Visibility ≠ Capability
Teaching tools is easy. Cultivating leadership is not. Most organizations pour resources into technical upskilling, while gaps in relational skills and strategic thinking go unnoticed. By the time these gaps surface, they're expensive to fix. Here's the thing: not everyone wants to climb the corporate ladder. And that's not a problem to fix, it's a reality to embrace. So let's unpack how to build leadership development that actually works for different people, roles, and situations. Because the old playbook doesn't cut it anymore.
Rethinking What Leadership Looks Like
The leadership gap isn't only about having enough people in management roles. It's about recognizing that influence happens everywhere, and that the people who'll move your business forward might not have, or want, a Director title.
It's time to challenge a few assumptions about how we can identify, develop, and support leadership talent.
Does Confidence Always Equal Competence?
Let's be honest: the loudest voices in the room aren't always the best leaders. Visibility doesn't equal capability. The people quietly solving problems, mentoring peers, and keeping teams together often get overlooked. So don't use self-promotion as a shortcut to identify leadership potential. Look for emotional intelligence, team impact, and the ability to influence without authority.
EQ Isn't Optional Anymore
Most leadership programs prioritize hard skills over relational ones. In an AI-first world, relational skills aren't "soft"—they're essential. Last year, Gallup identified four leadership skills that matter most to employees:
- Trust
- Compassion
- Stability
- Hope
Those are the skills to nurture. Because when things go sideways, it's your emotionally intelligent people who translate chaos into action. The people who can read a room, adapt their style, and make others feel heard are your future leaders, whether they've raised their hand or not.
Leadership Without The Ladder
Most Learning and Development programs still design leadership development around hierarchy. It's time to build for influence, not just titles. The player-coach model is everywhere, and it works.
Almost everyone in your organization can be effective leaders. Look for the people who deliver results while mentoring others, who influence cross-functional projects, who rally teams to solve real problems.
Broaden the definition of leadership to include behaviors like:
- Strategic thinking and decision making
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Mentorship and knowledge sharing
- Driving innovation and change
Peer Learning Builds Real Capability
80% of learning at Google happens through peer-to-peer networks. But our State of Upskilling report found that people-based learning is underutilized and undervalued, with over 40% saying they're not using any people-focused learning—and have no plans to.
When it comes to building strong leaders, most L&D teams reach for familiar tools: courses, workshops, or assessments. But leadership isn't something you learn in a vacuum—it's something you practice in relationship with others. That's why mentorship stands out as one of the most effective ways to grow leaders.
Think about it: the best leaders you've worked with likely didn't emerge from a textbook. They learned through guided experience: navigating challenges, reflecting with a mentor, and applying new approaches. Research shows companies that invest in relationship-based development see 53% longer employee tenures and nearly 79% more leadership promotions. That's not theory, that's transformation in action.
When organizations scale mentorship intentionally with structured frameworks, thoughtful mentor matching, and clear goals, they unlock far more than individual growth. They build stronger pipelines of ready leaders, reduce turnover, and foster cultures where developing others is a core expectation.
When done right, people-focused learning adds depth, context, and accountability that content alone can't deliver. Mentoring builds leadership skills in real time, and it scales naturally. It's about connection, conversation, and the kind of human support that transforms potential into performance. And the people who step up are often your emerging leaders.
Assess And Develop Leadership Like Any Other Skill
Many organizations get stuck because they know leadership matters, but they're not sure how to systematically measure or develop it. Leadership gets treated like a mystical quality that people have or don't have, rather than a set of skills that can be observed, assessed, and built.
To develop and retain your next great leaders, it's time to change that approach.
Start With Clarity, Not Complexity
Before you can develop leadership, define what it looks like in your organization. Not the generic stuff from leadership books, but the specific behaviors that drive results.
Work with the business to define these behaviors. They know the benefits of exceptional leadership in action, the stuff that motivates and drives outcomes.
Measure Leadership Like You Measure Anything Else
Use behavioral assessments tied to real scenarios your leaders actually face. Get peer and team feedback on influence, collaboration, and decision making. Create leadership simulations or stretch assignments to see how people perform under pressure.
The bonus? You can pair leadership assessment with hard skill evaluation in technical contexts. Some of your best future leaders might be quietly solving issues behind the scenes.
Build Leadership Through Real Work (And Track What Matters)
Leadership development can't happen in a vacuum. The best leaders are built through peer learning, cross-functional mentoring, and project-based roles where they have to influence without authority.
Let emerging leaders shadow executives but also try reverse mentoring where junior people teach senior leaders about new technologies or market trends. Give people coaching tied to real-time challenges they're actually facing, not hypothetical case studies.
Leaders aren't one-size-fits-all, and leadership development shouldn't be, either. Expand your definition of what a stellar leader is and provide opportunities that give your emerging leaders a chance to shine. And you'll soon start to build a strong pipeline of future leaders.
