HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Executive Leadership Trends with John Morgan, LHH
In episode 732, we welcome John Morgan back to the show to discuss the state of executive leadership through the eyes of executives themselves.
John is the President of LHH’s Career Transition & Mobility and Leadership Development businesses. As an experienced business leader and management consultant with over 20 years of helping Fortune 500 companies navigate the human capital and talent development industry, he is responsible for leading the strategy direction and driving revenue and profitability growth for LHH.
LHH, the professional talent solutions and advisory company (and a part of The Adecco Group), recently surveyed 2,282 C-level executives from organizations across the globe to better understand the challenges and opportunities for improvement across executive leadership.
The ICEO Executive Research report, called Views from the C-Suite, investigates the state of executive leadership through the eyes of executives themselves. LHH surveyed 2,282 C-level executives from organizations across the world to better understand the challenges and opportunities for improvement across executive leadership.
Questions for John include:
- Can you tell us about the ICEO Executive Leadership Report?
- What are some of the biggest concerns facing today’s executives?
- What types of executive support are leaders looking for and why?
- Can you share ways executive support can reduce executive turnover? Talk to us about the correlation between support, engagement, and retention.
- From what you're seeing, how much turnover is healthy?
About LHH
LHH is a professional talent solutions and advisory company, and a part of The Adecco Group, preparing workers, the people that manage them, and business leaders for the challenges we face in this new world of work.
Listen to John's previous appearance on the show here.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannum, and in this episode we're going to welcome John Morgan back to the show to discuss the state of executive leadership through the eyes of executives themselves. Lhh, the Professional Talent Solutions and Advisory Company and part of the EDECO group, recently surveyed 2,282 C-level executives from organizations across the globe to better understand the challenges and opportunities for improvement across executive leadership. John is the president of LHH's Career, transition and Mobility and Leadership Development Businesses. As an experienced business leader and management consultant with over 20 years of helping Fortune 500 companies navigate the human capital and talent development industry, john is responsible for leading the strategic decisions and direction driving revenue and profitability growth for LHH. John, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you back to the HR Chat Show. Welcome today.
Speaker 3:Phil, thanks so much. Great to be back as always, really a pleasure.
Speaker 2:So before this call, I was having a look back. Do you know what? It was all the way back in the summer of 2021 that you and I had a chat on this show. Maybe you can reintroduce yourself to our audience. And also, what have we been up to over the last few years, John?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I can't believe the time has gone by that quickly, bill, but it's a pleasure to be back and hello everybody. I'm John Morgan. I'm the global president for LHH's career transition and leadership development businesses, which also includes our executive coaching businesses. So what have I been up to?
Speaker 3:We've been doing a lot of great stuff at LHH over the past couple of years.
Speaker 3:Our core business is still really the same and we really as an organization exist to really help professional level talent in the area of recruitment, upskilling and career transition skilling and career transition and our services are really focused on both temporary and permanent professional search solutions, executive search but also we're the leading provider of executive coaching through our Ezra brand and we do a ton of work in the career transition space.
Speaker 3:We're actually the world's largest outplacement provider. So in the last three years really all of our businesses have been growing. We've supported a lot of massive restructurings in the workforce that have gone down, especially last year, and then you know our space in executive coaching has really grown and our whole executive practice really has been taking off in executive search and executive career transition, and that's what's really spawned some of the recent research that we've been doing around. What are the top challenges that executives are facing right now? So it's been a busy couple of years. The business is going really well. I think the work that we're doing is really great and meaningful and we're happy to be doing more of it and happy to share more about that with you and your audience today.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you very much. Well, let's do exactly that then. So, as I mentioned in my intro earlier, we are talking about the views from the C-suite. Can you tell our listeners about the ICEO Executive Leadership Report?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm happy to.
Speaker 3:As I mentioned, we have a lot of work that we do again in recruitment and in development and in transition with the executive population.
Speaker 3:So the research, ice, the research you know ICE CEO is a shorthand for the International Center for Executive Options.
Speaker 3:It's the brand we use for our executive career transition practice and, you know, really it's the work that we do there where C-suite executives are looking for their next leadership role. But, as I mentioned, we also work with executives that are currently leading organizations and we provide them with peer level mentoring and one-on-one advisory support. So the reason why we did this research is because we work across various populations with executives and we really wanted to understand what's on the mind of executives today and also the HR leaders that support them. So we did a survey at the beginning of the year to over 2,200 C-level executives from our clients across a multitude of global markets, north America included, but also representative large markets in Europe and Asia and Pacific. And what we're really trying to do is to try to better understand what are the leadership challenges right now, any country differences and also what are the potential HR support areas that are needed and how to best handle the current leadership challenges, and so, as the report showed, there's lots of challenges and they're not so simple.
Speaker 2:Okay, well then, let's break those down. What are some of the big issues, john, and the big issues and the concerns facing today's executives?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I'll tell you a little bit about some of the things that came out of the research, I mean, I think, before the research. First of all, I think we all know that the climate that executives are facing today and the business topics are there's this really, you know, more complicated and more challenging than ever. You know everything from return to office and hybrid working to some of the talent scarcity issues that we have, you know. Then we have obviously lots of ESG issues that leaders have to think about geopolitical unrest, inflation, economic issues in different countries and then, obviously, we have a rapid disruption in technology and AI. So it's a perfect storm for executives. There's just a lot of stuff to really navigate, difficult time to lead. When we looked at our research for executives, there's just a lot of stuff to really navigate, difficult time to lead.
Speaker 3:When we looked at our research, I would say probably three key themes and trends emerged. The first is that technology-related challenge. It was really something that jumped out of our survey. So, for example, among the executives that we surveyed, tech disruption, including AI, was the top external challenge. Twenty nine percent of respondents signaled that. And also digital transformation was the top internal challenge that executives signaled, and we also surveyed our HR leaders again, and HR leaders also mirrored that by identifying digital transformation as the most pressing internal challenge.
Speaker 3:Second thing that really jumped off was what we call a leadership confidence challenge, and executives unanimously acknowledge the existence of capability gaps within their leadership teams. Capability gaps within their leadership teams. Some of the reported gaps span across a lot of different competencies things like strategic thinking and innovation to creative problem solving Real lack of confidence. I think that leaders are lacking some competency gaps in this type of environment, and I think executives are really struggling sometimes to make decisions during pivotal moments that they haven't experienced before. We found 24% of respondents cited strategic thinking and decision-making abilities as the top capability gap within their senior leadership teams.
Speaker 3:And then the very last one I wanted to mention was the overall geopolitical and economic shift. I mean, we found only 27% of CEOs really feel optimistic about the global economy, and so respondents broadly agree that the instability in geopolitics right now poses the greatest threat to their business, but also new regulation, inflation and skill shortages. I mean these are some of the things that are on the top of the CEO's list of worries right now. So I think, when you add all those challenges up right now. We also have to be worried right now about the burnout issue and the wellness issue in the audio content we produce. You'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at HRGazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you very much. Just going back to the leadership confidence gaps or the crisis there, Just going back to the leadership confidence gaps or the crisis there, is that partly because large numbers of previously middle managers have moved into leadership roles due to the pandemic, due to lots and lots and lots of boomers retiring, for example. Is this part of that factor?
Speaker 3:It definitely is One of the points from the research and just the public research as well, not only ours. I mean, you actually saw last year that one third of the newly appointed S&P 500 CEOs were under the age of 50. So you definitely have what I would say is, by and large, an increasingly youthful leadership population that is going to need help with some of these capability areas population that is going to need help with some of these capability areas.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you very much. What types of executive supports are leaders looking for, then, and why and where does the HR department fit in Sure, I mean.
Speaker 3:I think it's probably summarized in two main areas. One is around helping to fill some of these noted capability gaps that executives are indicating or that HR leaders are indicating that the executive teams have, and the other is burnout. We did find in the research 52% of our executives that we surveyed say that their senior leaders are overworked or burnt out. 60% of executives would like to have more support options available to them. So one of the things that we heard was that the most desired form of support was really focused on bespoke one-on-one support like mentoring and coaching particularly. We also heard that 74% of executives reported obstacles to their well-being goals that were largely work-related. And when you look into the research further and think about mentoring and coaching specifically, again, we found that the focus was really skewed towards decision-making. So that's the business part, and then burnout and well-being the sort of work-life balance part and we see a real lot of peer mentoring and advisory solutions being offered to senior executives to really help them with some of those top business performance gaps, everything from how to navigate ethical decision-making, especially around AI, but also reviewing business strategy amidst all these external challenges, and then classic things like change management skills and innovation and problem solving things that leaders always need help with, right. So these are some of the things that we've been seeing in the types of support that's been needed. And then when you look at burnout, burnout is also something that HR is really helping their executive population with more and more.
Speaker 3:I have a couple examples of things that we can share with you about what we've been doing. This is where we provide generally business coaching, and that's one of the services that we provide. But what we've recently done with our Ezra brand is we've done a partnership with Headspace, which is a wellness app, and here I think we can no longer ignore the focus on business and wellness together, and so anyone that's in our coaching program, for example, any executive that's in our coaching program gets access to the Headspace mental health app, which allows people to really also focus on wellness. You know guided meditation, mindfulness practices, sleep and focus, among other wellness topics and I think you know offering this, in addition to real business advisory, is what's really needed for the executive population right now.
Speaker 2:Let's just hone in a bit more, if you don't mind, on that correlation between support, engagement and retention. John, can you maybe spell out some ways that executive support can tackle executive turnover?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Turnover executive turnover is a real challenge. It spiked in the first quarter of this year. I mean, I think burnout plays a big role in that. So again, I think, first of all, helping executives understand that this is a realistic part of the job and let's not make it taboo and let's understand that every young executive or seasoned executive is at risk of burnout because the nature of leadership has really really changed, gotten more complex, I would say, gotten more stressful.
Speaker 3:So if you as an HR practitioner can proactively understand, come to your executive with that solution. If you can actually come to your CEO and say, hey, the leadership team would benefit by going through some team development work, the leadership team would benefit by, you know, focusing on, you know, some mindfulness and some wellness, so sort of bringing it to their attention without making them ask for it. I think is one thing that the HR population can do. And I think you know executives are obviously seasoned leaders but at the end of the day they're no different than employees. I mean, they have, you know they have stressors, they have families, they have, you know, issues that are going to create stress and you know they can't ignore it. You know issues that are going to create stress and you know they can't ignore it. And so, again, making sure that we focus on the executive population and give them the support and give them those tools and proactively do that, I think, is a real benefit that the HR advisor can can provide.
Speaker 2:Okay, john. So from what you're seeing, how much turnover is acceptable, ie how much is too much? What proportion of leadership can a larger organization afford to lose each quarter or each year without big negative consequences for other team members, for their reports and indeed for the bottom line?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, we get a lot of firsthand trends from our recruiting clients on this topic and it does largely depend on the type of company and the industry and the type of role.
Speaker 3:Right, you have some companies you know where a high level of turnover, especially in roles that might be transactional, and or maybe you know further downstream, from the customer you know you might have like 40% that it's totally fine because it's just a high churn type of job. But on an aggregate level, if you're, if you're talking about the Fortune 1000, and you're saying to a CEO what's the acceptable level of turnover, they're probably going to tell you 10% to 15% generally. And within that population they're going to say, basically, we want to minimize regrettable turnover. So the combination of voluntary levers and involuntary performance management, that's going to be somewhere from 10% to 15% for most. Again, with HR leaders and executives really wanting to minimize the regrettable turnover, that's really the KPI. They want that to be zero, they want to keep their best people and they want to be able to quickly part ways when they have to with employees that are not performing.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, and just finally for today, john, listeners, there will, of course, be a link in the show notes and in the associated article to the report. But, john, how can folks connect with you? So maybe LinkedIn, email, whatever you want to provide there, and, of course, how can they learn more about LHH?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, of course. Thanks again for this, bill, and I'm on LinkedIn. John Morgan, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you to share more of my content and information, but, as well as about the company LHH, our website is lhhcom. Again, we are one of the three GBUs of the ADECO group, which is the world's largest global staffing company in Zurich. So the ADECO group website, or LHHcom, is totally fine, and you can reach out to me at johnmorgan at LHHcom with any questions at all about the research that we talked about today.
Speaker 2:Very good. Well, that just leaves me to say for today, John Morgan, it's been an absolute pleasure getting you back on the show and catching up with you. Let's not leave it so long until the next time. And for today, listeners, as always, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
