The Learning and Talent Podcast

Leadership Development is under increasing scrutiny. As AI reshapes how work is done, organisations are questioning whether their leadership programmes are building the capabilities leaders actually need to succeed in an environment defined by speed, complexity, and uncertainty.

In this conversation with Bjorn Billhardt, Founder and CEO, and Alex Whiteleather, Managing Director, Europe, at Abilitie, the pair highlight one consistent message: as they see it, the era of Leadership Development centred primarily on knowledge acquisition is ending. What organisations now require is leadership judgement.

Hot takes, anyone? 🔥 We’ve spent the last 12 months talking to Heads of Learning and collecting surveys about their priorities, so we asked three members of the team to predict the trends we might see in 2026.

Their thoughts? L&D will increasingly step into org development. L&D’s AI focus will become a focus on AI governance. Skills-based approaches will move from getting started to mainstream practice.

As a team, we’re in the fortunate position to eavesdrop on the discussions that are driving corporate L&D. We’re not learning experts, but we know a lot of people who are.

We’ve been doing more over the last few years to share insights from the iVentiv community with you. This is our latest experiment, and we’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’ll revisit these at the end of the year to see how close we got (or didn’t get!). In the meantime, join Richard Parfitt (Marketing Director), Kristy Kitson (L&D Strategist), and Hannah Hoey (Content Director) for the full conversation.

What skills and challenges should Chief Learning Officers be focusing on right now? Digital skills, leadership skills, internal marketing skills? It can be difficult to know what areas should be top of your list.