Who Told You Your Leaders Need Development?
A leadership diagnosis is only as strong as the perspectives and evidence used to construct it.
Senior leadership may be exactly right about what an organization needs from its leaders.
That doesn't necessarily mean senior leadership can see everything preventing leaders from delivering it.
Imagine a CEO says:
Our managers need to become more strategic. They're too tactical. They need to delegate more, get out of the weeds, and spend more time thinking about the future.
That may be an entirely accurate observation.
But if the organization immediately concludes that managers need strategic-thinking and delegation development, we've moved from an observation to a diagnosis without necessarily establishing what sits between the two.
Before designing the solution, I would want to ask:
What evidence tells us why these managers aren't operating more strategically today?
Because knowing where the organization needs to go and understanding what's preventing people from getting there are not the same thing.
The view from the top of the mountain
Senior leaders have an incredibly important vantage point.
They can see the strategy. They know the business priorities. They understand where the organization wants to be in three, five, or ten years. They are often best positioned to articulate what the future will require from leaders.
I think of that as being able to see from the top of the mountain.
You can see the destination.
But I also want to understand the runway required to get there.
Managers and leaders who are in the thick of the work have a different vantage point. They experience the decision processes, workload, organizational routines, expectations, and constraints that shape what leadership looks like every day.
Employees experience something else: what those leadership behaviors actually feel like from the other side.
Those perspectives aren't more important than senior leadership's.
They're different.
And that difference is exactly why I want them.
The observation can be right while the diagnosis is incomplete
Let's go back to the CEO who believes managers need to become more strategic.
We talk to the managers.
They tell us they want to spend more time thinking strategically, but their calendars are dominated by recurring meetings. Meaningful decisions require multiple levels of approval. They're expected to delegate, but when delegated work doesn't go as planned, they're held accountable for not being sufficiently involved.
The CEO's observation hasn't suddenly become wrong.
The managers may, in fact, be operating too tactically.
But now we understand something more about why.
The intention to operate strategically may exist.
The opportunity may not.
There may still be capability development needed. But decision authority, workload, calendar structure, and accountability expectations may also be contributing to the behavior senior leadership is seeing.
That changes the diagnosis.
And it should change the response.
Sometimes the original hypothesis is right
Now imagine another organization brings us the same concern.
This time, managers have appropriate decision authority. Their workload gives them room to lead. Delegation is supported. Senior leaders tolerate thoughtful risk.
Yet the evidence consistently shows that managers struggle to translate enterprise strategy into priorities for their teams. They have difficulty separating urgent work from strategically important work and struggle to delegate even when they have the opportunity.
The evidence may tell us:
Yes. There is a meaningful capability gap.
I'm completely comfortable with that conclusion.
That's the nature of diagnostic work.
The goal isn't to produce a surprising answer. The goal is to produce an answer the evidence supports.
Before the diagnosis, senior leadership had a hypothesis.
Afterward, the organization has evidence behind it.
Sometimes good diagnostic work changes the answer.
Sometimes it gives us greater confidence in the answer we already suspected.
Both are valuable.
Triangulation isn't consensus
I don't want multiple perspectives because I expect everyone to tell me the same story.
Sometimes the disagreement is where the most useful evidence sits.
Senior executives may say:
Our managers have plenty of authority to make decisions.
Managers may say:
Every meaningful decision still gets escalated.
The answer isn't to decide which group is telling the truth.
The question is:
Why do these two groups experience decision authority differently?
Perhaps formal decision rights exist, but managers have learned that exercising them carries risk.
Perhaps senior leaders believe they've delegated authority but continue to intervene informally.
Perhaps managers genuinely have more authority than they're using.
Any of those could be true.
The contradiction gives us somewhere to investigate.
Different perspectives don't have to agree. They have to help us understand more of the system.
So when have we listened enough?
I don't think the answer is a particular number of interviews.
Ten interviews can be enough for one question and completely inadequate for another.
Instead, I want to know:
Are consistent patterns emerging?
Have we heard from the organizational groups that hold relevant perspectives?
Where perspectives corroborate one another, what are they telling us?
Where they contradict one another, have we investigated why?
Is additional inquiry materially changing our understanding?
And most importantly:
If a leadership behavior is missing, can we explain why?
If we know managers aren't delegating but still can't explain what's preventing delegation, we're not finished.
If we know leaders aren't taking risks but haven't examined what happens when someone actually takes one, we're not finished.
If we know managers aren't thinking strategically but don't know whether the constraint is capability, workload, decision authority, expectations—or some combination—we're not finished.
We're still collecting evidence.
The purpose isn't to hear from everyone. It's to understand enough of the system to make a decision we can defend.
Before you invest in the answer, test the question
A significant leadership investment deserves more than a plausible hypothesis.
Before committing to the program, provider, coach, assessment, or architecture, I would ask:
What evidence is our diagnosis based on?
Whose perspectives are represented?
Where does the evidence disagree—and have we investigated why?
Can we explain not only what behavior is missing, but why?
Sometimes that process will challenge the original hypothesis.
Sometimes it will refine it.
Sometimes it will confirm that leadership was right all along.
The point isn't to produce a particular answer.
It's to make sure the evidence was allowed to change it.
Before asking whether you've gathered enough evidence to support the solution, ask one more question: