Reflections on Leadership

Leadership Is Discovered, Not Declared

Leadership Drift This Week

The fastest way to create a leadership problem is to decide who can and cannot lead based on whim or vibe.

Effective organizations develop leaders by creating opportunities for people to discover whether they are prepared for, and want, to carry the responsibility.

The moment an organization decides someone "isn't leadership material," it has made a leadership decision that creates a future leadership problem.

You've probably heard a dismissive, "She's not leadership material," or "He can’t manage."

Occasionally, these judgments hold weight. More often, leaders render them after a single project fails, or even before giving someone a meaningful opportunity to lead.

It’s the rigid certainty that concerns me.

I've watched too many people be dissuaded, devalued, or dismissed by leaders who, upon closer examination, were themselves struggling to lead well. When someone confidently declares that an employee "can't lead," my attention instinctively shifts away from the individual and toward the system that reached that conclusion.

Here, many plant the seeds of future failure. Consider a brilliant engineer: executive leadership promotes her into management because she excels at technical problem-solving. Six months later, she is overwhelmed, her team grows frustrated, and executives conclude they promoted the wrong person. Maybe they did. Or maybe they thrust someone into an entirely different profession without preparation. Technical excellence and leadership excellence are different disciplines.

Leadership Drift begins the moment leaders replace careful observation with convenient assumptions. Instead of developing people, they begin categorizing them. Instead of coaching, they conclude. Instead of discovering, they declare.

What if, instead, a manager invites an employee to take on leadership responsibility? The employee accepts, receiving dedicated coaching, feedback, and time to develop. Together, they discover what leadership actually requires.

You must neither presume leadership potential nor prematurely dismiss it.

Leadership is learned through responsibility, coaching, and reflection, not speculation. Some people become exceptional leaders. Others discover their greatest contribution lies elsewhere. Neither outcome is failure. The failure is never creating the opportunity to find out.

Leadership is an invitation. Some accept it. Some discover they don't enjoy it. Some realize their greatest contribution isn't managing people but mastering the work itself. Every outcome deserves respect. Only one outcome deserves criticism: never creating the opportunity to discover.

Leadership failure occurs when organizations never create the conditions for discovery.

They promote people because they equate career progress with people management, or they dismiss people before giving them a chance to develop. Both decisions fuel Leadership Drift, swapping thoughtful management for convenient assumptions.

When this occurs, they generate system-wide problems that look operational, but stem entirely from leadership:

Managers who never wanted to manage.
Employees forced to choose between advancement and fulfillment.
Teams led by technically capable people who were never prepared to lead.

None of these problems originate with the individual. They originate with leadership.

Promotion recognizes past performance. Leadership demands future responsibility. Leadership is a privilege and duty that requires serving, creating clarity, building capability, and helping others win. That responsibility to strengthen people deserves more than speculation. It deserves discovery. You cannot assume someone possesses these traits simply because they excelled in a previous role. Nor should you conclude too quickly that someone lacks the capacity to grow into them.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to discover whether leadership represents their highest contribution. Leaders must not write off others prematurely, nor push them into management simply because they excel at something else.

This way is more practical and humane. Often, the leadership-caused problem isn't an employee's inability to lead; it is leadership placing a thumb on the scale before the journey even begins.

Effective leadership rejects premature certainty. It creates opportunities for people to discover whether leadership is their highest contribution. Great organizations don't rush to label people. They coach, observe, develop, and discover. Because leadership should leave people stronger than it found them.

Drift Pattern of the Week: Growth Gaps

Organizations often confuse evaluation with development. Leaders become highly skilled at identifying who is ready now, but invest far less energy in preparing people for tomorrow. The result is a widening growth gap: employees receive performance feedback without meaningful opportunities to build leadership capability. Because the organization continues operating, this pattern rarely attracts immediate attention. Over time, however, leadership benches weaken, promotions become riskier, and fewer people feel confident accepting greater responsibility. What began as underinvestment in development quietly becomes a succession problem.

Leadership Practice

Ask one employee this week: "What responsibilities would you like the opportunity to grow into over the next year?" Then discuss what development (not promotion) would help prepare them. Leadership capability is cultivated long before leadership titles are awarded.

Diagnostic Question

If every promotion over the past two years reflected genuine leadership readiness instead of organizational convenience, how different would your management team look today?

From My Desk

Leadership teams spend significant time discussing who should receive the next opportunity, but remarkably little time discussing how someone will be prepared once that opportunity arrives.

I've noticed that when a new manager struggles, the conversation too often shifts toward whether the individual was the wrong choice. Much less attention is given to whether the organization created the conditions for that person to succeed.

The strongest organizations deliberately create environments where people can discover what leadership requires before everyone else depends on them to perform it.

Recommended Resource

Leadership Drift Diagnostic

Many organizations cannot accurately distinguish between an individual leadership problem and a system that consistently sets people up to struggle.

The Leadership Drift Diagnostic examines how leadership decisions, management practices, development systems, and organizational assumptions contribute to recurring performance issues. Rather than focusing solely on individual capability, it identifies where Leadership Drift has entered the organization.

Leaders gain greater clarity about why management challenges continue to reappear, where leadership systems require strengthening, and what practical actions will improve leadership effectiveness before the next promotion, restructuring, or succession decision.