Making Leadership Development Work Better

I was tempted to title this post “Why your leadership development programs aren’t working” but that felt unnecessarily critical (or, at minimum, rage-bait-y). And yet, if you look closely at the courses and programs - and yes, coaches - you’ve invested in, have they delivered the results you were hoping for?

It’s not that they’re not working. Many of them create genuine insight and meaningful change. But I think they could be working even better.

Most leader development programs are built on the assumption that the leader already sees the relevant situations clearly, and they need to learn new behaviours, tools, and strategies that will help them make better decisions, build stronger teams, and become more effective leaders. (And in fact it is behaviour change that is most often the focus of the brief for executive coaching, so don’t think for a second that coaching is exempt from this challenge).

I believe that assumption is flawed. New behaviours, if chosen without the benefit of a full, balanced view of the situation, will be at best limited in their effectiveness. And possibly disastrous.

That realization has prompted a great deal of reflection on our work.

From my own practice - I've been spending a lot of time lately asking myself what I've actually been doing all these years when coaching has gone particularly well. What have I consistently noticed? What have I consistently focused on? What has actually helped clients grow?

I've come to realize one thing that is a bit different about my approach, and that is in common with how many of our associates work. We don’t focus too much on what the client is doing, at least not at the outset. Rather, we invite reflection on what they are seeing. Which leads to discussion of assumptions and beliefs and values and filters and preconceptions and hearsay and reputation - all the invisible influences that shape what we think we're seeing.

To be clear - when I talk about seeing, I don't simply mean looking. I mean noticing, interpreting, inviting input and diverse perspectives and recognizing patterns. I mean perceiving.

Which leads to understanding ourselves, other people, situations, and the larger systems in which they all exist.

That kind of expanded perception almost inevitably leads to better choices..

So - (finally) - this is where I’m headed. If perception is the foundation of leadership, where does it need to start and how can it best be expanded?

I believe there are four places where perception can expand.

The first is with the leader themselves.

Not simply their personality or preferences, but the assumptions, identities, habits, emotional patterns, and internal narratives that shape what they notice and how they interpret the world around them.

The second is other people.

Relationships are never just about communication. They are shaped by trust, expectations, fear, power, history, motivation, and meaning. Leaders who learn to perceive these dynamics begin having fundamentally different conversations.

The third is the situation itself.

We often assume we understand the challenge in front of us because we understand the facts. But situations have patterns, constraints, competing realities, and unintended consequences that are easy to overlook when we're moving quickly or relying on familiar explanations.

Finally, there is the broader field.

Every leader operates within systems that shape behaviour: organizational culture, informal power, incentives, history, market forces, social expectations, and countless other influences that are largely invisible until we learn to look for them.

I think of these as four capacities of perception.

Not because leadership can - or should - be reduced to a four-box model or a tidy framework. Quite the opposite. These capacities simply represent four places where our perception most often reaches its limits. And if perception shapes behaviour, then these are also the places where leadership has the greatest opportunity to grow.

This publication will explore each of these capacities in turn in the next few weeks, as a prelude to the launch of a new leader/top talent development program (we are looking for two companies to run pilot programs - please get in touch if that could be your organization).

In the meantime, I’ll share one of my favourite testimonials. Looking back, it may have been the first clue that I was doing something a little different.

A client once told a colleague who was interested in working with me, “If you want to get promoted, work with her.”