Most leaders know what good leadership looks like.
They know they should communicate clearly and listen actively. They know they should empower others and give them the authority to make decisions within clear parameters.
They know they should provide psychological safety and let others speak up, challenge decisions, and highlight problems and opportunities without fear of repercussions.
They know they need to be resilient and adaptable in the face of constant change and build a team that is the same.
They know they need to be transparent and hold themselves and others accountable.
Importantly, they know the importance of trust in their people and their people’s trust in the leader.
None of this is new.
Knowing is not the same as doing
The problem is that knowing what good leadership is doesn't mean leaders will behave that way.
A leader can understand the importance of clear communication and still deliver ambiguous messages. They can talk about empowerment and decision-making authority and continue to micromanage.
They can support the idea of psychological safety yet get defensive when someone challenges them. They may assume they are empathetic but still come across as indifferent. They may believe they trust their employees yet still monitor their activity.
This is the gap between knowing and doing.
This is the gap between what leaders know intellectually and what people experience with them every day.
Knowing is not enough. Intent is not enough. Even self-awareness is not enough if it doesn't lead to behavioural change.
This is where I see leadership development going wrong. People assume that if leaders are exposed to the right ideas, capability models, and behavioural frameworks, change will happen.
Unfortunately, conveying this information does not override embedded habits.
Under pressure, leaders often revert to their comfort zone and resume old habits. They fall back on what has served them in the past.
Leadership development cannot stop at helping leaders know what good leadership looks like. It must enable them to behave differently.
Why the knowing-doing gap exists
You may ask, “If leaders know what good leadership is, why do they struggle to behave that way consistently?”
Behaviours in our leaders are shaped by more than knowledge.
Habits are deeply embedded. Leaders develop thinking patterns and behaviours over years, and those patterns can become automatic. They are often the patterns that brought them success in the past. Under pressure, the likelihood of falling back into the comfort zone increases.
The organisation itself can reinforce the problem if the reward system is broken. We may tell leaders to empower, delegate, and create psychological safety while rewarding them for speed, control, individual results, or always having the right answer.
Leaders may not receive honest feedback. The more senior someone becomes, the less likely they are to hear how others experience their behaviour. Without genuine feedback, leaders may continue to miss the gap between their intent and their impact.
Pressure is also a culprit. When deadlines are tight, and risk and uncertainty rise, the comfort zone feels like a haven. The leader who wants to empower starts taking decisions back and the leader who wants to listen starts to interrupt. The leader who wants people to challenge them becomes defensive.
Leadership development needs to inform leaders but also recognise the forces at play that pull them back to old behaviours.
The challenge becomes not only learning new behaviours but making those new behaviours strong enough to survive these conditions.
Leadership development stopping too early
One of the biggest problems I see with leadership development is that the intervention often stops when the learning event ends. Leaders attend a workshop, complete a program, or undertake computer-based learning, and then they return to work.
The certificate is on the wall, but the development has stopped.
There is no clear behavioural goal, follow-up, coaching, observation, feedback, or accountability for the leader to apply what was learned.
We measure attendance, completions and participant satisfaction, and that is it. We label the activity as a success. Those measures tell us nothing about what leadership behaviours have changed.
Development needs reinforcement and leaders need ongoing support.
Leaders need regular opportunities to practice new behaviours, reflect on what happened, receive feedback and encouragement and repeat. They need time to embed the different ways of leading until those behaviours become their norm.
When we measure whether leaders are doing something different because of the development, we shift from the outcome being a learning activity to behavioural change.
How leaders close the gap
Leaders must address why the knowing-doing gap exists.
If habits are deeply embedded, they need to identify the specific behaviour they want to change and replace it with a repeatable, observable action. Rather than a leader saying, “I need to listen more”, they need to be more specific and say, “I need to ask two questions before I offer my view.” This is something concrete to practise.
If pressure drives a leader back to old behaviours, leaders need triggers that interrupt the automatic response. That trigger may be a deliberate pause or a question such as “What does this situation really need from me right now?” Leaders can identify the moments when they are most likely to revert to old behaviours and prepare themselves for them.
If past success reinforces outdated approaches, leaders must challenge the assumption that what worked before will continue to work now. They must ask if their current behaviours are serving them, the team and the organisation. They must unlearn to relearn.
If the organisation is rewarding the wrong behaviours, it must address the gap. Still, leaders can also look at what is being reinforced around them and recognise when the system is working against them. Leaders can close the gap by recognising and rewarding the behaviours they want more of in their own team, making those behaviours visible, and challenging the incentives or measures that send the opposite message.
Closing the gap requires feedback, so leaders must establish regular, credible ways to hear how their behaviour is experienced. They can use 360-degree feedback, regular check-ins, and peer reflection. Leaders must make it safe for others to be honest, listen without becoming defensive, act on what they hear, and then ask whether people have seen a difference.
If accountability is low after development, leaders must make their development commitments visible, specific, and regularly reviewed. They must engage someone who will challenge them when they revert to old habits, provide honest feedback and hold them to account.
If development is disconnected from the real work, then leaders must make the workplace the development environment. They must practise new behaviours in real meetings, real conversations, real decision-making, and real moments of pressure.
Development must happen in the real world
Leadership development is not confined to workshops, classrooms and coaching conversations.
Real development happens when leaders return to the workplace.
It happens in the meeting when they are challenged, in the conversation where they need to give difficult feedback, and in the moment a deadline is slipping. It happens when they could decide themselves but choose to delegate, and when they take ownership of a mistake and use it as a learning opportunity.
In these situations, the new behaviour is practised, and the workplace becomes an integral part of the development process.
Development in the workshop, classroom, or coaching session must give leaders opportunities to practise new behaviours in real situations, reflect on what happened, receive feedback, and try again.
Before leaders return to work, identify one or two behaviours they can deliberately apply in the situations that matter most.
For example:
· In the team meeting, ask for the views of others before giving yours.
· In the next diagnostic session, be clear about the outcomes, decision authority and boundaries, and then get out of the way.
· When challenged, ask a question before responding.
These are small actions, but when repeated in a real work situation, behaviours start to shift.
Feedback is essential
Leaders often judge themselves by their intent. They believe that their intentions are sound, but intention is not the same as impact. Intention is your goal, while impact is the actual result, effect or consequence. I like this short video by Daryl Page describing Intent vs Impact.
People around the leader experience the impact of the behaviour, not the intent behind it.
Leaders must know whether others experience the behaviour differently. This is why feedback is essential. Feedback can come from 360-degree assessments, coaching, direct observation or regular conversations. It can come from team members, peers, and superiors.
The most useful feedback is behaviour-based. This means leaders don’t ask, “Am I a good listener?” but ask, “Do I give you enough time to finish your point before I respond?” They don’t ask, “Do I empower you? but ask, “Do you feel you have enough authority to make decisions without coming back to me unnecessarily?”
Leaders must also create the conditions in which everyone feels safe enough to answer honestly. Leaders must listen and thank people for their feedback. They must act on the feedback and then ask whether their behaviour has changed.
Accountability turns learning into change
While feedback helps leaders see whether their behaviours are changing, accountability ensures they keep working on it. Without accountability, leadership development can become another good intention that competing priorities push aside.
A leader may leave a program committed to listening more, delegating more effectively or creating greater psychological safety. Still, unless those commitments are made visible and revisited, old habits can easily return.
Accountability starts by being specific. Leaders should identify one or two behaviours they will change and clearly define what those behaviours will look like in practice. Then they need someone who will hold them to those commitments. It could be a manager, a coach, a peer, a mentor, or even the team itself.
Measure behaviours, not attendance
If leadership development is intended to change how leaders lead, then that is what must be measured.
Establish a baseline before development begins. Identify the behaviours that need to shift, then measure them again after leaders have had time to practise and embed the changes.
The important thing is to connect the measure to the behaviour the development was intended to change. If the goal was to improve empowerment, the measure must be that people have more authority to make decisions. If the goal was to improve listening, then the measure is whether employees feel heard.
Conclusion
Leadership development cannot be judged by how much information leaders are exposed to.
It must be judged by the changes it delivered.
Leaders know what good leadership looks like, but they must be supported to translate that into different behaviours, reinforced in the workplace, challenged through feedback and sustained through accountability.
