Think about the experienced manager who knows they should delegate but keeps taking work back. The leader who has been taught coaching but continues giving people the answer. The senior leader who knows they should be thinking strategically but spends most of the week immersed in operational detail.
Is the problem really that they don’t know how to delegate, coach or think strategically?
Sometimes. But often they already know.
The more interesting question is: Why aren’t they doing it?
That’s where leadership development needs to go deeper.
“Great execution at one level inevitably becomes a straightjacket at the next unless you actively unlearn the habits that got you there.”
Under pressure, people tend to return to what feels natural.
For many leaders, what feels natural was established much earlier in their career: be the expert, know what’s going on, fix the problem, stay close to the detail, make sure it’s done correctly.
Those instincts can be enormously valuable. But as the leader moves into more senior roles, the same instincts can create micromanagement, dependency and bottlenecks.
The organisation keeps developing the leader’s skills without addressing the deeper issue. Their role has changed. Their leadership identity hasn’t..
One leader operating below their level affects much more than that individual.
Their people have less room to grow. Decisions move upwards. Senior leaders get dragged into operational issues. Succession becomes difficult because capability isn’t being developed underneath them.
Eventually the business becomes dependent on a small number of very capable - and very busy - people.
That’s why leadership development shouldn’t only ask: What skills do our leaders need?
It should also ask: Are our leaders becoming the leaders their roles require?
Those are very different questions.
Leadership development that moves with the leader
Leadership is contextual. A frontline leader, middle manager and executive shouldn’t have exactly the same leadership priorities.
So development needs to help people transition as their context changes - and ideally prepare them for the next transition before the promotion happens.
That’s the thinking behind the Leader’s Identity Guide. Rather than treating leadership development as a collection of isolated skills, we’re helping organisations create a repeatable process that leaders can return to as their responsibilities change.
Because the goal isn’t simply better-trained leaders. It’s leaders who consistently operate at the right level - while building capability in the people below them.
