How to Become a BOLD Strategic L&D Leader

Whether you are new to learning and development or a seasoned L&D leader, the world of work is in a constant state of flux. New technologies emerge, priorities shift and workforces evolve. In an environment of continual change, those in L&D who can help individuals, teams and organizations contribute value by being equipped for today and ready for tomorrow, are more essential than ever.

So how do we create this type of strategic impact when the ground beneath us is continually shifting? The answer doesn’t always lie in a ‘better’ 3-year strategic plan - it's about developing the thinking habits that enable us to anticipate what is needed in the future. Strategically navigating the changing world of work in real-time involves making evidence-informed decisions that keep learning aligned to business value even as priorities evolve.

The TRI Principles

In our book, The L&D Leader, we explore how effective L&D leaders navigate towards business value. With 20 years of benchmarking research and hundreds of interviews to uncover a set of consistent principles that have guided the work of high-performing L&D teams through constant disruption. We call these the TRI principles. These may seem familiar, perhaps even obvious:

· Tuning In to understand the landscape in our organization

· Responding by drawing on our expertise to support, design and engage others

· Improving through a continuous flow of insight and adaptation

At first glance, these principles are common sense. But they rarely translate into common practice. Our interviews with L&D leaders worldwide reveal that those who create lasting impact not only apply TRI, they also share a set of four thinking habits that set direction, shaping how they use those principles to navigate to business value. We call this the BOLD Compass.

The BOLD Compass

The BOLD compass consists of four interconnected thinking habits that work together as an integrated system, shaping how we perceive opportunities, make decisions and respond to the changing conditions around us.

BOLD thinking isn't about being brash or overconfident. It's about being grounded in business understanding, open to multiple perspectives, willing to learn through experimentation and deliberate in our actions.

Smart BOLD thinking involves being:

· Business-First: Orienting decisions around organizational outcomes rather than learning outputs. We measure what business leaders care about, speak their language and position ourselves as a driver of business results, not just a provider of learning services.

· Open Minded: Approaching challenges with curiosity and receptivity to multiple perspectives. We see ourselves as an explorer, not just an expert and build interdependent relationships across the organization rather than working as an independent service provider.

· Leading and Learning: Embracing experimentation and continuous improvement. We move at business pace when needed, balance proven approaches with innovation and treat productive failure as valuable learning rather than something to avoid.

· Deliberate: Taking intentional evidence-informed action rather than defaulting to convention. We see ourselves as changemakers who proactively shape organizational direction, rather than order-takers who respond to requests.

Developing Your BOLD Compass

Where are you now? Get your bearings.

Think of a recent situation where you made a decision or judgment call in your L&D work. Reflect honestly:

· Business-First: Did you start with business outcomes or learning solutions? Did you identify and measure what business leaders care about?

· Open Minded: Did you explore first or did you immediately prescribe a solution? Did you seek different perspectives?

· Leading and Learning: Were you comfortable experimenting or did you stick to proven approaches?

· Deliberate: Did you ground your decision in evidence from multiple sources or rely on your experience and professional judgement?

What one shift in thinking habits would most improve your effectiveness right now?

What will you try? Shift your course.

Here are four starting points. Choose the thinking habit that would make the biggest difference for you right now.

1. Business-First: Review your metrics. Review what you currently measure and report. Ask honestly: ‘Would my CEO care about this?’ Identify one business metric that matters to your organization and explore how your learning initiatives connect to it.

2. Open-Minded: Practice explorer questions. Before your next stakeholder conversation to discuss a new support request, write down three ‘help me understand’ questions about their request. Notice what you learn when you're genuinely curious instead of rapidly proposing a solution.

3. Leading and Learning: Run a small experiment. Identify one low-risk experiment that you could run in the next month. Define a simple hypothesis and clear success criteria. Track and review what happens and what you learned.

4. Deliberate: Challenge an assumption. Choose one current initiative and write down: ‘I believe this will work because...’ Separate assumptions from actual evidence. Pick one key assumption and check it with stakeholder input or data before proceeding.

Notice when you feel defensive about an approach or resistant to feedback. That's your signal to pause and ask what you might be protecting and where the growth opportunity lies. Self-awareness is the foundation of developing your BOLD compass.

Creating Strategic Impact in the Changing World of Work

Like skilled navigators who master both their charts and their compass, becoming a strategic L&D leader requires two things: a navigation framework to help us anticipate change and shift direction when needed and the thinking habits to use it well.

The TRI principles provide our framework. Our BOLD thinking habits create our internal compass, shaping how we perceive opportunities, make choices and adjust course towards business value.

So how do we create strategic impact when the ground keeps shifting? 

We stop trying to predict the future and start developing the thinking habits that let us navigate it. This is what dynamic strategy looks like in practice: not a document that lives on a shelf but shifting to a set of principles and thinking habits that guide our decisions daily. These are what help us adapt course while maintaining direction toward business value.

The shift doesn't require permission, position or dramatic transformation. It begins with one small navigation choice from a conversation where we explore rather than prescribe to one metric that connects with business outcomes or one experiment that we try. Becoming a BOLD strategic L&D leader emerges through developing and nurturing a relationship with our own thinking habits.

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