I recently revisited a major study (from Brandon Hall Group) on the state of leadership development, published in 2015. I came across it on my hard drive and thought, “Wow, it’s like a time capsule. Let’s see what we were talking about in 2015 vs. today.”

What struck me wasn’t what felt outdated.

It was how much of it still reads like a current diagnosis.

Ten years later, the same problems remain.

Not slightly improved.

Not meaningfully addressed.

Just… carried forward.

Back in 2015, 71% of organizations said their leaders were not ready to lead into the future.

I queried just one business publication: Forbes and asked it for the current state of unprepared leadership. Here are some recent headlines:

• Ineffective leadership and the devastating individual and organizational consequences
• Why 41% of job seekers don’t want to be managers (the article goes on to say that unprepared managers struggle, creating poor experiences for their teams, which trickles down to potential future leaders opting out before they’ve even had a chance to be a leader)
• Eight reasons leadership is hard and why few are prepared
• What is the story behind your company’s unready leaders

Bottom line: many organizations are still operating without leaders who are truly prepared for what’s next.

Leadership training is not the same as developing future leaders 

The Brandon Hall study also pointed out something that feels just as relevant today: in 2015 leadership development was being treated as a collection of programs rather than a business strategy.

If anything, we’ve doubled down on that approach.

The amount of leadership development content is overwhelming. There are more providers and more methodologies…

And yet, organizations continue to struggle to produce leaders who are actually ready to step into critical roles.

Because readiness doesn’t come from exposure to content.

It comes from exposure to responsibility.

From making decisions when the stakes are real. From navigating ambiguity. From being accountable for outcomes that matter to the business.

Perhaps the most telling insight from that 2015 study was this: only 8% of organizations had clearly defined what great leadership actually looks like.

Think about that for a moment.

For more than a decade now, organizations have been “developing leaders” without a clear-cut definition of what they are developing them into. It’s one of the reasons we start every client engagement with an activity: What Does a Leader Look Like (in this organization)?

And when that foundation is missing, everything that follows becomes diluted.

• development becomes generic
• leadership skills and business goals are disconnected
• leadership development becomes a checkbox, not a strategic initiative
• high performers leave because they don’t a clearly defined future with mobility
• internal successors struggle because they aren’t truly prepared to lead – they just “know stuff”
• external hires fail because expectations were never clearly defined for them
• and CEOs delay transitions because “no one is ready” to step up

My heart is heavy, because none of this is new.

For years, we’ve known that leadership development cannot be confined to training programs. We’ve known that real readiness is built through experience—through stretch assignments, cross-functional exposure, and decisions that carry real consequences.

We’ve known that leadership development must be tied directly to business strategy. And we’ve known that it must be owned by the business itself—not delegated to HR or a training department.

The playbook has been sitting in plain sight.

So why hasn’t more changed?

Because in many organizations, leadership development is still positioned as something that supports the business—not something that drives it. 

And that misalignment is where the real problem lies.

The uncomfortable truth is this:

We don’t have a knowledge gap when it comes to leadership development.

We have a priority gap.

Ten years ago, the findings in that report served as a warning.

Today, the consequences are playing out in real time—companies unable to scale, transitions that stall, and leadership gaps that directly impact performance and value.

So the question is no longer whether organizations understand the importance of developing future leaders.

The question is whether they are willing to treat it with the level of urgency—and ownership—it has always required.

Because if not, we will find ourselves having this exact same conversation again… ten years from now...

By Nanette Miner, Ed.D.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, HR, Leadership

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