Unlocking the Potential of L&D with Sue Suh

In today’s rapidly changing job market, staying competitive requires more than just keeping pace—it demands continuous growth and learning. By 2030, the global talent shortage is projected to result in unfilled roles amounting to $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues for companies. To future-proof your business, it's essential to cultivate the right internal talent to fill critical roles and drive growth.

You can begin by focusing on getting the most out of your L&D programs. By broadening L&D opportunities, shaping a growth-oriented environment, and making L&D integral to every role, you can inspire and engage employees, cultivating a culture of continuous learning and innovation that prepares your organization for future challenges and opportunities.

Through insights from Sue Suh, former Chief People Officer at TIME and Chief Talent Officer at The Rockefeller Foundation, discover how innovative approaches to L&D can transform your workforce and set your organization up for long-term success.

Q: How do you approach the challenge of opening access to high-quality L&D programs for all employees, and what strategies have you found most effective in ensuring these programs drive impact across the whole business?

"The most effective approach is encouraging leaders to think of "L&D" as a synonym for “job.” By employing someone, you’ve expressed a belief that this person has something to contribute to your business that’s important. Likewise, by joining your company, an employee believes they have something to offer you that can help you succeed. So L&D is inherent to what is both best for the business and relevant to an individual’s own growth: the more each employee is learning and growing and being trained for excellence, the higher impact for your company and the better for the individual. Thinking about L&D in this way removes the question of “who gets to participate”? Everyone gets to participate; it’s the whole point of creating a job in the first place."

Q: How do you balance the need for immediate skill development with the long-term career growth aspirations of employees?

"There’s room for both the immediate and the long-term. What’s most important is that managers and employees say this out loud to each other in clear and respectful ways. In some instances, resentment builds up in the manager because they feel the employee is not focused on “the good of the business at this time.” Or vice-versa: the employee feels that the manager does not see them nor care about their career aspirations. Make time to communicate: you’re on the same team, and the more you know about each other’s priorities the more you can help each other and the company overall. 

Sports changed my life when it comes to equal opportunity and growth, so I often consider situations with an athletic metaphor. In this case, let’s talk basketball: A dazzling three-point shot might be all you want to work on, because you want to be the next Sabrina Ionescu or Steph Curry. In the immediate term, however, you also have to make your free throws. Are perfect free throws going to be the thing that gets you to the WNBA or NBA? Not by themselves. But your team needs you to make them, and being good at them will keep you on the court, which is where you need to be in order to continue growing and learning. When the game is on the line, you don’t want to be benched because you can’t make your free throws. Sabrina and Steph both have career free throw percentages of over 90% in the pros and are very well-rounded players. "

Q: How do you foster a culture of continuous learning, and what role do senior leaders play in promoting and supporting this culture?

"A big one! As a senior leader, you are the connective tissue between most of the employees in your company and your top executives. Three ways you can start fostering a continuous learning culture: 

1. Share your story. Often the most powerful approach is to open up about your own career journey so far and what growth feels like for you. You can do this in any venue that suits your company and what personally feels most effective for you: anything from 1:1s with your direct reports, small groups of employees from across the company, brown bag lunch conversations where anyone is invited, all-hands meetings as part of the official agenda. And support your fellow senior leaders in this work! Telling your story can be vulnerable, and the more employees see senior leaders encouraging each other and setting an example of learning and growth, the healthier for everyone.
2. Share information with your team. Senior leaders can sometimes withhold information from less senior employees, and not involve them in org-wide policy-making or decisions. With the understanding that of course everyone cannot be involved in everything, informing your direct reports on why a policy might be changing (or other company-wide news) helps build trust and accurate communication across all employees. If you regularly practice cascading clear information to your managers, they can then ask questions, give you thoughtful input, and effectively support their own direct reports. Information helps everyone grow day to day and understand the trajectory of a company.
3. Share opportunities for “reverse mentoring.” No matter how senior we are in our careers, we are always learning. That’s a great thing! And meaningful lessons come from all directions, not just from the people who have worked the most years. If your company has a mentoring program, include the concept of “reverse mentoring” as part of the dynamic, so that it’s clear that both “mentor” and “mentee” have things to teach the other."

Q: In your experience, how crucial is executive buy-in and support for the success of L&D initiatives? How have you successfully gained and maintained this support within an organization?

"It’s essential. Executives: You create the weather in your organization. Think of this not as a burden of something that you “have” to do – but as something you “get” to do. What an extraordinary opportunity! You get to create an environment in which everyone knows how their job contributes to business success, is continuously growing, is energized and engaged, and feels like they matter. This of course takes constant focus and “walking your talk” on what you say is important to you and the company.

If you are someone who is thinking about pitching your executives on an L&D initiative: As for any proposal, the context matters. A successful pitch often starts well before the pitch itself. Do you and your executives have a healthy and mutually respectful line of communication? Are you agreed on what matters most for the business? Have you been delivering for each other in meaningful ways? All of this matters. Organizations move at the speed of trust."

Q: How do you ensure that L&D programs are not only aligned with current business needs but also future-proofed for an evolving labor landscape?

"I’m a big fan of getting the broadest possible exposure through your L&D, and not limiting it to going deep into just one skill set. Yes, specific expertise in certain areas is of course important. But this should not come at the expense of being isolated from the rest of the business. On the contrary, I think it’s crucial that every time an employee gets the chance to skill up, a core part of their training is exposure to other company functions and how everything fits together. 

One way to do this is, in every L&D module, include conversations with three people elsewhere in the company with whom the employee doesn’t normally interact in their day to day responsibilities. Have them mutually share how they work, what they’re excited about, what they hope to understand more, etc. In this way you are helping your employees connect the dots across the business, which is such a valuable skill set in itself no matter what job you have. And it generates creativity and energy!

Q: What does combining “broad” with “deep” have to do with future-proofing?

"From the employee perspective, you will gain an important way to always have something more to contribute than any one specific skill set being deployed in your current role, especially if suddenly that specific skill set is deemed no longer needed. Broader exposure also helps you better understand the overall business context and to manage any ambiguity that may arise in your specific role – as well as to spot opportunities you may not have been previously aware of.

From the company perspective, you now have an employee base who understands how they support each other and the company’s mission as a whole, and how they may need to pivot from time to time. Should business conditions change, you have the great option of engaging directly with your employees to help identify new solutions and ways of working together. "

Q: What are key ways that people leaders can effectively navigate and lead impactful L&D programs that drive employee development and business growth simultaneously?

"As a people leader you have an incredible opportunity to bring all of the above to life. It’s what makes the role so rewarding and core to any organization. Three things can help set you up for success:

1. Get to know your people. This might seem obvious – of course a people leader should know their employees! But make sure you are building relationships across the company that are not transactional. If the only time your employees hear from you is when you need them to complete a mandatory training or when something is wrong, your credibility as someone who believes in their growth is greatly diminished. Be proactive! Start conversations and gain understanding of people’s joys, challenges, and lived experiences. Everyone’s journey is different, and your ability to understand what means the most to your own employees will help you create a genuinely authentic L&D program.
2. Become fluent in the business you’re in. This doesn’t mean just memorizing what numbers were read out at your company’s latest quarterly earnings call. It means being immersed in the internal and external context in which your employees and leaders are operating. How is success defined for each part of your business? What motivates your teams? Are you aware of the terms, vocabulary, and history that are core to functions across your company? Scan the news every morning for 15 minutes – what’s happening in your industry today? What’s happening in the world at large? All of this will help you make sure your L&D approach and overall leadership are relevant and meaningful.
3. Get outside! There is so much to focus on in HR, you can forget to look up from your desk. But your ability to help others succeed will be limited if you yourself stay in a box. Nurture an external network across your industry (and beyond!), which can provide additional insight, resources, brainstorming, and support. Go to events where your own colleagues are being featured: seeing your brand and your people in action is awesome – refreshing, clarifying, and relevant to any L&D approach for the business."