Leadership and Management Development Matters but Is Not Delivering Impact
According to research from McKinsey & Company and Corporate Executive Board, more than 500 executives ranked leadership development among their top three human capital priorities, with two-thirds identifying the development of effective leaders as their single greatest concern. U.S. companies now invest roughly $14 billion annually in leadership development — a clear indication that organizations understand what is at stake. Yet significant leadership and management development mistakes persist.
The outcomes are sobering. Nearly 60 percent of new leaders underperform during their first two years in role. At the same time, close to 70 percent of senior executives report being only “somewhat” or “not at all” satisfied with the performance of their frontline leaders.
If leadership development is such a high priority — and such a significant investment — why do the results so often fall short?
Why are business leaders not better prepared to navigate the inherent complexity, ambiguity, and accountability that come with leading others? What breaks down between well-intentioned leadership and management training programs and the sustained performance organizations expect?
Leadership and Management Development Mistakes: Top 6 Reasons Programs Fail
Based upon data from our people manager assessment and leadership simulation assessment centers, here are the most common mistakes made by companies as they plan and roll out leadership and management development initiatives:
- Treating All Levels and Roles of Leadership the Same
Organizations rely on levels and titles to structure hiring, performance management, and compensation. But from a development perspective, identical titles rarely mean identical responsibilities.
Not all Managers, Directors, or VPs share the same span of control, scope, or decision authority. Some lead large teams. Others manage a function, a process, or serve as senior individual contributors with no direct reports. When development programs assume uniformity based on title alone, relevance suffers.
For example, teaching team chartering and performance coaching to a “manager” who oversees a workflow but has no direct reports misses the mark. The content may be strong, but it does not reflect the role’s actual demands. Engagement drops. Application stalls. Credibility erodes.
The same misalignment appears at senior levels, where leaders with similar titles often carry vastly different strategic and operational responsibilities.
To avoid this mistake, define clear criteria for each leadership offering. Identify the specific responsibilities, decision rights, and outcomes tied to the role — not just the title. Effective leadership development requires high levels of relevance and should align with real accountability and business context.
- Not Focusing on Business Outcomes and Metrics First
Too many instructional designers begin with learning objectives, content outlines, and training modalities. While logical, this approach often misses the mark. Leadership and management development should not start with what will be taught — it should start with what must change in the business.
If you want professional development to matter, anchor it to the business outcomes that are most critical to your strategic priorities. What must improve? Revenue growth? Execution of a new strategic initiative? Employee engagement? Retention of top talent? Until those answers are clear, program design is premature.
Engage key stakeholders early to define one or two priority outcomes and ensure they align with both business and people strategies. Clarity creates focus. Focus drives impact.
Then determine how training success will be measured before the program begins. Identify the metrics that will signal progress — whether that is improved strategy execution, stronger team performance, higher engagement scores, reduced turnover, or better employee relations. Whatever the goal, define it first, measure it consistently, and design backward from the results you expect.
When outcomes lead, learning follows with purpose.
- Trying to Do Too Much
With so much at stake, it is tempting to want to teach leaders and managers everything you can about goal setting, building trust, feedback, coaching, career development, communication, conflict, change management, decision making, employee engagement, retention, onboarding, performance management, compensation, rewards and recognition, recruiting, hiring, team dynamics, etc.
If you want to create higher performing leaders at your company however, your leadership and management development initiatives must keenly focus on your marketplace, your strategy, your culture, and the critical few leadership scenarios — that if leaders had high levels of proficiency — would lift performance where it matters most. People can only learn and change so much at a time; not all skills are of equal value for your unique context.
Once you can clearly articulate the business purpose and learning objectives, you can then focus on the critical few scenarios, skills, competencies, behaviors, and attitudes leaders will need to succeed and to be high performing in their specific situation. Remember, when it comes to gaining new skills and changing behavior, less is more.
- Overlooking the Importance of On-the-Job Learning
The farther leadership development sits from real work, the less likely behavior will change. When learning feels abstract or disconnected from current and future responsibilities, it rarely sticks. New skills require relevant, frequent, and timely practice — paired with direct feedback in areas that matter to the individual, their manager, and the business. Without application in live situations, even the best-designed programs fade into good intentions.
Leadership capability is built in the flow of work, not apart from it. The strongest results come from linking development to real business challenges through leadership action learning. When leaders tackle meaningful projects, solve pressing problems, and reflect on their decisions with structured feedback, learning deepens. Insight becomes habit. Habit becomes performance.
- Underestimating the Difficulty of Behavioral Change
Leadership development is not about acquiring information — it is about changing behavior. And behavior change is hard.
Many customized training programs underestimate the effort required to replace ingrained habits with new ways of leading. Stretching into unfamiliar territory creates discomfort. Old patterns feel efficient and safe. New approaches feel awkward and slow. Without sustained reinforcement, most leaders revert to what is familiar under pressure.
A single training event — especially one that is misaligned with business realities or unsupported by senior leaders — will not produce lasting change. Insight without practice fades. Commitment without accountability weakens.
If you expect new leadership behaviors to stick, build an ecosystem that supports continuous learning. That means real-time application, structured feedback, coaching, peer reinforcement, and visible leadership modeling and sponsorship. It also means aligning performance expectations and incentives with the behaviors you want to see.
- Failing to Create Accountability
Another common mistake is to fail to measure and communicate training results. We believe that training measurement is vital to:
— Track if your learning solution is making the desired impact.
— Understand if people are using the new knowledge, skills, and processes.
— Assess levels of manager support and reinforcement.
— Provide feedback for coaching that is targeted, relevant, and actionable.
The Bottom Line
Even though most managers and leaders are not meeting expectations, companies continue to give managers and leaders wider responsibility over more employees to increase productivity and speed up decision making. If you can avoid the top leadership and management development mistakes, you can set your leaders and managers up for success.
To learn more about how to develop better managers, download the 6 Management Best Practices that Make the Difference Between Effective and Extraordinary
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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