The leadership capability gap

A client called me not long after promoting her best salesperson into a sales manager role. Six months in, the whole team’s numbers were slipping – not because the new manager lacked ability, but because leading a team turned out to be a completely different job to the one she’d been promoted for, and no one had taught her the difference.

It’s one of the most common patterns I see, and the data backs up why it feels so widespread right now. Recent Gartner research found the majority of CHROs don’t believe their leaders and managers have the mindset to lead change effectively – and Australian workforce data this year points to leadership benches shrinking as a genuine risk, not a hypothetical one.

The honest truth is that most businesses promote for technical performance, not leadership readiness, and then quietly hope the leadership part sorts itself out. It rarely does on its own. The skills that make someone excellent at their job – selling, building, delivering – are not the skills that make them good at developing other people to do the same.

What actually closes the gap isn’t a one-off workshop. It’s consistent, deliberate development built around the real decisions a leader faces:

• Development tied to the specific challenges of the role, not generic leadership theory

• Honest, regular feedback – not just an annual review that arrives too late to change anything

• Coaching that continues past the first few months, when the pressure to revert to old habits is highest

• Clear expectations of what ‘good leadership’ actually looks like in your business, set before someone steps into the role

This matters commercially as much as culturally. People don’t leave organisations – they leave managers. Every dollar spent developing the leaders you already have is a dollar spent directly on the retention of everyone who reports to them.

If you’re looking at your leadership bench and wondering how ready it really is, I’d welcome the conversation.