Something fundamental is changing about how companies talk about the future. This development is likely spurred by how fast AI is changing things, and I’m consistently hearing that organizations are actively preparing for operating realities 5, 10, or sometimes even 20 years down the road.
In these conversations, there is a lot of discussion about what leadership looks like in the future: the skills leaders will need to have, the qualities they will need to possess, and the demands that will be asked of leaders. While it’s important to establish goals and standards for future leaders, I don’t think HR leaders have an equally clear picture of how to produce these kinds of leaders. This is not just my perspective; surveys of HR leaders have found that even though three-quarters of organizations prioritize internal promotion, only 20 percent have successors ready to fill critical roles.
What’s certain is that we know leaders don’t just appear when companies need them— they are developed with a careful balance of experience, learning, and time. In this article, I’ll explore a few things I’ve seen help improve this delicate process, and what leadership development trends can tell us about the roadblocks that HR leaders should be mindful of.
The Experiences That Build Leaders Are Disappearing
HR departments have long operated under the assumption that with enough time and resources, any early-career employee could be a future leader. It might seem a bit idealistic, but I’ve seen enough folks who were once considered “low-middle potential” employees rise through the ranks to know that you can never fully count someone out of the leadership track.
It’s likely not a surprise that AI is disrupting that picture. On the one hand, early-career roles are shrinking because work that many new professionals need to develop their professional readiness is being automated or redesigned. On the other hand, technical specialist roles, another reliable entry point, are under pressure as AI tools broaden access to information and skills, limiting the need for narrow expertise.
What Happens When the Entry Level Gets Automated Away?
The result of shifting hiring priorities is what SeramountHR is calling a career diamond: fewer entry points, more pressure in the middle, and senior roles increasingly dependent on lateral or external hiring rather than internal progression.
When these early-career roles disappear, so do many of the informal experiences that teach the judgment, influence, and critical thinking skills that are essential to developing the leadership capacity that every business depends on its leaders to provide.
Recently we’ve seen huge strides in making training more immersive, and technological advances such as AI-powered personalized learning are only going to make training programs better. However, the problem is that no matter how advanced the methods of leadership development become, most programs were not designed to effectively support today’s career architecture. As work experiences that once played a role in the development of future leaders become less available, organizations will need learning to carry more weight.
What Happens When Teaching Leadership Isn’t Enough?
I do not think the answer is to abandon formal instruction; we just can’t expect formal programs to do the entire job, especially when on-the-job experience is limited, and employers need to bolster traditional learning with experiential learning. To achieve that, leadership candidates need opportunities to make real decisions and solve real problems.
Managers Have No Time to Build the Bench
No matter what development model you build, managers will play a key role. Every minute that managers spend identifying potential in their team members or providing feedback to leadership candidates is invaluable to the long-term health of the leadership bench.
Yet the role of the modern manager is much less “coach” than we need it to be. Managers now spend about 40 percent of their time on administrative work and daily issues, while only 13 percent goes toward developing their people. Compounding the problem, that time is being distributed to more team members as the average number of direct reports per manager has risen nearly 50 percent since 2013.
What Happens When Development Is Always the “Work That Can Wait”?
When managers are constantly overloaded, urgent work crowds out developmental work in a vicious cycle that impedes the growth of their future leaders:
- Feedback becomes less frequent
- Stretch assignments are harder to structure and monitor
- Employees receive fewer opportunities to reflect on what they are learning
- Managers struggle to participate meaningfully in their own development
- Without intervention, the cycle continues
I would encourage HR leaders to focus on role design. Short-term fixes like wellness programs can help managers cope, but they don’t solve the underlying problem. Creating real capacity will require harder choices about what managers should stop doing, which responsibilities can be reassigned, and what value we place on developing future leaders.
Bottom Line: No Matter What the Future Holds, We Will Need Managers’ Ability to Execute Change
The C-suite may set direction, but leaders across every function take us to the destination.
Even though AI is a new technology, we are already beginning to see how it is creating an environment where disruption is constant. Over the next several years, I believe that employers are going to increasingly depend on their leaders to translate the “why” behind change and move their teams through the process of “how” change is executed.
This is not a problem that HR can recruit its way out of. External hiring may fill an immediate need, but it does not build a system that organizations can rely on. No matter what future you are preparing for, leadership development excellence is the key to truly adapting to the change we all see on the horizon.
Join the Conversation on How HR Can Respond
If you are interested in collaborating with other CHROs on how to build stronger leadership systems, I encourage you to join us at our upcoming experience on December 2–3 in Santa Monica. We will be sharing our latest signals on the workforce transitions that organizations must navigate to become future-ready and how CHROs can lead their organizations through this transformation.
