At a recent leadership conference I walked the floor with a senior executive. Booths showed AI tools, simulations and platforms promising transformation at scale. Staff handed out pens, tote bags and cookies stamped with company logos. The floor buzzed with giveaways and promises of the future.
After a few demos he stopped and asked the only question that mattered.
“I see the innovation. But where’s the money slide? Which of these actually helps me grow, sell or survive the next disruption?”
It’s a fair question and one we don’t answer well. Leadership development is a multi-billion-dollar industry but it rarely faces the scrutiny we give finance, marketing or operations. Leaders attend. Feedback forms get collected. Work returns to normal. When leaders go back to their jobs the gaps show up.
The Learning Deficit
Most programs feel disconnected from the work. They don’t feel urgent. When development is framed as helping leaders build their edge, expand their impact and prepare for what’s next, people engage. When it feels like an obligation they check out.
Gallup’s data makes the gap hard to ignore:
- In 2024, only 45% of U.S. employees joined training to build new skills for their current role.
- Just 32% of those hoping to move into a new role within the year feel equipped to excel.
- And only 2% of CHROs believe performance management works as intended.
These aren’t just statistics. Most employees are stepping into the future already unprepared. Four in five lack a clear path for growth. And if only 2% of CHROs trust the system, the problem isn’t with individual effort—it’s a structural failure at the very top.
McKinsey research shows that only 11% of executives strongly agree that leadership development programs achieve and sustain desired results. An HBR study showed that much of the learning in leadership development is not translating into improved organizational performance, largely because people revert to old behaviors soon after training.
The barriers are easy to recognize. Time away from the job collides with daily demands. Budgets cut corners when margins tighten. And perhaps the most troubling—leaders who have simply lost interest in their own development. That loss of appetite may be the most dangerous signal of all, because when leaders disengage from growth, their teams usually follow.
Organizations are facing tomorrow with yesterday’s playbooks: more courses, more hours, little strategy. The cost shows up in growth that slows, launches that stall and talent that leaves.
If leadership development is going to drive results instead of draining budget, five shifts are overdue.
1. Put Business in Charge
A mid-size B2B tech firm tied leadership development to a live market-entry sprint. Managers made pricing and partnership decisions with coaches at their side. One manager said, “It wasn’t training. It was survival with someone making sure we didn’t blow it.” Results followed: faster customer meetings, sharper decisions and a pipeline that moved ahead of schedule.
It worked because business leaders owned the design. When development is treated as an HR side project it drifts into abstractions. When executives co-architect it, learning lines up with growth priorities and people see the connection immediately.
2. Make Development Part of the Work
Teams are overloaded. Workshops and offsites rarely stick. Development works best when it lives inside the job itself—coaching in real time, peer feedback during actual problem-solving, skills built without breaking the week.
The contrast is clear. A three-day retreat can inspire, but energy fades the moment the inbox fills up. A short coaching session in the middle of a live project, on the other hand, leaves a lasting mark because it helps solve the problem right in front of the team.
And then there’s the forgetting curve. A bit dated, yes, but still painfully relevant: people forget about half of what they’ve just learned within a day and close to 90% within a week. I’ve seen it play out countless times—rooms full of energy, notebooks packed with ideas, and almost nothing carried back into the work. My biggest epiphany is this: business cycles don’t wait for learning cycles to complete. And at the pace business moves today, learning that lags is learning that doesn’t matter. Leadership development has to be built into the flow of work and the flow of business—not parked at the end of a class or trapped in a portal.
Different groups also look for different things. Younger employees want growth tied to purpose and impact. Senior leaders want it tied directly to business outcomes. Both want development that fits how they already work. If learning feels like an interruption it will always be the first thing cut.
3. Create Stretch Situations
Real growth happens when leaders are pushed into situations they can’t solve with what they already know. Give people roles they’ve never held, decisions in unfamiliar markets or challenges without clear answers. Provide support, then let them work through it.
Picture a finance manager asked to lead a customer negotiation for the first time. Or an engineer dropped into a cross-border project where cultural differences shape every call. Or a marketing director suddenly responsible for supply-chain planning during a crisis. Those are the kinds of experiences that accelerate skills. They are also the assignments that reveal who can rise.
Those moments will happen anyway. The real question is whether you design for them or leave them to luck.
4. Track Results Not Attendance
We still measure development by attendance, surveys and satisfaction scores. None prove impact. Better metrics ask: Did teams perform better? Did leaders make faster calls? Did high-potentials step up? Did innovation accelerate?
As one executive recently put to me: “I don’t care how many attended. I care if anything got better.” Sales tracks revenue. Operations tracks efficiency. Development should be held to the same bar.
The way to do it is straightforward. Look at performance data before and after a program. Ask managers if they see sharper judgment or stronger collaboration. Observe whether decisions are being made closer to the front line. These are visible shifts, and they’re far better signals of success than a stack of feedback forms. Anything less is theater.
5. Start With Market Needs Not Frameworks
Too often development defaults to generic “future skills” lists and competency models. But markets don’t move on frameworks. They move on what customers demand next and what frontline employees are already seeing shift.
Ask customers about their emerging needs and you get a roadmap of where capabilities must grow. Ask employees closest to the work what they’re encountering and you uncover early signals of change. Both perspectives matter because customers reveal demand and employees reveal capacity. Put the two together and you can see where development must focus.
That’s where the real signal lives—on the edges of the market and inside the day-to-day work.
The Slide That Counts
Back in that exhibit hall the executive asked, “Where’s the money slide?” He wasn’t looking for another demo. He wanted proof that leadership programs prepare people to succeed when it matters.
The answer isn’t another course or competency model. It’s development tied to live business problems, measured against real outcomes and owned by the leaders who use it.
CEOs should be asking the question. CHROs should be ready to answer. If the answer isn’t in results, it isn’t leadership development. The money slide is results. Not attendance.