Leadership Development

What leadership development covers at each level

The content changes as people move up:

• First-line leaders (team leads, supervisors, shift managers): moving from doing the work to getting work done through others. Coaching conversations, scheduling, attendance and discipline, handling former peers, basic employment law, running a team meeting.
• Mid-level managers (managers of managers, site leaders): building and developing a leadership bench, budgeting, planning, managing across functions, leading change.
• Senior leaders and executives: strategy, organizational design, leading through other senior leaders, external relationships, board communication.

The biggest gap in most organizations is at the first level. Frontline supervisors usually manage the largest share of the workforce and get the least preparation, often promoted on Friday because they were the best agent or picker and expected to lead on Monday.

Methods that work

Classroom training alone rarely changes how someone leads. Strong programs mix methods, roughly in line with the 70-20-10 model:

• Stretch assignments: leading a project, covering a manager's role, opening a new site.
• Coaching and [mentoring](/glossary/mentoring/): regular conversations with an experienced leader about real situations.
• Cohort learning: peers moving through the program together, sharing problems.
• Formal sessions: short, practical workshops on specific skills, followed by practice on the job.
• 360-degree feedback at the start and end, so participants see how others experience their leadership.
• Action learning: small groups solve a real business problem and present to senior leaders.

Worked example: a supervisor program for a multi-site operation

A healthcare revenue-cycle company with 1,800 employees across six sites promotes around 30 people a year into supervisor roles. Its six-month program:

Month 1: a two-day workshop on the shift from peer to leader, coaching basics and the company's attendance and discipline policies. Each new supervisor is assigned a mentor from another site.

Months 2 to 5: monthly half-day sessions on one skill each (difficult conversations, reading team metrics, scheduling, recognizing good work), each followed by an assignment applied with their own team. Biweekly mentor calls. A small improvement project chosen with their manager.

Month 6: project presentations to site leadership and a repeat of the 360 survey.

Measures: first-year supervisor retention, turnover on their teams compared with teams under other new supervisors, engagement scores, and the share of future manager roles filled internally.

Choosing participants

Two approaches coexist. Programs for everyone in a leadership role (all new supervisors, all new managers) build a consistent baseline. Selective programs for high-potential employees prepare a smaller group for bigger roles and connect directly to succession planning.

For selective programs, be careful with how people are nominated. Manager nomination alone tends to favor people who resemble current leaders. Use clear, job-related criteria, look at performance and potential evidence, allow self-nomination, and review the demographic mix of nominees and participants. A nine-box grid is a common starting point, though it carries its own bias risks if ratings aren't calibrated.

Measuring impact

Agree on business measures before launch. Useful ones include internal fill rate for leadership roles, time to fill those roles, retention of program participants, turnover and engagement on their teams, and promotion rates afterward. Pair these with behavior measures such as 360 results or direct-report surveys. Satisfaction scores from participants are nice to have but say little about whether anyone leads differently.

Common mistakes

• Training after the promotion is months old, when habits have already formed.
• Generic content that ignores the actual policies, systems and pressures supervisors face.
• No involvement from participants' managers, who then don't reinforce what was learned.
• One-off events instead of programs that run over months.
• Only investing at the top. Executive programs are visible, but frontline leaders shape the daily experience of most employees.