We've all seen it. The company invests in leadership development, brings in experts, teaches proven frameworks. People nod along, take notes, maybe even get excited about the new approaches they're going to try.
Then they go back to work and default to exactly what they were doing before.
The issue isn't the frameworks themselves. There are 75,000+ books on leadership (probably double that now), and many of them contain genuinely useful ideas. Franklin Covey, John Maxwell, Brené Brown—there's no shortage of smart thinking about how to lead well.
The problem is the gap between learning about leadership and actually leading.
It's really easy to tell people information and walk away feeling like you've done your job. "I told them how to have difficult conversations. It's not my problem if they can't do it." Except it actually is our problem if they can't do it.
The leaders who successfully implement new frameworks are the ones who get realistic about building blocks. They ask themselves: "Where am I right now? How good am I at this specific thing on a scale of 1-5? What would getting one level better actually look like?"
This isn't about self-criticism. It's about honest assessment as the starting point for growth.
One approach that works: take something like Maxwell's five levels of leadership and map where you are on each dimension. You might be strong at building relationships (level 2) but weak at developing other leaders (level 4). Now you have something concrete to work on instead of trying to become a "better leader" in general.
Here's something that separates leaders who grow from those who plateau: the ability to name their weaknesses out loud.
"I want you to know that I cannot always set good context for people. I'm very aware of that. I can talk too high level and not give you the backstory. If I do that, I'd love it if you could ask me for information that you're missing, because I know that's a weakness for me."
That's not weakness—that's leadership. You're being mature about your gaps and creating space for others to help you address them.
The StrengthsFinder people are onto something when they suggest focusing on strengths rather than trying to fix every weakness. But you still need awareness of where you struggle, and you need to be able to talk about it with your team.
Individual effort only gets you so far. The companies where leadership development actually sticks are the ones that align on what they value and what kind of leadership they want to see.
This is where many organizations trip up. They teach one thing but model something different. The leadership development program emphasizes transparency, but all the real decisions happen in back-channel conversations. People are told to delegate and develop others, but the culture rewards individual heroics.
You have to walk the walk you want from your leaders. And you have to create systems that reinforce the behaviors you're trying to teach.
The most effective leadership development we've seen breaks things down into daily, weekly practice. Not just the big moments—the crisis management or difficult conversations—but the ordinary interactions where leadership actually happens.
How do you start one-on-ones? How do you respond when someone brings you a problem? What questions do you ask when a project isn't going well? These micro-practices are where leadership development becomes leadership reality.
One more thing: find people outside your organization who can give you perspective on your leadership. The higher you go, the lonelier it gets, and the more you're surrounded by people who tell you what you want to hear.
You need someone who can give you reality checks, help you think through challenges, and provide a frame of reference beyond your current company. That might be a formal mentor, an executive group, or even friends in similar roles at other companies.
Leadership development fails when it's treated as a one-time event or a purely internal process. It succeeds when it becomes ongoing practice supported by both internal systems and external perspective.
Your frameworks are only as good as your ability to implement them when it matters.
This is the third part in a four part series on Leadership Development by Oxygen. We'll be releasing the next part each Wednesday, so stay tuned!
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