Leading Has Changed. Has Leadership Development?

Leadership expectations are shifting. But how many organisations have stopped to rewrite the job description? 

On paper, the job looks much as it did five years ago, i.e., set direction, deliver results, manage a team.  

But the conditions around it have changed. People are carrying worry about global conflict, political polarisation, climate change, and cost of living into work with them. At the same time, organizations are asking more of leaders when it comes to developing people, navigating uncertainty, and keeping teams connected. 

That makes the human side of leadership a much bigger part of the job. Leaders are expected to help people grow, work through ambiguity (read: alleviate anxiety), and find a sense of connection at work. 

As we explored last month, leadership feels heavier than it used to. So now the question is whether the way we develop leaders has kept pace with the job they’re actually doing. 

Lucinda Quigley, Talking Talent’s Global Head of Market Solutions, doesn’t think it has. And she sees the current rush to build AI capability as a useful example of the problem: Organisations are often quicker to train leaders in a new skill than to develop the human capabilities the changing job demands. 

The Skills Trap 

“In some organizations, the focus is all on the skill,” she says. “How you use it, how you do the prompts, how you integrate it into your work, how you speed things up. There’s huge pressure on leaders to learn the skill themselves and then impart it to others.” 

It’s an understandable instinct. AI is a skill, and skills can be trained, measured, and rolled out at scale. But Lucinda argues that focus is limited. “What’s actually needed is a focus on the mindset and behaviors that help people navigate through change. That’s the broader picture.” 

The Skill Everyone Assumes You Already Have 

Ask Lucinda where the gap is widest between the leadership role on paper and the job leaders actually perform, and her answer is immediate: relational capability. 

Leaders today are expected to manage conflict, have adult-to-adult conversations about difficult subjects, help people feel they belong, and sometimes to act, in effect, as counselors. 

Yet almost nowhere is that written into the role, and almost no one is explicitly trained to do it. Relational skills rarely appear in a leadership curriculum or a development plan.   

“It’s assumed,” Lucinda says. “Everybody thinks it’s innate human behavior we all have to some degree. But they don’t spent time refining and developing it as a skill.”  

She recalls a coaching client, a senior leader, who arrived at a realisation three sessions in. “She said to me, ‘I’ve got to this stage in my career and I’ve never thought about the fact that my own personal development is integral to my performance as a leader. I’ve just always thought it was about getting the job done.’” 

That, Lucinda says, is not uncommon. It’s what happens when organizations develop leaders for output and assume the human side will take care of itself. 

AI Coaching Goes Just So Far 

Some organizations will point to their coaching investment as proof they’re taking behavior change seriously. Coaching has become far more democratised through digital platforms, and increasingly through AI. But Lucinda sees a nuance getting lost. 

“AI coaching can only help you so far,” she says. “Above a certain level, with the complexity and the heaviness that leaders are holding, they need a human.” 

The tools are scaling. The needs are deepening. But those two lines don’t automatically meet. 

What Developing Leaders for Today’s Job Looks Like 

There are signs of organizations starting to rethink. Lucinda describes a client who recently came to Talking Talent having noticed something specific: Their leaders were carrying too much internal criticism, and they wanted a program to help people move past those limiting beliefs.  

“It’s rare for a client to notice something that specific, that personal, and come in and say this is actually what we want,” she says. 

That internal work is just one part of Talking Talent’s leadership programming. Rather than putting leaders straight through a “manager as coach” or a “difficult conversations” session, leaders start with a journey of self-reflection, supported by one-to-one coaching.  

“Now when you come together to discuss leadership with your peers — because group processing is also important — you’ve already done the figuring out of what your current challenge is, what you need, and who you are as a leader,” Lucinda explains.  

“Together, that gives you the grounding to think less about performing leadership well and more about what the people around you actually need from you.” 

The Future Leadership Pipeline is Watching  

There is a significant risk in continuing to develop leaders for yesterday’s role. Leaders who are given more interpersonal responsibilities without the tools, time, or space to carry it will burn out. Organisations will lose talented people, and others will look at the role and decide they do not want it. 

That last consequence may be the most overlooked. 

“Leadership is becoming less and less aspirational,” Lucinda says. “Younger generations, watching what the role now demands, are choosing portfolio careers and entrepreneurship instead and measuring success in well-being and time, not just salary and title.” 

Organisations cannot solve this simply by adding another course to the leadership curriculum. They need to reconsider the role itself, the capabilities required to perform it, and the support people receive once they step into it. 

The question for HR leaders is not whether their organization offers leadership development. 

It is whether that development is preparing people for the leadership job that exists today.