As AI reshapes work, Shannon Alter writes that L&D teams must stop treating leadership confidence, presence and emotional intelligence as optional. Future-ready organisations will be those that build adaptable, human-centred leaders through deliberate practice, feedback and support before the highest-stakes moments arrive, retention falters and top talent starts looking elsewhere.
Learning and development professionals are navigating a disconnect right now: while AI adoption accelerates across organisations at unprecedented speed, Gallup reports that fewer than 50% of employees participated in professional development last year. This doesn’t make for positive reading, especially when organisations have a responsibility to help shape confident, future-ready leaders.
Leaders of the future will choose to work with organisations that actually invest in their L&D
It’s easy to place the blame on participants, but this isn’t just a participation problem, it’s a stop light. Traditional approaches to leadership development are failing at precisely the moment when human leadership is key: when people will vote with their feet and pursue other opportunities. Leaders of the future will choose to work with organisations that actually invest in their L&D to shape them into confident, dependable leaders equipped with tools that will help them excel.
Many L&D programs inadvertently undermine the prized capabilities of confidence, executive presence, and authentic connection that are critical to organisational success. These skills are core business competencies that require deliberate, sustained development. The time to invest in your future leaders is now, not once they’ve already been promoted or hired into the role.
Companies that recognise this and build development programs accordingly will create a significant competitive advantage. They are the ones who will attract, hire and retain top tier talent.
L&D professionals can lead that transformation
Most L&D executives already know what doesn’t work:
- One-off workshops with no reinforcement: stickiness counts
- Promoting high performers into leadership roles without development support
- Treating confidence and presence as personality traits rather than learnable skills
- Assuming leaders will develop these capabilities independently by just ‘figuring it out’
This requires a different approach from what has been delivered previous. L&D executives need to focus on what does work, then creating bespoke training experiences that will deliver results, not just become a tick-box exercise. If nothing is implemented and leaders don’t know what action to take, then nothing will change or improve.
Leaders need confidence
Confidence is a skill that often leaves leaders exposed. There’s a preconception that you’re born with it, but it’s actually a skill that can be taught and improved upon. Confidence is one of the most popular training workshops I deliver. Surprisingly, leaders often feel that everyone is confident except for them. When leaders work with me to improve their communication skills, it almost always boils down to confidence, either under- or even over-confidence. Working on developing confidence and increasing executive presence takes exactly that, work and practice.
If you’re presenting a business case to the CEO or the C-suite and you’re nervous, uncertain or lack confidence, it shows up in your voice, on your face and in your body language and the audience feels it too. This undermines your authority and credibility and reduces their confidence in you and your ability to perform.
Your teams, colleagues and clients need to believe in what you say. They need to trust that you can walk the talk, because confidence becomes the differentiator between leaders who inspire trust and those who create doubt and uncertainty.
The three non-negotiable leadership capabilities L&D must develop
If you want your organisation to prepare confident future-ready leaders, you must focus on building three core capabilities: adaptability, emotional intelligence and comfort with ambiguity. These aren’t abstract concepts, they’re measurable competencies that enable leaders to navigate complexity and change effectively.
Adaptability and learning agility remain critical. As a leader you have to know how to pivot successfully and how to train your teams to pivot too. This goes beyond simply learning new tools. It requires the confidence to step into unfamiliar territory, along with the resilience to adjust the strategy when initial approaches don’t work. L&D programs must create safe spaces for leaders to practice pivoting before the stakes are high.
Emotional intelligence has shifted from “soft skill” to strategic business priority. In diverse, hybrid workplaces, leaders must have heightened self-awareness and the ability to read and respond to team dynamics across digital and physical environments. EQ enables leaders to set the emotional tone for their teams, create psychological safety and maintain engagement during uncertainty. L&D professionals should position EQ development as essential leadership infrastructure, not an optional “nice to have”.
Comfort with ambiguity separates effective leaders from those who struggle. Leaders who wait for absolute certainty before acting create bottlenecks. Those who can make sound decisions with incomplete information, and communicate the reasoning behind those decisions, keep organisations moving forward. This capability must be deliberately developed through graduated exposure to ambiguous situations with structured reflection.
These three capabilities share a common thread: they all require confidence to execute effectively. This is where L&D development becomes critical.
Building confidence: The leadership capability that amplifies everything else
When organisations invest in leadership development, they typically focus on improving strategic thinking, communication, or decision-making. But underlying all of these is a more fundamental capability: developing executive presence. This is where most L&D programs miss the opportunity.
Executive presence can sound a little mysterious. Most leaders have heard of it, but don’t know how to develop it, or use it. It is our ability as leaders to convey executive readiness, confidence and impactful presence
When I first started out in business, my favourite mentor and I were meeting over coffee one morning when he leaned in across the table. This was my first leadership role, and I needed some advice on getting my point across to the people who mattered most: my team and our clients.
“Here’s the secret,” he said. “Everyone makes an impression when they walk into a room. You’re a leader. Make yours count.” He was talking about executive presence.
Here’s what I tell my clients: executive presence isn’t about being the loudest in the room or having the fanciest title. It is about how you:
- Inspire trust
- Connect and communicate with others
- Hold yourself under pressure
- Project confidence, even when you’re still working on it
It’s about making people feel they can trust you, listen to you, and follow your lead. The impression you make, your ability to convey executive readiness and an impactful, confident presence are key; it’s owning any room you walk into.
Here are three critical three ways leaders can develop executive presence:
Practice opportunities before high stakes. Leaders need structured and frequent chances to practice communication and decision-making in challenging scenarios. This means moving beyond role-play exercises to creating authentic practice environments where the stakes are real but contained.
Structured feedback loops and reflection. Development happens in the space between action and reflection. L&D programs must build in systematic mechanisms for leaders to receive feedback, process it and adjust their approach accordingly. Without this structure, experience alone doesn’t build capability.
Graduated responsibility with support. Confidence develops through successful and layered navigation of increasingly complex challenges. This requires thoughtful sequencing of development experiences paired with coaching support, not sink-or-swim decisions.
Executive presence: Making the intangible tangible for development programs
In today’s environment, executive presence isn’t about title or authority. It’s about demonstrated capability built through consistency: showing up prepared, creating genuine connection, following through on commitments and aligning what leaders say with how they say it. This requires emotional intelligence, self-awareness, intention and deliberate practice.
L&D programs can develop executive presence by teaching leaders to answer three critical questions before any important interaction:
- Why does this message matter to this audience?
- What is the issue and what am I recommending?
- What specific action or outcome am I seeking?
This framework transforms executive presence from an abstract quality into a concrete practice that can be coached, refined and measured.
Implementation: What actually works in leadership development design
For L&D professionals looking to move beyond traditional approaches, the most effective development programs share specific characteristics:
They prioritise application over information transfer. The goal isn’t knowledge acquisition, but behaviour change that sticks. This means designing for immediate application, not eventual implementation.
They create peer learning communities. Mentorship and peer coaching programs normalise ongoing growth and provide leaders with sustained support networks. This shifts development from isolated events to continuous practice.
They measure what matters. Rather than tracking seat time or satisfaction scores, effective programs measure behaviour change, application of skills and the overall impact on team performance. This data helps demonstrate ROI and refine program design.
They treat confidence as infrastructure. The most sophisticated programs recognise that confidence enables everything else. They build it systematically through tailored coaching, graduated responsibility and supported risk-taking rather than assuming it will develop naturally.
The L&D opportunity: Positioning human leadership as competitive advantage
Technology will continue to handle more tactical, repeatable tasks. But the distinctly human elements of leadership; the ability to inspire, build trust, communicate with clarity and conviction, and create authentic connection, will become increasingly valuable because they can’t be automated.
This creates a significant opportunity for L&D professionals. By designing development programs that intentionally build confident, human-centred leaders, you position your organisation to navigate complexity more effectively than those who treat leadership development as discretionary spending.
Consider the leadership moments that define organisational success: delivering clear communication during uncertainty, making high-stakes decisions under pressure, providing direction when the path forward is unclear and setting repeatable processes that teams can follow. These moments require human judgment, authentic connection and the confidence to lead when outcomes are uncertain. They cannot be delegated to technology.
The future of work may be increasingly digital, but the future of leadership remains fundamentally human. L&D professionals who embrace this truth and build development architecture accordingly, will create the resilient, adaptable leadership capacity their organizations need to thrive.
When the moment matters most, leadership is still human work. And confident, present, connected leaders remain the competitive advantage that can’t be replicated by any technology.
Shannon Alter is Founder of Leaders Exceed and author of her third book, Be Influential: Surefire Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills
