Most leadership programmes miss essential practical skills
At a glance:
Most leadership programmes, even the best ones, skip the practicalities of how to lead the everyday conversations that actually lift performance and help their employees grow. They may include coaching but not how to practically apply coaching skills to performance and development conversations, or give leaders enough practice, so they feel confident to use them on Monday.
Most leadership programmes are strong on the big picture, what is needed from leaders to deliver on the vision, strategy, and growing self-awareness. Where they can fall short is the everyday stuff.
These skills are imperative right now as teams are running lean, with little budget to add headcount. That means you need your leaders getting the very best from the people they already have.
In this post, you’ll learn which practical skills most leadership programmes miss, and what your leaders actually need to lift performance and develop their teams.
What leadership programmes do well
Let’s be fair first. A good leadership programme builds real value.
They lift self-awareness, sharpen strategy, and help leaders think bigger. Those things matter, and we are not knocking them.
The gap is not what these programmes teach. It is what they leave out.
The practical skills they skip
The skills leaders use most are the everyday conversations. How you lift someone who is struggling. How you stretch a good person to be great.
Most programmes cover this as a concept, not a craft. Leaders learn the theory but never get shown exactly how to do it, or given time to practice. So they finish inspired but not equipped.
Three practical skills tend to go missing.
Skill one: a coach approach to performance conversations
A coach approach means you ask questions and help someone work things out, rather than only telling them what to do. It builds ownership, so the change actually sticks.
You cannot carry passengers, but pushing harder rarely fixes performance. A good conversation does.
We know from the work we do with leaders, that when it comes to performance conversations, while they know it should be for everyone, in reality their focus and energy goes to under performance. This means most leaders are missing the biggest opportunity to unlock greater productivity in their team, because the average or even great performers aren’t getting coaching attention.
Most programmes never hand leaders the specific framework for this, or let them rehearse it. Ours does, and leaders tell us how practical it is to use straight after the workshop.
This skill helps leaders at any time but is crucial in the current environment of reduced budgets and lean headcount. Leaders are being asked to deliver more with less and will be relying heavily on their teams for this.
Skill two: the development conversation
Development is not the same as performance, and it is often handled badly. There are two big mistakes leaders often make.
Tne first mistake is focussing all development conversations on what is needed to be successful in the current role. In our view that is a performance conversation. “Semantics!” I hear you say. And you’d have grounds for that. Often development is required to lift performance. However, what I mean by a development conversation is one where you are helping the individual lift their eyes to the horizon and help them to get clarity on which direction they want to head. The benefits to them, their manager and the organisation are well researched and bountiful and yet, these conversations are the exception not the rule in many organisations.
The second mistake is to take a sheep dip approach, using the same templated questions and approach to everyone in your team. It assumes everyone needs or wants development right now and everyone knows what they want to develop for their next role. They do not. Some people are happy and settled in their current role. They may be new in the role or perhaps towards the end of their career or just surviving the day with three kids under five! For these people, development beyond their current role may not be important. Research conducted by Clarity Insight in December 2024 shows that only 25% of New Zealand employees are clear on what they want to do next. That means most of your team are simply not able to answer the question of where they see themselves in 2-5 years or what they want to develop for their next role because they have no idea what that looks like AND they often assume everyone else knows, so are not confident to say so. They need help to get that clarity.
Each needs a different conversation. The skill is checking where someone sits before you launch in and the agility to tailor your coaching conversation to what is needed. That takes practice.
Skill three: building a feedback culture
Feedback is the strong foundation for both performance and development conversations. Saved up for an annual review, however, lands cold and late. A feedback culture is the opposite. It is small, regular, honest conversations, so nothing is a surprise.
This is a skill, not a policy. Leaders have to build the habit and hold it.
When they do, it pays dividends. One organisation we worked with saw a massive lift on the engagement question "my people leader is giving me feedback on my performance" after their leaders learned this.
The missing ingredient: practice
Here is the piece almost every programme skips. Sitting in a workshop and hearing about a concept is not the same as being able to do it.
The leaders we work with get real time to practise these conversations with each other first. We often buddy them with leaders from other parts of the business, which builds confidence and broadens their view at the same time.
That practice makes all the difference between a nice framework and a skill they can use on Monday.
But doesn’t our leadership programme already cover coaching?
Very likely, and that is a good thing. Most solid programmes cover coaching alongside other core leadership practices.
It is often only a small component of the overall programme so leaders get a ‘once over lightly’ experience. What they rarely include is the specific how-to of a performance or development conversation, plus enough practice to make it stick. That is the exact gap we fill, and it sits neatly alongside what your programme already does.
What this means for your organisation
If your leaders finish their training inspired but still avoid the hard conversations, this is usually why. The missing piece is practical, practised skill.
Close that gap and the payoff is real. You get leaders who lift performance sustainably, develop their people with intent, and hold on to the good ones you cannot afford to lose.
What to do next
Look at your current leadership development and ask where the everyday conversation skills actually sit.
Check whether your leaders get time to practise, not just learn the theory.
Add practical performance and development conversation coaching to fill the gap.
Further reading:How to have a performance conversation that works and our model for career development.