One of the most important questions that L&D professionals should be encouraging emerging leaders to confront is: What is the culture that I need to inherit five years from now if I'm going to make maximum impact? The next question is: So what can I do now to start shaping it?

As an influential Booz & Company survey showed, cultural factors are the biggest inhibitors to successful and sustainable innovation. And because the incumbent executives are often the authors of the current culture it can be hard for them to make meaningful changes to it.

Emerging leaders, on the other hand, are hungry, ambitious, fired-up initiators who are often much more comfortable with change than their superiors.

Leadership teams that truly value innovation as a source of strategic advantage need to swallow hard and allow emerging talent to challenge ways of working that will inhibit tomorrow’s sources of value creation.

How engaged are emerging leaders in your organisation with shaping the culture that they need to inherit in the future?  It's the basis of a great leadership development module!