In partnership with
The Science
The of
Making
of a
Learning
Modern Leader:
Five ways to make your L&D
strategy more successful
Do your employees have the skills
to lead through change?
In partnership with Barbara Oakley
Distinguished professor of engineering and influential
researcher on the neuroscience of learning
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Table of contents
The state of leadership today
3
Leading in a digital revolution
Respondent profile
5
1. Leading the organization
10
The evolution of
leadership over time
Leading in uncertain times
12
6
The history of leadership
7
2. Leading teams
13
The anatomy of a modern leader
8
3. Leading transformation
16
4. Leading oneself
18
9
Drive impact with better
leadership today
24
2
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The state of
leadership today
3
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The pressure building over leadership skills development, coupled with the challenges in reporting soft
skills impact and the difficulty of finding targeted and easy-to-execute leadership programs, means L&D
leaders have to figure out how to scale leadership training quickly, at a reasonable cost.
Indeed, the skills of modern leadership, such as strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, resilience, and
Through our Making of a Modern Leader research involving a global survey of
agility, have shifted significantly since the pandemic due to the changes brought about by remote work
1,000 people managers, with survey partner OnePoll, Coursera data from 100
and digital transformation, employee burnout, and economic uncertainty.
million-plus learners, and insights from remote leadership champion GitLab,
this report unpacks:
This situation opens up several questions: What influence is leadership having on talent attraction and
retention? How do we make sure our teams have what they need to survive in uncertain times?
On top of this, 60% of executives believe we should be moving toward a fractionalized working approach
where employees flow to tasks and projects based on their skills and interests rather than their traditional
job roles.1 With this, leadership requirements will only become more of a prerequisite for everyone.
60%
of executives believe we should be moving
What leadership means today
The four key areas of leadership to
focus on in your organization
The skills needed to connect, inspire,
and thrive in these areas
toward a fractionalized working approach
4
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Respondent profile
A total of 1,000 managers employed in the United Kingdom, the United States, India, Australia, Mexico,
France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia participated in the Making of a Modern Leader research.
Nearly half of all respondents worked in either the financial services (12%), manufacturing and
construction (12%), e-commerce (11%), or healthcare (10%) industries.
Managers constituted the largest share of respondents, making up 54% of the pool, with a further 15% in
the C-suite and 13% directors. More than half of all respondents worked in companies with up to 1,000
employees. Thirty-nine percent of the remaining respondents worked in companies of 1,000+ employees.
Sector
Seniority
Financial Services
12%
12%
11%
10%
Manufacturing
and Construction
E-commerce
Healthcare
Other
GitLab’s Darren Murph also
participated in the analysis portion
of this research. Murph is a pioneer
of and advocate for the title “head of
remote.” He authored GitLab’s “Remote
Playbook,” which codifies GitLab’s
practices for working online. You can
learn his takeaways on Coursera in his
How to Manage a Remote Team course.
Darren Murph
15%
C-Suite
13%
Directors
5%
VPs
Head of Remote, GitLab
Other
5
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The evolution of
leadership over time
6
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The history of leadership
What does good leadership look like? It’s a challenge researchers have pondered for decades.
Here are the various leadership models we’ve seen over time2:
1800s-1940s: Trait theory
Leaders are born with innate traits, and leadership is not made or
trained.
1940s-1950s: Behavioral theory
Leaders are not born with particular characteristics but learn specific
leadership-related behaviors.
1960s-1990s: Situational theories
Leaders align their leadership styles for specific contexts given the
impact of leader-follower dynamics.
1990s-2000s: Modern theories
Leadership is the culmination of interactions between the leader,
their followers, and the situational context.
Coursera’s take today: Leadership in
a hybrid world
Leaders are agile employees of any age or seniority level who motivate
and inspire themselves and others. They set clear goals and ensure
accountability from anywhere in the world.
Experts today recognize that the
complexity of leadership requires
studying multiple behavioral,
situational, and cognitive dimensions.
For this reason, this study takes a close
look at the impact of technological
innovation and other rapid
socioeconomic changes on leadership.
7
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The anatomy of a modern leader
One goal of the research was to understand the evolution of leadership in the face of socioeconomic change and technological
disruptions. To answer this question, we started off by asking middle managers to select the most sought-after characteristics of
a leader before the pandemic versus today, as well as the characteristics they’d like future leaders to prioritize in the years ahead.
Here are the results:
Past:
Current:
Future:
Organized and accountable
Confident decision-maker
Emotionally intelligent
Persuasive
Problem solver
Agile and adaptable
Strong business acumen
Effective communicator
Inspirational
Critical thinker
Strategic
Trustworthy
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Leading in a
digital revolution
9
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
The impact of the digital revolution
1. Leading the organization
Hybrid, remote, and in-person challenges
Given the speed at which companies introduce technological
innovations, employees may get bogged down or even fall behind
without proper leadership. To unlock your business’s competitive edge,
A hybrid model is the most common setup for most organizations today. Having 50% office capacity
empowering employees to leverage the right technology at the right
at all times is what 41% of middle managers report in their organization. And more than a third of
time and place is important.
them believe leadership has changed for the worse with the transition (34%). The biggest resulting
The result of this is a new set of expectations, demands, and skills in four
key areas of leadership: leading an organization, leading teams, leading
pitfalls, according to the research, are ignoring work-life boundaries (38%), neglecting team morale
and company culture (37%), and communicating with credibility (30%).
transformation, and leading oneself — which we’ll discuss in the following
To address this, leaders must acknowledge and respond to a new suite of workplace expectations
subsections.
beyond the short-term response that emerged during the pandemic.
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Lead organizations with the right skills
What has worsened in remote/hybrid leadership?
culture across teams, and strategically plan for years into the future. With the added
Ignoring work/
life boundaries
38%
37%
Communication
with credibility
ensure the organization’s success going forward.
30%
Prioritizing the wrong
kind of things
29%
Micromanagement
27%
Failing to evaluate
the performance
27%
Little learning
and growing
0%
difficulties of remote work and digital transformation projects, the Leadership Academy
from Coursera helps employees develop and grow these fast-evolving skill sets to
Neglecting team morale
and company culture
N/A- nothing
has worsened
In today’s complex business environment, leaders need to grow the business, drive
Leader spotlight: Tom is a middle manager at a global organization. He is
looking to improve his strategic management skills. He could start with a short
Clip on Coursera, like Leadership vs Management, then take the follow-up
course, Stepping Up: Preparing Yourself for Leadership, followed by the handson Guided Project, Program Change Management in ClickUp, to identify and
26%
classify the required components for change management. Going forward, he
could take a Specialization like Foundations of Management to understand
8%
how the concepts he learned link to real-world scenarios.
25%
50%
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Leading in uncertain times
ʻʻ
The challenges leaders face are exacerbated during uncertain times — like now, with a recession looming — as
employees stress over their finances, worry about their job security, and question their purpose. Given these
uncertainties, our research shows leaders who prioritize empathy, compassion, and patience (29%), are visible
Leaders must step up to
alleviate these concerns
by offering assurances
and flexibility. They must
invest in new systems and
ways of working which
prioritize equitable access
to information and enable
more frictionless work.
and open (26%), and are masters of change management (25%) are preferred.
What should leaders master in challenging times?
They practice empathy,
compassion, and patience
29%
They’re visible and
hold an open dialogue
26%
They’re masters of
change management
25%
They lead with
kindness and respect
15%
Darren Murph
Head of Remote, GitLab
They’re im6%
perfectly human
0%
10%
20%
30%
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
2. Leading teams
The rise of the middle manager and
individual contributor
How can leaders best motivate teams?
57%
Lead by example
An underlying challenge of the remote and hybrid workplace is the intensity of leadership
expected from less experienced employees, particularly middle managers. From motivating
peers to maintaining company culture and driving business results, they’re on the frontline
with their teams while also answering to senior leadership on business results.
Middle managers in our research say that motivating teams and leading by example
54%
Set clear goals
51%
Encourage teamwork
Empower team members
48%
Give open and honest feedback to
allow team members to grow
48%
are their top leadership priorities (57%), followed closely by setting clear goals (54%),
encouraging teamwork (51%), and empowering team members (48%).
But because of the culmination of turbulent external factors and the pressures of leading
without the requisite support or training, middle managers overseeing one to six people report
feeling more stressed and less productive than senior executives managing 15-plus employees.
They are 46% less satisfied with their jobs and struggle more than twice as much to maintain a
sense of belonging3.
Give praise and reward
Be optimistic and positive
Provide a vision and purpose
0%
45%
44%
43%
50%
100%
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Lead teams with the right training
New managers are essential to organizations tasked with leading a team while continuing to bring in the revenue the business
needs to sustain itself. Without proper training, rising middle managers may struggle in their new roles, burn out, or hurt their
direct reports’ productivity and job satisfaction.
Leader spotlight: Wendy was recently promoted to manager. She is now tasked to lead one other remote team
member. To step up to the challenge, she is watching a course Clip on Coursera, Recruiting and Managing Your
Team, while developing some team-based technology skills useful for team building and communication in a
hybrid world through the Building a Team in Microsoft Teams hands-on Guided Project. Later, Wendy plans to take
the Specialization Leadership Out of the Box to lead more effectively as she takes on more complex responsibilities.
Remote work also brings high expectations on every employee in the business to perform as a strong team player, regardless
of whether they have direct reports. Everyone must be responsible for clear communication, workload management, and
structured decision-making. This is particularly challenging during a downturn, given that employees without direct reports
ʻʻ
Since we are remote,
there is a high
expectation to do your
work without direct
supervision. It means
that every team
member is responsible
for communication,
structuring decisions,
and managing their
workload individually.
Darren Murph
Head of Remote, GitLab
typically have little to no say on strategy but are subject to the many pivots and re-shuffles an organization may go through as it
tries to find its footing.
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
For this reason, employees at all levels urgently need leadership mentoring — 19%
What should leaders do to inspire employee
learning in the workplace?
of managers say that leading by example and letting others see how you are learning
new skills is the best way to inspire learning in the workplace. Modeling learning is more
19%
Lead by example
powerful than encouraging a more flexible workplace (16%), offering incentives and rewards
(16%), and creating a diverse organization with a myriad of perspectives and experiences
Encourage flexibility
16%
Reward learning
16%
for employees to learn from (15%). Mentoring is key to letting employees see their
leadership potential and imbuing their confidence to make their best contribution.
What’s interesting is that 70% of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs open
to all employees already, but there is little evidence of their effectiveness4. The cause?
When mentoring is optional, those who require it the most are likely to decline it.
Hire for diversity
15%
Link learning to employee objectives
15%
Allocate time to learn
Foster curiosity
0%
10%
9%
25%
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
3. Leading transformation
The role of tech and data on leadership
Connected with the new challenges of remote and hybrid work is the discrepancy between tech,
What should effective leaders prioritize today to
lead at their best?
data, and leadership skills. With the increasing pace of digital transformation in the workplace,
organizations rely more and more on tech and data subject matter experts to solve difficult
56%
Motivating a team
business problems.
Encouraging employee development
Here’s where it gets tricky: By promoting these technical leaders into managerial roles without
proper leadership training, organizations hurt their business goals and team morale. Leadership,
39%
Learning and growing
once again, is a must-have for everyone in the business.
33%
Setting priorities
To lead at their best, more than half of managers say motivating a team (56%), encouraging
44%
employee development (44%), and learning and growing (39%) must be prioritized. These are
learned soft skills that new leaders with technical backgrounds may be unfamiliar with.
0%
Handling conflict
31%
Supporting individual
employees
31%
25%
50%
75%
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Case study: Visible Alpha
Lead transformation by merging
technical and soft skills harmoniously
Aware of the importance of helping technology experts build soft skills alongside technical
ones to upgrade their team’s leadership abilities, the innovative financial market analysis
software company, Visible Alpha, offers courses on Coursera in communication and team
management to new hires, as well as to those looking to move into leadership roles.
“We’ve found that Coursera is versatile enough to be useful for
Many employees with the right technical skills to transform their business
employees, managers, and executives. Our learners like that the
lack the leadership skills to lead this transformation harmoniously
content is from leading universities and institutions. Coursera’s rich
throughout the organization. The Leadership Academy from Coursera helps
employees ideate, experiment, and learn the key principles and practices
necessary to inspire change in others and drive change in the organization.
catalog means we can find leadership and communications courses
relevant to our company’s specific needs.”
-Alyssa Chen, HR Director at Visible Alpha.
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
4. Leading oneself
The evolution of the competencies of a leader
As leadership theories have evolved, so has the way of expressing the key competencies involved
in leadership. Competencies like problem-solving, communication and conflict resolution have
always been core leadership attributes, but how we express them is drastically changing.
For example, while some leaders may seek to solve problems as quickly as possible for maximum
financial results, others may view problem-solving through the lens of how their solution can
create an impact beyond the bottom line.
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Four leadership styles and their leadership competencies manifested5
Focusing on tangible success, these leaders prioritize metrics
related to financial results, such as costs and quality.
Prioritizes efficient problem-solving, conflict resolution focused
on financial return, and a competitive communication style.
The Modern Missionary
Driven by human values, these cause-guided leaders hope to build
something meaningful that makes a difference rather than strive
for more profits and growth.
Focuses on meaningful problem-solving, conflict resolution
aimed at making an impact, and inspirational communication.
The Problem Solver
These leaders are adept at confronting difficult challenges and
identifying new opportunities. However, rather than relying on
their team, they take charge and leverage their expertise.
Prefers accurate, number-based problem-solving, conflict
resolution that relies on core expertise, and top-down
communication.
The Solutions Finder
Humble and self-effacing, these leaders believe in uncovering the
talents of their colleagues and maximizing the collective genius of
the organization.
Focuses on joint problem-solving, open communication, and
collaborative conflict resolution.
The Classic Entrepreneur
Our research shows that while respondents have experienced a fairly even split of leadership styles throughout their
careers, the leadership style they find most appropriate for leading today is the Solutions Finder leadership style (31%).
This leadership style fits the skills-first (versus role-based) business mentality. Workers flow to tasks and projects based
on their skills and interests rather than their traditional job roles, uncovering the organization’s collective genius.
31%
of respondents find the Solutions
Finder leadership style most
appropriate for leading today
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
It also sits well with the current employee demand for more autonomy. Recent research by Deloitte
shows that half of the employees surveyed were more likely to join and remain at organizations that
Reflecting on oneself matters in leadership
offer them agency and choice in how they apply their skills to work6.
It’s possible that the misalignment in leadership style needs (by business goals) and business wants
(by employee preferences) caused higher-than-normal attrition rates in recent years, as evidenced by
the Great Resignation.
For leaders to better define problems, determine long- and short-term solutions, and solve
inventively, they need a foundational understanding of how they operate as individuals and where
they need to adapt to give the best of themselves to others.
Indeed only 26% of employees surveyed by Deloitte in recent research strongly agree that their
employers treat them as whole individuals who offer diverse contributions based on their unique
portfolio of skills, yet this is what half of the employees prefer.
Leader spotlight: Rob recently joined the business. He is going through a tough period
outside of work, impacting his mood and people management skills. To navigate this
challenge, Rob started taking the following courses to reflect on himself and lead better:
26%
of employees believe employers
are using their talent to their fullest
first, the course Clip on Coursera, Why Emotions Matter: Physical and Mental Health;
then, a hands-on Guided Project, Assimilating into your New Job, to create a 30-60-90
plan that set him up for success in his new role; and, finally, The Science of Well-Being
course to build more productive habits to be happy.
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
ʻʻ
With socioeconomic uncertainties on the horizon,
leaders cannot afford to undermine credibility
and jeopardize their reputation by compensating
with overconfidence. Instead, they need to find
a way to reassure their teams and approach the
future with confidence using empathy and strong
storytelling, relying on concrete information and
particularly on strong data and strategies.
Darren Murph
Head of Remote, GitLab
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The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Leadership
Academy
Leadership
Academy
“An important part of leadership development is the realization that there are
“An important part of leadership development is the realization that there are
component skills that can be learned and mastered.”
component skills that can be learned and mastered.”
Leadership Academy
Develop employees
to
lead without
limits
DevelopDevelop
employees
to lead
without
limits
employees
to lead
without
limits
Lead
Yourself
Lead
Yourself
Lead
Teams
Lead
Teams
Matt Dearmon, Director of Leadership
Matt Dearmon, Director&ofProf.
Leadership
Development
& Prof. Development
Lead
Organizations
Lead
Organizations
Core human skills for productive
Develop teams at all levels that
Empower your workforce with
Core human skills for productive
Develop teams at all levels that
Empower your workforce with
interactions and impact
collaborate and thrive
management and org. dev skills
interactions and impact
collaborate and thrive
management and org. dev skills
Sample SkillSets:
Sample SkillSets:
Sample SkillSets:
Sample SkillSets:
Sample SkillSets:
Sample SkillSets:
Emotional
Emotional
Intelligence
Intelligence
NewNew
Managers
Managers
Managing
Managing
Managers
Managers
Diversity
Diversity
andand
Inclusion
Inclusion
People
People
Development
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Organizational
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Development
Development
Interpersonal
Interpersonal
Skills
Skills
Team
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Management
Management
Strategic
Strategic
Management
Management
Lead
Transformation
Lead
Transformation
Digital
Digital
Transformation
Transformation
Design
Design
Thinking
Thinking
AgileAgile
Aware
Aware
World-class
World-class
content & expert
content & expert
instruction
instruction
Hands-on
Hands-on
learning
learning
Pictured: Sample Guided Projects.
Pictured: Sample
Guided
Projects.
Over 2,000
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Projects available
Over 2,000 Guided Projects available
on Coursera. 100 added monthly.
on Coursera. 100 added monthly.
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Proprietary
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11
11
22
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Useful courses to develop a Solutions Finder leadership style
Lead Yourself
Lead Teams
Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future
(Institute of the Future)
How to Manage a Remote Team
(GitLab)
Storytelling and influencing: Communicate with impact
(Macquarie University)
Building High-Performing Teams
(University of Pennsylvania)
The Growth Mindset
(University of California, Davis)
Leadership focused on Human Flourishing
(Tecnológico de Monterrey)
Lead Organizations
Lead Transformation
Inclusive Leadership: The Power of Workplace Diversity
(University of Colorado)
Agile Leadership: Introduction to Change
(University of Colorado)
Six Sigma and the Organization
(University System of Georgia)
Superbosses: Managing Talent & Leadership
(Dartmouth College)
Organisational design: Know your organisation
(Macquarie University)
Collaborate on Files in Slack: Local & Google Drive Integrations
(Coursera Project Network)
23
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Drive impact
with better
leadership today
24
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
In the face of global socioeconomic uncertainty, technological disruptions, and a hybrid workplace, effective
leadership is more important and complex than ever. Our research shows a discrepancy between the types
of leaders employees need and those currently heading our teams and organizations — especially as hybrid
work requires more roles to step up to the plate.
Learning leaders should prioritize upskilling their workforce in leadership competencies that empower
technical experts to lead transformation, provide the business with a competitive edge and reduce talent
attrition. Deploying ongoing, easy-to-access, soft skills training for all through affordable and scalable
leadership programs, such as Leadership Academy from Coursera, could be the solution.
Ready to power your organization with
the next generation of leaders and
create high-performance teams?
Request a consultation today.
Above all, these programs should be flexible, cater to existing foundational knowledge, offer a mix of
learning formats, from short clips to full courses and specializations, and provide in-course assessments
and hands-on learning to help employees retain knowledge.
25
The Making of a Modern Leader: Do your employees have the skills to lead through change?
Endnotes
1
The skills-based organization: A new operating model for work and the workforce. Deloitte. September 2022.
2
Leadership Theories and Styles. WGU. April 2020.
3
It’s Time to Free the Middle Manager. Harvard Business Review. May 2021.
4
Why Your Mentoring Program Should Be Mandatory. Harvard Business Review. October 2022.
5
The 4 Leadership Styles, and How to Identify Yours. Harvard Business Review. August 2016.
6
The skills-based organization: A new operating model for work and the workforce. Deloitte. September 2022.
26