What growing organisations get wrong about leadership development

As organisations grow, leadership becomes a priority.

More people are stepping into leadership roles. Expectations increase. Complexity builds. Performance becomes more dependent on how well people lead, not just what they deliver individually.

The response is familiar: design or buy a leadership programme.

Workshops are commissioned. Frameworks are introduced. Cohorts are put through well-structured experiences. Feedback is positive.

And yet, six months later, very little has actually changed.

This is not because leadership development does not work. It is because of how it is typically approached.

Programmes don’t fail. They just aren’t enough.

In many organisations, leadership development exists as a series of discrete events.

A programme here. A workshop there. Perhaps a coaching offer layered on top.

Each element may be well-designed. But they are rarely connected—to each other, or to the reality of how leadership actually plays out day to day.

Leaders return from a session inspired, then re-enter systems that reward the opposite behaviours. They are encouraged to delegate, but remain accountable for everything. They are asked to think strategically, but are measured on short-term delivery. They are told to empower teams, but operate within structures that limit autonomy.

Over time, the signal becomes clear: the programme is the exception. The system is the rule.

And the system wins.

The gap between development and reality

What is often missing is not more content, but connection.

Leadership development is frequently designed in isolation from:

• The actual demands of leadership roles as they are evolving

• The organisational systems that shape behaviour—performance, incentives, decision-making

• The pressures leaders are under, particularly in growing organisations where pace and ambiguity are high

• The future direction of the organisation, and the kind of leadership it will require next

  
  

Without this connection, development becomes abstract.

Leaders may understand what “good” looks like in theory, but struggle to apply it in context. Or they apply it briefly, only to revert when the environment does not support it.

This is why many organisations see high engagement with leadership programmes, but limited sustained impact.

Leadership is not an event. It is a journey.

If leadership is shaped over time, through experience, expectation, and reinforcement, then development needs to reflect that.

This is where a different approach is required: one that treats leadership development as a journey, not a series of interventions.

A leadership journey connects multiple elements that are often treated separately:

• Development: building skills, judgement, and self-awareness over time

• Context: anchoring learning in real work, real decisions, and real challenges

• Expectations: being explicit about what leadership looks like at different stages of growth

• Performance: aligning goals, feedback, and incentives with desired leadership behaviours

• Future focus: preparing leaders not just for today’s roles, but for how those roles are changing

  
  

In this model, programmes still have a role—but they are not the centrepiece. They are moments within a broader, more deliberate system.

Designing for the reality of growing organisations

This matters particularly in growing organisations, where leadership is often under the greatest strain.

Roles are fluid. Structures are evolving. People are leading for the first time, or at a scale they have not experienced before.

In this environment, leadership cannot be “trained” in isolation. It has to be developed in context.

That means:

• Focusing on the transitions leaders are actually going through (for example, from individual contributor to manager, or from manager to enterprise leader)

• Embedding development into real work—using live challenges as the material for learning

• Creating space for reflection and sense-making, not just action

• Ensuring senior leaders are actively shaping and modelling what good looks like

• Aligning systems so that the behaviours being developed are the ones being rewarded

  
  

This is more complex than running a programme. But it is also more aligned with how leadership actually develops.

From programmes to pathways

The shift, then, is from programmes to pathways.

Instead of asking, “What programme should we run?”, the more useful question is:

“What leadership are we trying to build, and how does that develop over time in this organisation?”

Answering that question leads to different choices.

Development becomes more targeted. Learning becomes more embedded.

Expectations become clearer. And leadership becomes something that is actively shaped, rather than periodically addressed.

For organisations willing to make this shift, the impact is not just better programmes.

It is better leadership—because it is built where it actually matters: in the work itself.