How Do You Make Progress Through Leadership & Professional Development?
Organizations don’t make progress simply because they have a strong strategy. They make progress because they have people capable of leading that strategy, developing others, making decisions, and turning priorities into action.
As technology and the workplace continue to evolve, leaders are being asked to adapt faster while providing the clarity, communication, coaching, and accountability their teams need to perform. Leadership development can no longer be reserved for a select few at the top. Organizations need capable leaders throughout the Roster.
How Leadership & Professional Development Have Changed
Leadership development is moving beyond occasional workshops and one-time training events. Organizations increasingly need development that is continuous, practical, and connected to the challenges leaders face in their everyday work. Current leadership research points toward experiential learning, coaching, peer learning, and opportunities to practice leadership skills rather than simply learning about them.
Technology is changing what leaders need as well. As AI takes on more analytical and administrative work, distinctly human capabilities—including judgment, communication, adaptability, relationship-building, and the ability to develop others—are becoming increasingly important. Deloitte’s human capital research similarly emphasizes that organizations have to rethink how humans and technology work together rather than treating workforce transformation as primarily a technology challenge.
“Organizations have to rethink how humans and technology work together rather than treating workforce transformation as primarily a technology challenge.”
“Managers, emerging leaders, and individual contributors all influence culture, execution, and the people around them.”
At the same time, leadership can’t exist only at the top of the organization. Managers, emerging leaders, and individual contributors all influence culture, execution, and the people around them. Progress requires organizations to continually develop the Roster so people are prepared not only for the roles they hold today, but for the responsibilities they will take on next.
Is the way you’re developing leaders preparing your organization for what comes next?
That’s where making progress begins.
What Gets in the Way of Progress?
Leadership development is often treated as something organizations provide rather than something leaders continually practice. But attending training isn’t the same as changing behavior. Progress happens when development becomes part of how people lead, communicate, coach, make decisions, and develop others.
Comfort Creep
Success can make leaders comfortable with the skills and approaches that have worked in the past. But as teams, technology, and expectations change, leaders have to remain curious, coachable, and willing to grow. Leadership development stops working the moment leaders believe they have arrived.
Misalignment
Leaders can have different interpretations of the organization's priorities, expectations, and culture. When the Target isn't clear, those differences travel throughout the Roster. Strong leadership development creates greater alignment around where the organization is going and how leaders are expected to help get it there.
Inconsistent Execution
Knowing what good leadership looks like doesn't guarantee it will show up consistently. Communication, coaching, feedback, accountability, and decision-making have to become behaviors leaders practice—not simply concepts they understand.
Accountability Gaps
Professional development requires ownership. Organizations can provide training, coaching, and resources, but leaders have to take responsibility for applying what they learn and developing the people around them.
Stalled Progress
Organizations can invest heavily in leadership programs without seeing meaningful behavioral change. When development stays in the training room instead of showing up in everyday leadership, learning may occur without producing progress.
The Make Progress Framework
Target
What kind of leaders does the organization need?
Define what effective leadership needs to look like at every level of the organization. The Target isn't simply completing a development program. It's building leaders who can strengthen culture, develop people, navigate change, execute priorities, and prepare the organization for what's next.Playbook
How will those leaders be developed?
Create a leadership development approach that combines learning with application. Training, coaching, feedback, mentoring, real-world experience, and opportunities to lead should reinforce the behaviors and capabilities the organization expects from its leaders.Roster
Who are we developing?
Leadership development shouldn't begin only after someone receives a title. Organizations make progress when they continually strengthen current leaders, prepare emerging leaders, and develop people throughout the Roster who can positively influence the performance of others.Progress Requires Developing Others
Leadership isn’t measured only by what a leader can accomplish personally. Great leaders increase the capabilities of the people around them.
Walter Bond teaches servant leadership as a model built around three responsibilities: encourage, support, and empower. A leader’s role is not simply to direct people, but to help them develop, perform at a higher level, and eventually take greater ownership themselves.
That philosophy is also central to Walter’s book, SWIM: The Shark, the Suckerfish, and the Parasite. One of Walter’s Sacred Six principles is that sharks elevate suckerfish. At its core, this principle is about mentorship—successful people intentionally investing in others, helping them grow, and elevating the people around them.
For organizations, that means leadership development can’t stop with developing the person who attends the program. The real multiplier happens when leaders take what they’ve learned and use it to encourage, support, empower, and develop the people around them.
Professional development creates its greatest impact when leaders don’t simply ask, “How can I become better?” They also ask, “Who am I helping become better?”
The strongest leaders don’t just make progress themselves. They develop people who can make progress without them.
Explore More Leadership & Professional Development Insights
You Promoted Your Best Performer. Did You Prepare Them to Lead?
Why success as an individual contributor doesn’t automatically prepare someone to lead, develop, and get results through other people.
You Announced the Change. Did You Create the Clarity?
Why successful change requires more than communicating what is different—it requires helping people understand why it matters and what they need to do next.
Ready To Make Progress?
The leaders your organization will need tomorrow are being developed today. The question is whether they are being intentionally prepared to lead people, navigate change, strengthen culture, and develop the next generation behind them.
Walter Bond helps organizations turn leadership and professional development into action—giving leaders practical principles they can apply to their own performance and use to elevate the people around them.