Blog Posts
Leader-Directed or Self-Directed: Which to Use When
For as long as there have been leaders, there’s been a debate about which is better: a hands-on approach or …
Organizations often invest heavily in recruiting leadership talent from outside, even when qualified people already work inside the building. A leadership pipeline is the ongoing system an organization uses to identify, develop and advance people into leadership roles, and it works best when potential gets recognized before a role opens.
Picture a VP of Operations role posted externally after two internal candidates declined consideration. Both had the skills to succeed. What was missing was a reason to want the role. Your leadership pipeline is leaking, and it’s worth acting on. Succession planning depends on that pipeline staying full.
Organizations that build regular development conversations into daily work strengthen their leadership pipeline.
Strong leadership pipelines get built continuously, not only when succession talks start. The internal bench grows when someone regularly checks in on who’s ready for more rather than just once a year. Here are seven patterns worth watching.
Organizations often reward current performance more consistently than leadership potential. A project coordinator who guides their team toward decisions without formal authority is a common example. Colleagues bring them problems first. Their performance scores are solid, but their influence never gets captured on a succession list. Two years later, they’re leading a team at a competitor.
Employees who solve problems others bring to them and are respected by their teammates, even without a title, are often future leaders hiding in plain sight. In your next team meeting, notice who others turn to before a decision gets made. It’s not always the most senior person in the room, but the one who makes others feel heard. Mistaking performance for potential is a signal worth tracking.
Many organizations wait until someone receives a promotion before investing in leadership development. Being prepared to lead and receiving a leadership title aren’t the same thing. A strong performer can be labeled a future leader for two years, yet never receive a development conversation or a stretch assignment. The plan is always to start “when the timing is right.” They accept an external offer before that happens.
Leadership skills develop over time, not necessarily after a promotion. This week, identify one person flagged as high potential who hasn’t had a growth-focused conversation in the last 90 days. Schedule 30 minutes, not for a performance review, but to ask, “Where do you want to go?” That question starts the work of building future-ready leaders.
Employees pursue leadership more readily when they understand what opportunities exist and what’s expected of them. A team lead who loves their work and wants to advance but doesn’t know whether growth means a senior contributor track or a department leadership role is a familiar scenario. When they ask about next steps, the answer is “just keep doing what you’re doing.” They update their resume that afternoon.
Clarity works the opposite way. When people know what’s next, they stay and work toward it instead of updating their resume. This week, name two or three specific, observable things a high-potential team member would need to demonstrate for a larger role. A clear growth path doesn’t require a formal document, just enough clarity that they know what “ready” looks like.
Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that a lack of engaged leadership accounts for most of the recent downturn in employee engagement. That makes how often leaders hold real development conversations just as worth measuring as short-term results. Skip one, and you withdraw from the future pipeline just as surely as you would deposit into it otherwise.
Take a department head who delivers strong results but keeps everyone glued to the project status. They never ask a direct report about their development goals. When two of their strongest people leave in the same quarter, leadership is surprised, but the rest of the team isn’t.
A 2024 Gallup study found that 42% of employees who voluntarily left their organization said their leader or organization could have prevented it. In your next one-on-one, ask: “What’s one thing you’d like to learn in the next six months?” Then, follow up with one concrete action.
High-performing employees sometimes decline leadership opportunities after watching overwhelmed leaders manage heavy workloads and shifting priorities. Picture a reliable performer who watches their team leader spend every Friday catching up on a week of deferred work. Soon after, they decline the team lead role themselves. They’re simply responding to the only version of leadership they’ve seen up close.
That reaction lines up with a broader trend. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that engagement among people in frontline leadership roles fell from 30% to 27% in 2024, the sharpest decline of any role group. If you lead a team, make one visible change this month. Block one hour a week as protected development time and keep that appointment.
What accelerates development faster than any course? Stretch assignments are the kind that push someone beyond their current skill level. Take a senior analyst who performs the same reporting function flawlessly, year after year. They’re never asked to lead a cross-functional initiative or present to senior leadership, and they plateau. Their peers notice long before the leader does. Their exit survey names the reason as limited growth opportunity.
This week, identify one task you own that a high-potential team member could lead with your support. Hand it off by explaining the context, the stakes and when you’ll check in. That’s a stretch assignment, and it costs nothing but intention.
When investment gets delayed across all six patterns above, talented people exit and take with them the years it would have taken to develop someone else to that same level. An organization that invests in an 18-month emerging leader cohort, then watches five of six participants leave within a year, illustrates the risk. The gap was that no visible opportunity followed.
This kind of succession risk builds for years before anyone notices, until a critical role opens and no one internal is ready. Look at your last three departures and ask whether each person had a development conversation in the six months before they left.
Succession planning works best when it reflects a healthy pipeline, built through everyday development. Here’s where to start.
Leadership development works best as an ongoing habit integrated into everyday work. Organizations that build it in, through stretch assignments, honest feedback and regular growth conversations, keep more of their strongest people moving up.
If you’re not sure where to begin, start with one conversation this week. Find someone with more potential than their current role demands and ask what they want to grow toward next.
At The Center for Leadership Studies, we help organizations turn that one conversation into a repeatable practice, backed by a framework leaders can apply to every person on their team. Our Situational Leadership® Essentials course equips leaders to assess what each person needs and adapt their approach. Our Situational Performance Ownership® course builds self-directed development. Contact us for more information.
