is really important even when it gets tough. The other thing that I thought was quite important for to think about in leadership development and currently and in the future is moved to a much more sort of fourth industrial revolution or this very connected world that we're in what does that mean for developing leaders and particularly in a country like where I live it's often thought that it's going to exacerbate inequality so how do you help leaders understand how you, how relationships are really important how transparency becomes really important how your ability to be empathetic to adapt and to adjust and to really understand how people are being impacted by this in terms of of the future. So, thank you. Thank you so much Elspeth and thank you for taking us through those sort of really key building blocks if you like in terms of leadership development so starting with how do we build a global leadership mindset. The role of tools like theory you in creating programs and then starting with something like a personal practice framework and sorry we didn't have the picture of the hand there for you all but again shows the benefit of storytelling actually I'm sure we can all picture a hand and what those individual digits might look like. So, thank you so much for that Elspeth it's a really useful foundational piece and we'll hear from Desiree shortly in terms of how she builds brings some of those essential building blocks to life in the program that she runs for Anglo but before I introduce Desiree I just wanted to bring Sasha Watson back in. So Sasha we Elspeth finished there on the point of technology and you have most recently spent six years at arm which is a global technology company with tens of thousands of technical leaders. And I'm really curious Sasha in terms of what your key takeaways would be in terms of leadership development with that kind of technical cohort. Yeah thanks Erie. It was certainly a huge learning curve for me in particular. I think the first piece of insight around technical leaders that I came across was just how many individuals were reluctant to be leaders and particularly in the tech industry there's been a huge shift you know in the past 10 years or so to make sure that there are learning tracks for people who are technically excellent but that don't want to lead a group of team or people. So individual contributors and my challenge for HR and indeed professionals is how can you ensure that you're not holding good people back from progressing because they don't want to leave groups of people. But actually they could be great senior voices in your organization that really impact on your strategy and the strength of your organization. That's one piece. I think the meaning of leadership was something that came up a lot and just that journey helping people to understand that being a leader isn't about being the most senior person in the room or actually about control. In my view it's about creating a following and it's actually a mindset and the way you behave and how you approach work rather than the former pieces. So that was a big piece that I took away. Diversity of thought was probably one of the biggest challenges I overcame thank goodness in the end but I think you know first of all working with technical leaders was feeling that we were talking two completely different languages. But then when you have that great meetings of great but different minds actually it actually became a really powerful way of working and I learned so much I'd like to think vice versa for some of the people I engaged with. But just around you know the need for data and the preference around logic rather than my preference that Elsa spoke about earlier around inner wisdom I definitely go for inner wisdom. And I think also for anyone that's engaged with five year olds. Making sure you always know the answer why so why are you doing something why something important why something happening. So that definitely definitely came across in terms of things I learned and I think building on that was that difference between eq versus IQ. You know I'm very privileged to work with some of the most brilliant minds I've ever come across. And some of the challenges I helped to overcome in the journey was around that human need for connection and empathy and the role a leader has in making sure that your people are following and are you know emotionally connected and vested as well as intellectually stimulated around building on you know challenges for your business so it doesn't keep the key pieces I could talk about this probably for a whole webinar Zoe but those for me other key pieces about what technical leaders brilliant thank you thank you so much Sasha and just a point there actually we know that we're covering a lot of ground in this hour so please if you've got any questions comments please add them now into the chat so that we can get to those at the end of our conversation here. So I'm really delighted now to introduce our third and final speaker on the webinar. Desiree Shuck. So Desiree is the global head of leadership development for Anglo American one of the world's leading mining companies with 91,000 people. She joined in 20 she was appointed as the global head in 2017 and and in the last year she's also taken on the additional role as the subject matter expert on the group wide inclusion and diversity workgroup and this is the group that's actually responsible for transforming the company culture. So a massive remit welcome Desiree and I wonder if you could just kick us off in terms of just giving a little bit of an overview into who Anglo American is for those that don't know you. Thank you very much and thanks everyone good to be here. So as you said we are globally diversified mining business we're one of the leading mining businesses top four. And just to make it more real we own majority share of the bears diamonds that we're most people recognize us and also most of the platinum in the world. So basically as a mining business and the size and shape of our mining business we supply material that enables modern life. So whatever we're using to to live today has probably been mined by either us or some of our peers in the industry. But mining and context. I think that's all I'd like to say about. Yeah we are cross the cross the globe everywhere in terms of our leadership development strategy and what our goals and our real purpose of a leadership development is for a large 21,000 person company very simply it looks quite complicated I think on the face of it the strategy but very simply over arched by the Anglo American purpose which is to reimagine mining to improve people's lives and our burning ambition to be the most valued mining company by 2023 and as of all our stakeholders from a leadership development function we need to develop and produce the leaders that are going to ensure that we achieve our burning ambition and live out purpose and it's underpinned by our six values at the bottom of the picture. So there's three things that we really think about there there's an environmental context that we need to think about. And the company strategy and what's happening in leadership and and such have alluded to those. And then in terms of our responses in terms of how we develop leaders we have developed intervention that just go back one sorry we've developed interventions that link to each of the different levels of the organization so right from the frontline all the way to executives, we work with the top 10% at each of the levels, and we partner with testing class, universities, business schools, providers to, to develop those leaders at each of the different levels across all geographies and functions, and then we measure the impact which I'll talk to later. So we've got a really well defined five year plan from a leadership development point of view. Next one which gives us directionally where we'll be going in terms of delivering the leaders that our business will need because we need them to be thinking about today. The short term to exactly today what they're going to do to deliver extraordinary results at the same time to be thinking long term at the same time. It's not an either or and how do we create that mindset that's both and they're not either or so this is our rough idea plan. Wow, that's that's that's that's fascinating Desiree and as you said it's like how how do you develop that both and thinking so people have focused both on the short and long term and what's fascinating about that five year plan over as you can see that you're bringing in that multi pronged approach that we certainly came out of our recent research. So provocative question for you Desiree, how do you how do you measure success you know how do you know when the leaders actually been developed. I don't think any of us are either ever developed as as as a as a finite destination I think this is a constant. It's a journey so we can measure how we are developing and how leaders are developing, but we never actually developed and measured someone developed and also we really looking at leader agency so we can provide the experiences we can provide the support and at the same time we expect our leaders to earn their own journey as well. However, we can we can measure success in a certain way. So we look at three things we look at lead identity which is how inside yourself to you identify yourself as a leader because that's key. The second one is intent what it what it what are you trying to achieve. And the third one is impact now impact we can measure three different levels we can look at micro impact which is you as a leader how are you changing and we can do that by 300 360 degree feedback before and after intervention. We can do that for as long as we like that's at the micro level that means a level is your team the team you're leading the team you're part of is it becoming more effective what's what's happening there we can do that by a customer rating. And then macro macro measurements are are you actually shifting the dial in terms of helping anger achieve our burning ambition and live out purpose how and what and so we're looking at those three things at three different levels. Fantastic. Thank you. And just wanted to pick up so obviously with Elsbeth talked about the role of experiential learning and gave the example of working with a women's leadership program and getting them to think about the bigger picture. And I know that you have pioneered some big experiential programs. And just just interesting your view what what's the role of experiential learning and what are some of the the pluses and some of the watchouts. Okay, so we we're really a big proponent of supporters of experiential learning in fact we've got a center for experiential learning into how the further that's how much we believe in this because we really think that you learn by doing the thing and then getting feedback on it and reflecting on this. There's some interesting challenges about experiential learning and the way we've been doing it in the past because we work with people globally and our model has been to slide them the top talent slide into different locations so they get out of their comfort zones they experience a completely different reality to get out of their comfort zones and then to learn when they're out of their comfort zone in a in a new environment. This makes straight slap in the face of sustainability in terms of for how long are we going to be able to justify flying lots of people across the world. I mean as much as we believe in it. I think as L&D professionals we're going to be called upon to look at how do we create those experiences at a much more localized level, even while you're part of a global team. And this is this is what we're thinking really hard about how do we do that so we don't give up the value of experiential learning but we cut down the impact on environment and on climate change and all of that. We can't be supporting so many flights or for much longer I don't think. So yeah thanks Desiree and we'll get into that when we get into the Q&A as well because I know that we've had some questions coming in in terms of what do you guys think are the biggest trends in terms of learning over the next 5-10 years so we'll get on to that in a minute. So final point before we open it up to Q&A and I wanted to bring you back in Sasha to specifically ask about this this point about securing senior buy-in because we know that this is a recurring theme across all of our webinars in terms of how do you get buy-in from senior leaders and obviously if you want to have a really effective leadership development program we've already commented on how leadership on sustainability requires a different set of interpersonal skills so it does require specific leadership programs. We need the buy-in of the board so Sasha really interested in your thoughts on this. Yeah thanks Zoe so I thought I would start with this sentence which might seem controversial but the meaning here around all boards being the same is the function of a board is the same right. So we should all have a common understanding of what is the purpose of a board. The first thing in my view around getting the board on board is to really understand the leaders on them and those individual personalities roles and drivers because those are the things that make the difference. And then just to cover these these three points briefly is one is around relevance and showing a deep understanding of your business your industry and the broader landscape. For me it's critical showing your relevance and the piece here especially if you work in a fast moving industry like technology industry is ensuring that your approach to whatever challenges you're solving in your role keeps up with that industry. You know you said earlier Zoe that some of the practices that your research round is that people look back. So again you know staying relevant is about looking forward and moving with the pace of your business. Connected to this is about being part of the conversation. I've mentored so many people that have said to me you know how to get a seat at the table. And I feel very passionately that actually sitting that table is sometimes very long and laborious. So it's not about sick at the table. It's about having your voice in the room because if you have your voice in a room you're able to amplify your impact across many rooms and many borders and many teams. So actually being part of the conversation having your input and your insights with as many people as possible means that actually can be heard in many more places rather than just one room around that one table. And again this is this is for me again all around written credibility and of course it's obviously the credibility to get the board on board but it's about how you build that credibility and a key piece here for me is around have a point of view and you know have a sort of advisory consultive approach to your point of view. So it doesn't feel that you are being protective or subjective you know have a credible point of view that's above and beyond your outside of your comfort zone and out of your lane so to speak. And then my next and final point around getting the board on board is to continuously ask yourself some questions. So is what you are doing or proposing going to make your company stronger. You know will it bring a competitive advantage and does it solve a business challenge. Or you know are you addressing me as a stakeholder and continuously ask yourself these questions because if you can't answer these questions with evidence. I would suggest you're not ready to get the board on board needs to do a bit more work to collect these two pieces. And certainly I think if you can start a conversation with the board addressing one of these questions or you know looking at one of these through one of these lenses you have a way richer conversation with a senior leader. Brilliant thank you Sasha it's really really sound and sage input so so thank you. So at that point we've heard a lot of great advice from our from our three speakers we had else Beth really laying out some of the sort of foundational pieces. And Sasha and Desiree bring it to life with many examples from from from their experience. And I see that we've had a number of questions that have been coming in so thank you for those and do keep those coming. And the first question that perhaps I could open this up to you Desiree first as I mentioned is. What do you see as the biggest trends in terms of learning over the next five to 10 years particularly with regard to leadership on sustainability and you already mentioned the point around. Now how do we give people rich transformative experiences perhaps without getting them on a plane. Just wondered what else you're seeing in terms of trends. Being one of the biggest trends is accessibility of tiny pieces of learning and when you need them just exactly the same as the way we use Google for every single thing when we want to go and look at it. We need to on the job we need to have learning pieces available to us like that and I think that the other big thing is around. All of us learning how to give on the spot feedback to each other and I'm seeing that that's really becoming a massive thing in within our company and we encouraging it on every level that. You know the people that we work with see us all the time they see us in our good moments they see us in our not so great moments and if you've got a couple of people who just give on the spot feedback and we've got some systems that are enabling that. That's the use of technology but actually the use of technology to encourage people to be more connected and not less connected. I'm seeing a huge trend is to be absolutely connected in terms of your we call it social process. How do you know yourself and how do you know each other and how do you help each other using technology and then maybe it's face to face. But I think it's the immediate accessibility aspect that's one of them and I think yeah. That's a brilliant answer. Thank you Desiree and as I said that very much ties into one of the insights that we got from the research that we did in building leaders for long term business performance. This idea of I like your expression of tiny pieces of learning. So how can we have sort of actionable learnable teachable chunks that actually we can take away and and bring into our sphere influence immediately. And Sasha I wonder if you've got any things to add on that last point from Desiree encouraging people to be more connected not unconnected the use of technology. I wonder how that played out played out for you. No I definitely agree and I actually like to call it bite size learning and and on demand right so I think it's small bits of learning on demand. So I think technology is going to amplify how we learn and I think that what we learn will also evolve. So I'm seeing so much more interconnectedness across hierarchy so you know reverse mentoring or learning across discipline and bring a different piece of content together. And I think I've definitely seen a lot more purpose and profit put together around learning as well so that interventions are not just about how do we make more money but how do you make more money and have a greater impact. So I think there's going to be evolution on how we learn with tech and then what we learn. Brilliant fantastic thank you. Super and I've had a question that's just come in which related to is a little bit related to that. Your final point there Sasha so any practical examples from from the three of you in terms of how do we get the content of leadership development strategies prioritized against competing business objectives. We know that often there's there's something that might be flavor of the month within within the business that seems to get a lot of the resources. So any any advice there in terms of ensuring that learn leadership development strategies are prioritized. Any tips do you want to kick off with you Desiree again and then I'll go to one of the things that we ensure is that we become the conduit if we've got leadership development thing in our academy that and we've got programs across all the different levels and we've got it. For instance a brand new values pieces coming in to our company right now we become one of the primary conjures of getting that message to people in a very real way so it's not for me it's not competing at all. We are the way to drive the strategy. We are competing for resources we just a method of ensuring that people understand the strategy understand the new whatever's going on in the company as well. So we constantly work very collaboratively with with all the new strategy pieces that are coming out. Brilliant I think that's that's a great way of reframing is actually how how can leadership development become the enabler for for the overarching business strategy Sasha anything that you would like to add there. Yeah I love that term enabler Zoe because I think that's key and I think I just say I'd go back to those questions that I raised earlier to say you shouldn't have to compete or rethink your content. If what you're doing is making the company stronger and helping competitive advantage and solving a business problem. You shouldn't have to compete because what you're doing is going to be so important to the company's future success. So I would say rather than try and compete have some reflection on is what we're doing relevant and is what we're doing making the company stronger and then you should have to compete you will be adding and therefore enabling. Yeah brilliant thank you Sasha absolutely it's like how do we ensure that individual our leaders and individuals across the organization are thriving and ensuring that the organizations fit for purpose in the future. And I want to bring you back in I wonder if firstly if you had any thoughts on this or also the first question as well in terms of trends that are coming up that you see. Well I mean I just speaking about that I think it's really important I think Sasha did bring it up early that we acknowledge this leadership everywhere in an organization and I mean from data presentation you can see that Anglo-American is acknowledging that and so. I would say look for unsung heroes look for people who are doing really interesting stuff and really you know acknowledge it and embrace it and so I think that's going to become more and more important that it's just seen as as an everyday thing is showing leadership. I guess for me I think online learning is going to become much more important and it's interesting because we feel that face to face and leadership development requires. You to see each other and to speak to each other and to connect each other and I think we've got to find ways with with online learning to be able to allow that to happen differently. And that's a challenge for large institutions like the University of Cambridge. I mean CISL is shifting but I'm not sure many universities understand the and how to be really creative with online learning and you really do reach many, many more people and access. Yeah, so that's just my my two thoughts on those things. Yeah, so that's a very good point to bring up actually. There I'll spend the role of both blended learning so face to face and online and also online. I know that with our online learning programs here at CISL and we've reached 2000 individuals literally over the last 18 months. So it really gives you the opportunity to scale very, very quickly and that we're bringing in online components to many of our programs. And I just wanted to pick up on the piece actually such that you mentioned earlier with regard to the role of communication skills for leadership development. This is the question that we've had come up and I know that you made the point about being heard. And actually, when it comes to being heard, have you got something to say, how's it been validated? And we heard the power of that image from Elspeth earlier when she was talking about the hand and the digits, the importance of storytelling in leadership development as well. So starting with you, Sasha, just wondered how important you think communication skills are for leadership development. I mean, I think it's critical and I'm so surprised how many L&D and HR professionals don't engage with communication professionals to help really build those programs because the theory is one thing. But actually only a real comms professional will help you really round out that learning. And if you think of some of the great leaders of all time, you know, be they political leaders or religious leaders, whatever, something that really binds them is their ability to tell an incredible story and communicate. And for me, communication skills are what makes some of the best leaders go from, you know, being great leaders of business to being a memorable individual that leaves a legacy. I think it's how they communicate. Brilliant. Thank you, Sasha. Elspeth, I just wonder if you had any thoughts on this one. Well, I go back to my little thing that I was to say quieten your cavernous so that you can hear and I think that I think really important to be able to listen, but you can't listen if your mind is sort of busy answering the question or wanting to say what you want to say. That's a key skill in communication. I think that for leaders is to be able to really listen and to what people are saying. So active listening. So yeah, it's a really important part of leadership development. And I think appreciation, the ability to appreciate is a really important skill, which is part of communication and how you do it has to be culturally sensitive, but I think really showing people the appreciation is a really important skill as well. Yeah, thank you. I think those are all really important points and actually takes us back to Desiree's earlier point about the importance of peer feedback that obviously very much starts with listening and also starts with appreciation. Desiree, anything else that you'd like to add to this point? Yeah, I'd just like to add, I think the gap is important and that's the gap between listening and responding. And often the gap is too short or not thought through enough and we react or I know we've taken one aspect of communication, but I think we need to mind the gap a little bit and think about that. And as leaders, we should take it upon ourselves to be working on our communication skills every single day because we judge by the ability to communicate, whether it's written, whether it's spoken, whether it's how we conduct meetings. That is, if you were a warrior going to war without a weapon, that's what a leader is who can't communicate effectively. So best we'd be working on that all the time. And that's also a lifelong journey and trying to get really good at it and some people find it easier than others, but I don't think you can lead without being able to communicate effectively. Yeah, absolutely. Very good point. It's something that we're looking at. We're newsflash, creating a new online course, which is going to be communicating for influence and impact. So watch this space. So we've had a question around diversity. So the broad question is, what are the benefits of diversity and leadership? And one of our participants was very interested in specifically what Anglo is doing in leadership development to encourage diversity. So firstly, Sasha, perhaps I can invite you and obviously thinking broadly in terms of diversity and inclusion, what are the benefits for leadership? So, I mean, I think if you take that you need diversity that is obvious around, you know, gender, race, et cetera, as a basis to make a strong leadership team. Some of the benefits, again, if you're talking to your board and around innovation. So the great ideas that come from different mindsets and learnings and backgrounds, you know, have really set companies apart. I think it helps also to build stronger teams, stronger workforces. And there's a plethora of research out there that shows the difference between, you know, people that are all the same leading and diversity and diversity in different in profit, productivity, morale, et cetera, et cetera. And I think a wonderful piece of diversity is if if your boards and your leadership and your approach are representing your customers and your people, you're way more likely to have a great environment of, you know, a meeting of minds. If your boards and your teams and your learning aren't representative of your stakeholders, you know, you're far more likely to have a misalignment and therefore, you know, less success. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And Desiree specifically from the Anglo perspective. Anglo American, we specifically change it to inclusion and diversity because we are all of our initiatives in the space around how do we create processes and systems where every single voice is heard. We do that. And if we, as leaders, we are thinking about that all the time, because if every single person's heard, then what will follow is that we will get different people into the room as well. But we used to only have one type of voice that was heard. It was a very loud bombastic type of voice. And what where we seeing the shift is how do we hear everybody. Yeah, that's what we're doing at Anglo American on different fronts in different functions. We've got, as you know, massive global global interventions across the board, we just want to see awards by inclusion and diversity initiatives. But the underpinning of it is hearing every single voice in the room. Yeah, absolutely. Now, as what often happens, we tend to get a flurry of questions in the last couple of minutes. So I'm going to put a couple out there, but I'm very conscious of time. So two interrelated questions. So we've had a question around how agile projects can give people the chance to lead and collaborate and thoughts on how agile has changed how you train people to lead. And a related question is the key skills that technical leaders need to develop in the next decade. I know, Sasha, you probably covered quite a lot of that, but Sasha, any thoughts particularly on how agile has helped or key skills for technical leaders. So yeah, I mean, I've seen more and more companies adopting this, this agile approach. It's very on trend right now. I think that the good thing around that is back to one of the earlier points I had around co-creating and integrating. I think that the beauty of working in an agile approach and bringing cross-purpose and working team together is that you have very, very quick and focused teams looking at problems together with all different mindsets and thoughts with much stronger outcomes working at a different pace. So certainly, especially technical environment, you see real benefits of understanding many disciplines and working at pace together. So I definitely see that there's a place for it. I don't know how long we'll do that until the next big thing comes in, but certainly it's very on trend right now. Super. And Elsbeth, one for you. We've had a question. How do sustainability professionals develop systems thinking? Any quick thoughts there? Well, I mean, just the way that you present sustainability shows that you've really got to understand it's a massive big system that we're part of and we can't and you've got to really understand that there's multiple issues and the notion of wicked problems comes up very strongly in it because you think you can intervene at one place but you just create a problem somewhere else. So this is notion of unintended consequences. So I think it's the only way to teach sustainability is through a systems thinking lens. I don't think you can teach it any other way. Yeah, because you cannot just do one thing with environment and not understand the social implications and vice versa. So really important that it's taught through a system thinking lens. Yeah. Absolutely. And final question for you Desray. We've had a question in terms of any suggested frameworks for providing and receiving feedback. Quick 30 seconds on that one. Yeah, we use this is a situation. This is the impact that the big thing that we use is assume good intent and also the neuro leadership piece around asking for feedback. So not just giving the feedback just encouraging people to learn how to ask for feedback. Please could you give me feedback about and then being really specific. So we've got a whole blend of ones we use. But I think the most important thing is to encourage people to request feedback and not just pop up with cleverness around what you're seeing. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for that. So, unfortunately, we're coming to the end of our hours webinar. Just a reminder, the recording of this webinar will be available and our next webinar is coming up in December and on December 10. And please join me in thanking Desray Elspeth and Sasha for a really rich conversation. And I'd just like to say hopefully we have communicated that leadership on sustainability requires a different set of interpersonal skills. And we've started to dig into that. And our final point is this is part of our repertoire of thinking in our series on leadership. And we're really interested in continuing the conversation with you in terms of where should this repertoire of thinking go in 2020. So very much look forward to any conversations that you'd like to have with us and look forward to joining us for the next webinar in December. So thank you all for joining and particularly thank you to our speakers. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye.