Most organizations struggle not because they lack leaders. They struggle because too many people in leadership roles were never prepared to lead. Often, this is the number one reason organizations ask for my guidance. The common practice is for high-performing technical experts to be promoted into leadership positions without being equipped with the mindset, skills, and habits required to actually be leaders. The result is predictable. They become bottlenecks, micromanage their teams, and spend most of their time doing instead of leading.

In my experience, solving this problem requires much more than just some leadership training after someone is promoted. Leadership development should begin early and continue throughout a person's career. Every employee should learn to lead themselves first, then progressively develop the capabilities needed to lead others. While tools and techniques are important, they are never enough on their own. The mindset of a Transformative Leader is what determines whether those tools create growth or simply reinforce counterproductive behaviors.

One of the biggest mindset shifts is recognizing that a leader's job is not simply to deliver results. A leader's primary responsibility is to grow leaders while also achieving results. That means assuming positive intent, earning commitment rather than demanding it, and creating an environment where people willingly contribute their best rather than merely complying with instructions. Organizations must also reward people for performance but promote them based on their leadership potential, helping prevent the Peter Principle from limiting organizational growth.

Ultimately, leadership development must become part of everyday work, not an occasional training event. Organizations need promotion practices, reward systems, and experienced leaders that intentionally focus on developing leadership capability at all levels. When leadership development becomes part of the culture, organizations create leaders who not only deliver outstanding results but also multiply leadership capacity throughout the business.

Key Points

The biggest reason organizations seek leadership consulting is that too many leaders have never been taught how to lead.
High-performing technical experts are often promoted into leadership roles without adequate preparation.
Leadership is a skill unto itself, one that can be learned, practiced, and improved upon independently of other capabilities.
New leaders frequently become bottlenecks by micromanaging and trying to do everything themselves.
Leadership development should begin long before someone receives a leadership title.
Tools and skills are necessary, but mindset is what determines leadership effectiveness.
Transformative Leaders focus on developing people, not simply completing tasks.
Leaders earn commitment through trust, purpose, and intrinsic motivation, not through authority or compensation alone.
Organizations should reward performance but promote based on leadership potential.
Leadership development should be embedded into everyday work, not limited to classroom training.

Quotes

"Your job as a leader is not just to get the job done. It's to grow leaders while getting the job done."
"Reward people for their performance, but promote them based on their potential."
"Tools and skills matter, but without the right mindset, they will never produce Transformative Leadership."
"People owe leaders compliance. Commitment has to be earned."
"Leadership development isn't an event. It has to become part of the everyday work of the organization."

Of the top three reasons that our clients bring us in to support them, the top one, the biggest one, the main reason is that they have people in leadership roles that are just not equipped to lead. This happens in businesses that have not done a good job of developing leaders. Technical experts get rewarded with additional responsibility And that additional responsibility sometimes includes leading others. And they just don't have the expertise to do that. What ends up happening is that these leaders who are in these roles end up becoming super doers because they feel like doing more of what has gotten them to that point is probably what is needed. And as a result, they become a bottleneck to the rest of the organization.
They want to have their finger in every pie. They want to micromanage. They want to be involved in everything. They want to prove their worth by doing more of what has gotten them to that point. So what ends up happening in most organizations to some degree is that people end up getting promoted to the first level at which they're incompetent. So this is known as the Peter Principle. So somebody is doing a good job. We promote them to the next level. They're doing a good job. We promote them to the next level. They eventually get to a point where they are no longer competent relative to the requirements of that role. Now, as we engage with our clients, we go through a comprehensive assessment to understand what the situation is and how they've gotten there and what we need to do to remedy the situation. There's just so many different things that we work with them on.
too many to list in this video right here. But suffice it to say that some of the remedies include the following. Number one, it's important to do leadership development early and throughout the person's career, regardless of whether they're on a technical track or leadership track. It is important for any contributor, any person, even though they're an individual contributor right now, to be prepared to at least be able to lead themselves. There are certain habits that they need to take on even though nobody else reports to them. And eventually, as they get close to leading others, there are other skills and tools and mindsets that we need to equip them with. One of the mistakes that businesses make is that even when they take on leadership development, they equip people with tools. And sometimes they might even go beyond that and give them the opportunity to practice with some of those tools and develop the skills. But tool sets and skill sets, while very important and necessary, are not sufficient for a person to be what I call a transformative leader.
What is necessary is the mindset of a transformative leader. So you may know exactly what tool to use, what form to use to provide feedback. You may have gone through the process to do it a certain way, but if you don't have the mindset that says, look, providing this feedback is intended to help the person grow. It's not intended to punish them, for example, for something they didn't do right, you know, six months ago and things like that. You have to have the certain mindset to be able to apply the tools and the skills that you have picked up properly and effectively. So again, there are a number of distinctions that we work with leaders on relative to their mindset. Here are some examples of the mindset of leadership.
Leaders need to understand that their job is not to just get the job done, but to grow leaders in the process. They need to subscribe to McGregor's Theory Y that essentially assumes positive intent and recognizes that people want to do well. They need to recognize that people do not owe them commitment. They owe them compliance. Essentially, as a leader, I need to recognize that You know, I pay people and they need to do their job. And yes, they owe me that. But if I really want their commitment, if I want their discretionary effort, I need to earn that. And usually that is done through intrinsic rewards, not extrinsic rewards like salary and benefits. So these are just a few of the things that are important to recognize. And again, there's a whole host of distinctions that we work through with leaders to make sure that they
not only understand and know about these mindset shifts, but they get to practice them in the real world and develop themselves into the kind of leader who is not only just competent relative to the technical understanding of what's going on, but they also demonstrate a certain character that causes people to trust them and It helps them influence people and essentially develop more credibility throughout the organization as a leader. Now, one of the remedies that help organizations avoid the Peter principle, if you will, is something that I learned when I was working for Procter and Gamble. I learned that we should reward people based on their performance, but promote them based on their potential. Now, obviously there's a certain amount of performance that is needed in order to get promoted, but just because you're performing well, doesn't mean you have the potential to go to that next level. In fact, one of the things that we used to do was we asked the question, if we were promoting a person to the next level, or we were considering that promotion, we would ask the question, is this person capable of
being successful at the next level above that one. One of the other causes of leaders not being developed that I have seen and the remedy for that really has to do with founders or first generation leaders or some of the experienced leaders who are in leadership roles, but they got there because of their technical skills, for example, and they're not equipped. They don't have the right skills. tools or skills or mindset to develop other leaders. In those situations, it's important for that person to recognize that they are being the bottleneck in developing additional leaders in the organization and get themselves out of the way. This doesn't necessarily mean that they cannot be involved, but they've got to give the reins to someone else within the organization who's got
the mindset and the attitude or the expertise to lead the leadership development. Now, in some cases, it might be appropriate also to involve an external resource for a period of time to accelerate progress. But the reason that does not happen oftentimes is that the person in charge, the person at the top, does not recognize that they are indeed slowing things down. So I would encourage you to think about your organization. Are the leaders in your organization, are people in leadership roles equipped to lead? Do they have the right tools, skills, and most importantly, the mindset to lead? How have they gotten there? What are some of the policies? What are some of the procedures in your organization that has actually resulted in this situation being the case where leaders are not equipped perhaps. And what are some things you can do with your reward systems, with your promotion process, with most importantly, instilling this mindset in leaders that once they are in a leadership role, their job is not just to get the job done, but to grow as leaders and grow others. What are you doing when it comes to
putting in some leadership development programs and not just programs in the form of training sessions and things like that. What are you doing to build leadership development into the everyday practices? I'd love to hear your answers. If you want to comment on this video or you want to send me a DM, I'd love to know what's going on. And if you have some ideas and you would like some guidance, reach out to me. This is something that I do for a living, but I also enjoy doing it. I enjoy engaging with people who have passion for developing other leaders. So I wish you the very best in growing leaders in your organization, and I look forward to hearing from you.