The ART of Connection in Leadership Development

All leaders grow at their own pace, shaped by their strengths, opportunities and the situations they face. What's common across all that uniqueness, however, is the power of connections as the foundation for growth. The Insight Experience ART methodology focuses on design that ensures connection between people, ideas, and action.

Why Connection Accelerates Growth

Connection accelerates leadership development in multiple ways. Connections with other leaders—the traditional "networking" sense of the word—help a leader see role models, validate their challenges, access great practices, and identify resources and support. Connections to peers, both inside and outside the organization, offer new ideas and spark growth through interaction.

But connection as an accelerator of leadership development is much broader than growing a network of contacts. Effective leadership development helps leaders see connections in their own mindset and behaviors, and it enables them to spot new possibilities and take action. Those connections come from a broader range of juxtaposed ideas and conversations:

1. Connections Across Ideas

Leadership development programs offer new ideas, models, and perspectives on leadership. Those ideas prove most useful when a participant can connect them to their own experience. Artful design creates room for reflection and thinking prompts that help leaders make those idea connections.

2. Connections of Causality

Leadership is often a long lead-time activity. The most valuable leadership actions can take time to show benefits, and leaders can easily miss the cause and effect of their own leadership. Artfully designed experiential learning and business simulations help leaders telescope time and understand the long-term implications and benefits of their actions.

3. Connections to Culture

Leadership drives results, and it shapes the working environment of an organization. Leaders often focus on delivering value to customers, shareholders, and communities but think less often about how their leadership creates the culture of work. Artful design highlights the connection between leadership and culture as a powerful additional lens for development.

4. Connections to Opportunity

Personal growth is challenging. For many leaders, their existing behaviors have driven real success in their careers and organizations. Growth requires motivation, and artful design helps even the most talented leaders see the connection between their own growth and new opportunities.

Building Connection by Design

Connection, broadly defined, is a critical ingredient for leadership learning. Every leadership development program should be intentionally designed to enable connections of all types. At Insight Experience, we use our ART methodology to ensure targeted connections for each audience.

To find out more about the ART of Connection, head to our Targeted Connections page.

Amanda Young Hickman

Amanda Young Hickman has more than 20 years of experience advising and leading clients on the design and implementation of strategic change initiatives and leadership development experiences. She is an expert facilitator and a seasoned program designer who works in all phases of learning experience design and delivery. Amanda is a founding partner of Insight Experience and believes in the impact a leader has on an organization and its results.