Steve George argues that developing senior leaders takes strategic, tailored support. Drawing on CIPD insights, he outlines how coaching, real-world stretch assignments, and structured feedback build resilience, agility and judgement. He shows why needs-led design, multi-tier pathways and succession planning help L&D create engaged workforces and future-ready leadership pipelines today.
Change is a constant in today’s working world and during uncertain times, employees look to senior leaders for direction, clarity and confidence. But leading through complexity takes more than experience alone – it takes resilience, agility, and the ability to navigate competing pressures with foresight. Having the right support can make all of this much easier and L&D teams have a key role in equipping current and future senior leaders with the capabilities to help their organisations thrive.
Effective leadership correlates with greater employee engagement
Developing senior leaders demands more than scaling up what works for the wider workforce – a broad-brush approach simply won’t be as effective. Leadership support requires a targeted, experiential, strategic approach that can ensure leaders can not only respond to change, but also actively shape the future of their organisations.
Why leadership development is important
It’s easy to think of senior leaders, particularly those at or near the C-suite, as well-equipped to navigate any situation thrown at them; they’ve already reached the top rungs of the career ladder and often have extensive experience to draw upon.
However, the recent political uncertainty and crises including the Covid pandemic have shown that business isn’t always straightforward or predictable. Difficult decisions sometimes need to be made, and with this pressure falling squarely on business leaders’ shoulders, they need to feel confident in their ability to make the right call.
Ensuring leaders’ skills, knowledge and capabilities are up-to-date is also important for retaining the confidence of their employees, which in turn helps drive engaged and productive workforces. The CIPD’s Good Work Index shows that effective leadership correlates with greater employee engagement, with employees showing greater willingness to go the extra mile.
Approaches to leadership development
Taking a tailored, individual approach to leadership development is often the most effective way to ensure senior leaders maintain the skills and capabilities needed to guide their organisations towards success.
Effective leadership training can boost important skills such as communication, goal-setting, motivating employees and change management both in the short and long term. However, CIPD research shows that organisations tend to see the best returns by focusing their investment on those needing the most support to develop ‘good’ leadership skills.
For leadership training programmes to really be effective, they need to start with an understanding learners’ needs. It sounds obvious but assumptions can still be made without fully understanding where the gaps are. This is necessary for clear, specific learning goals to be set.
Programmes should include a blend of learning methods such as structured sessions with an instructor, self-directed work and reflective exercises, with ample opportunity to apply what’s been learned in either real-world or mock scenarios.
Our analysis has found the skills most likely to translate into effective leader behaviour are practical in nature: general management skills such as goal-setting and conducting performance appraisals, and interpersonal skills like listening, negotiating and mentoring.
How L&D teams are developing leaders
Organisations are using a variety of approaches to develop leadership capability in current and aspiring leaders. For the CIPD’s report, Role of HR in selecting and developing senior leaders, we held focus groups and interviews with senior HR professionals across a range of sectors including healthcare, construction and tech, to see how they approached this challenge.
Several methods stood out as successful ways to develop senior leaders at an individual level:
- Executive coaching or mentoring: One-to-one development, provided both internally or externally, provides a safe space for a creative exchange of ideas and honest conversations. It can help build emotional intelligence, self-reflection, and thought processes around managing change. However, our research finds that it’s important to be clear about the purpose of coaching or mentoring and how the individual and organisation will benefit from it
- Learning by ‘doing’: Opportunities to lead on projects, volunteer or take a secondment in areas that allow leaders to practice the skills they need to develop are seen as effective. Importantly, even when projects or activities don’t go as planned, they provide an opportunity for individuals to learn and grow
- Sharing feedback: Structured feedback methods, such as 360 feedback, are seen as particularly impactful in leadership development
Succession planning
There are several situations where group-based learning offers advantages, for example developing aspiring leaders, or implementing new ways of organisational working or other significant change. The approaches that work well here include:
- Immersive programmes: These are often high impact, in-person programmes that provide a shared opportunity for individuals to critically assess their own behaviour and development journey, alongside peers. They can also be useful for developing a particular skill among a group of people, or for supporting broader cultural shifts. However, L&D teams should ensure these programmes don’t become ‘sheep-dip’ exercises, as each learner has unique development needs
- Group coaching: Although less tailored towards individual needs, group coaching programmes can be valuable for developing collaborative behaviours, building trust, improving cohesion and for helping current and future leaders work through real organisational challenges
- Multi-tiered leadership pathways: Programmes where aspiring leaders progress through a defined leadership structure, where each level has different development goals, can also be useful for succession planning and career development
L&D teams should work with their colleagues in HR to ensure that development programmes align well with the organisation’s future talent planning needs. By developing ‘homegrown’ talent, organisations can seek to retain loyal and experienced colleagues who know the ins- and outs of their organisation and its goals. Leadership development is not just a training initiative for the ‘now’, but a core element of future-proofing the organisation too.
Senior leadership development is more strategic
In today’s complex work environment, developing senior leaders requires more than traditional training. It must be strategic, tailored and closely aligned with organisational priorities. Coaching, real-world stretch experiences and structured feedback help leaders build the resilience, agility and judgement needed to navigate uncertainty and support performance.
These leadership development methods do more than prepare individuals, they strengthen the whole organisation. Crucially, integrating development with succession planning ensures a strong, future-ready leadership pipeline that is positioned for long-term success.
Steve George is head of learning at the CIPD
