Our passion at qChange is helping leaders be their best. To accomplish this, we made a conscious decision to focus on the leader’s journey. We imagine a leader is like a rock thrown into a body of water. They create the ripple that impacts the whole of the organization. With that philosophy in mind we believe that there is a need for a new Experience Management Category – Leader Experience Management (LXM). Other great organizations focus on Customer Experience Management (CXM), Employee Experience Management (EXM), Brand Experience Management (BXM), and Product Experience Management (PXM). We’re spending our time, energy, and resources on creating and servicing a new XM focused on the critical role of Leader.

LXM places the leader at the center and focuses on their journey in the organization. Creating a positive Leader Experience means comprehending and appreciating the leader’s journey in context – focusing on the challenges and opportunities they face day by day, hour by hour, thus in real-time. LXM involves understanding and improving all aspects of the environment the leader attempts to excel in:  culture, physical, technological. By enhancing this experience for a leader, a leader is better positioned, and equipped to be the ripple effect across the organization.

Why create this category? Why focus on LXM? Why does qChange think this is needed now more than ever?

1. Leadership Development is needed, but broken:

Leadership Development is often very expensive and not valued nor trusted by Executives. In fact, $366B (USD) is spent on leadership development globally with 90 cents of every dollar considered wasted by CEOs

2. Passive leader development doesn’t deliver in the long run:

Current methods of Leadership Development, while well intentioned, are often flawed. Numerous studies have shown that traditional leadership delivery methods, such as instructor led training, seminars and even eLearning, have a forgetting curve of 90%, and often lack situational context.

3. The leadership skills gap is real and growing:

Organizations need it. Only 19% of organizations say they are “very effective” at developing leaders, and 84% of organizations anticipate a leadership shortfall in the next 5 years.

4. COVID-19 is changing how we lead, and validating the importance of leadership. Note:  We believe everyone can be a leader, not just those with direct reports):

Who knows how long COVID-19 will be with us? With this global pandemic, organizations and employees are counting on authentic and highly competent leaders more than ever. These are no doubt extremely difficult times, and through these times we have to keep developing leaders, creating positive culture, and helping leaders understand both their strengths and opportunities to develop allowing them to be their best in every moment.

Effective leadership development needs a new delivery method that occurs in context, is personalized to the leader's situation, and scalable so everyone can grow these business-critical skills. To do this at a higher-level with a bigger impact across the organization, we believe LXM is the future.

I would love to get your comments on this and if you have any questions please email me at: jhowes@qchange.com.

John C. Howes, Ph.D.

Chief Leader Experience Officer,

qChange