When I work with leadership groups below the C-suite, I almost always get asked the same question by each group: “Are you telling our executives this too?”
When this comes up, I am generally talking about vertical development and how leaders tend to operate at different levels of Leadership Capability (e.g., Mind 1.0/4th Gear, Mind 2.0/5th Gear, Mind 3.0/6th Gear). I paint the picture of what leadership looks like at each level, and they start to get a clearer sense of what level they operate at, and also what level their leaders might be operating at.
For a long time, I mostly heard that question as frustration. Increasingly, I think it is often a legitimate diagnosis.
The leaders asking the question may understand that they should empower more, think more strategically, develop others, or respond less reactively under pressure. But they may also be operating in an organization that is continually signaling something different.
Leaders Adapt to the Environment Around Them
Leadership development often focuses almost entirely on the leader. If leaders are too controlling, too reactive, too focused on execution, or not developing others, we naturally ask what needs to change in them.
Sometimes that is the right question. But it is not the only question.
A leader may be encouraged to empower others, think long-term, be strategic, and develop their people. But, if they feel mistakes by their employees will be held against them, that it is imperative that they hit the near-term numbers, and carry a workload that makes it easy to push out developing their people, leaders feel they don’t have any options.
The gravity of their situation is pushing them away from how they may be encouraged to operate.
In situations like these, leaders are not simply choosing how to lead. They are adapting to the conditions around them.
This is why I am increasingly talking about Leadership Environment: the mix of pressure, workload, incentives, culture, purpose, developmental space, decision-making norms, and expectations that shape how leaders operate.
Why the Environment Often Pulls Leaders Toward 5th Gear
In my work, I sometimes describe leadership through 4th Gear, 5th Gear, and 6th Gear (stemming from Adult Development Psychology frameworks).
At 5th Gear (where 85% of executives operate), leaders are often highly achievement-oriented. They care deeply about performing, advancing, standing out, and producing results. That orientation can create a great deal of success, which is one reason it is so common among senior leaders.
The challenge comes when that achievement orientation becomes deeply embedded in how an organization operates.
Consider the stacked-ranking performance systems once used at companies such as GE and Microsoft. The basic logic is understandable: if people are evaluated against one another, perhaps the competition will push everyone to perform at a higher level.
That logic fits comfortably within a strong achievement orientation. But it also creates predictable pressure. People become more concerned with where they stand. Collaboration can become more difficult. Mistakes become riskier. Looking successful starts to matter more.
A leadership philosophy has now become an organizational system.
This is one reason Leadership Environment matters so much. Leaders do not have to be explicitly told to become more guarded, more short-term, or more self-protective. An organization can quietly incentivize those behaviors through the way it rewards, evaluates, pressures, and promotes people.
Why Good Leadership Development Can Fail
This also helps explain something that frustrates many HR and L&D leaders.
An organization may invest heavily in teaching leaders to delegate, coach, collaborate, develop talent, lead change, and think more strategically. Leaders may leave those experiences genuinely intending to lead differently.
Then they go back to work.
If their environment continues to reward personal heroics, immediate results, certainty, speed, and visible individual success, the old patterns tend to reappear.
This does not necessarily mean the training was ineffective. It may mean the environment is stronger than the development.
That is why I do not think we can get a clear picture of the health of a leadership population by looking only at Results Delivery or Leadership Capability. We also have to understand the environment those leaders are operating within. The same leader may operate very differently in an environment that provides clear purpose, space to learn, reasonable pressure, and encouragement to build capability in others than in one that continually pushes them toward urgency, control, and short-term wins.
The C-Suite Has a Disproportionate Influence
To be fair, the C-suite is under pressure too. Market conditions, customers, competitors, investors, and financial expectations all shape the demands senior leaders are dealing with.
But senior leaders still have considerable influence over how that pressure gets passed through the organization. They have substantial influence over what happens next. They decide how external pressure gets translated internally. They shape incentives, priorities, workload, performance systems, norms, and what the organization celebrates or punishes.
That is why the question, “Are you telling our executives this too?” is such an important one.
If we want leaders throughout an organization to operate with greater Leadership Capability, senior leaders have to think not only about how those leaders are developed, but also about the environment they are being asked to lead within.
How Healthy Is Your Leadership Environment?
A useful place to start is to look at the signals your organization sends every day. Here are some questions to start getting a pulse on your organization’s Leadership Environment:
- What receives more attention: hitting the number or fulfilling the organization’s broader purpose?
- Do leaders gain status by being the person who saves the day, or by building people who no longer need saving?
- What happens when someone takes a reasonable risk and gets it wrong?
- And do leaders actually have enough space to think, learn, and develop others, or is nearly all of their energy consumed by execution?
Those questions tell us something important about the kind of leadership the organization is likely to produce.
If you want better leaders, developing the leaders matters. But it may not be enough. You also need an environment that supports the kind of leadership you are trying to develop.
I am currently developing tools to help organizations assess their Leadership Environment and broader Leadership Health. If you are wondering whether the environment in your organization is enabling your leaders to operate at a higher level—or quietly pulling them in the opposite direction—feel free to reach out.
