I spent years in the gleaming corner of Learning & Development known as Leadership Transformation. Not just trainings—experiences. High-gloss, high-budget, high-aspiration. Three, six, twelve-month programs wrapped in luxury. Branded decks. Five-star offsites. Farm-to-table catering. All in service of checking the box: “Leaders trained.”
And for a while, I believed in it.
But last year, something snapped. I couldn’t design one more beautiful slide for a room half-listening. Couldn’t watch one more workshop get swallowed whole by the same stale systems. Couldn’t keep pretending that better branding would fix what was broken.
Because here’s the truth: no offsite, no workbook, no model of adult learning can override the daily conditions that actively destabilize good leadership.
The best leadership development doesn’t happen in a classroom.
It happens in the moment.
It happens when someone steady stands beside you.
And if you’re lucky? That person is already on your payroll.
They’re called HR.
Not the version you trot out when someone complains.
Not the one that sends policy reminders.
I mean the real ones. The ones who lead quietly. Who coach in the margins. Who know exactly how to keep both the human and the business intact when things get messy.
For years, they’ve been the best underused leadership coaches in the building. They’ve walked with new managers through tough calls. Talked them down from bad ones. Balanced risk with reality. Helped people lead—not by theory, but by presence.
But somewhere along the way, the system rewrote their role.
It didn’t happen all at once. It happened quietly. In the name of scale. In the name of risk. In the name of “consistency.” Coaching got deprioritized. Documentation took its place.
Now HR spends more time prepping for depositions than developing leaders. Not because they want to—but because the system demands it. One shaky termination, one angry Glassdoor post—and suddenly the most important role in the company is reduced to recordkeeping.
But if you’re serious about leadership? You already have what you need.
You just need to let them do the job.
I’ve seen it.
I worked with a senior HR leader who was everything a training program tries to manufacture. Steady. Unshakable. Instinctive. The kind of person who makes coaching feel like breathing.
When a manager came in with a tough situation, they didn’t assign a workshop. They didn’t forward a link. They sat down. They listened. They helped them lead.
No jargon. No models. Just clarity, language, and guts.
That’s what most leadership programs miss: timing.
Learning doesn’t land when it’s scheduled.
It lands when it’s real.
When a team is fraying.
When a manager’s about to make the wrong call.
When a conflict is quietly poisoning trust.
That’s when the lesson sticks. That’s when the reflex gets built.
That’s when leadership is actually learned.
But we’ve built a system that waits.
Waits until there’s damage.
Waits until someone quits.
Waits until we’re in cleanup mode.
Then we send them to “training.”
But by then, it’s not development.
It’s damage control.
If we actually want better leaders, we have to stop waiting for the mess.
We have to stop treating coaching like a luxury and start treating it like oxygen.
Every organization has a choice: build reflexes before the break…
or keep calling in the ambulance after.
Your best coaches are already here.
Let them work.
And if you’re not sure who they are?
Look for the ones buried under the admin load.
I have little doubt there’s someone like this in your org right now.
You just don’t see them—because the system has hidden them.
They might have a coaching certification.
Maybe they studied psychology or behavioral science.
They’re fluent in conflict, team dynamics, and how humans actually grow.
And they’re itching to help. Not in theory. In the room. In the moment.
But instead of being unleashed as coaches, they’ve been deputized as compliance officers.
Every time they want to coach, they’re told to document.
Every time they want to guide, they’re told to cover liability.
And somewhere in between the open tabs and templated forms,
another manager flails and another culture slips.
You want better leaders?
Start by setting these people free.
Untether them from the fear.
Stop treating coaching as a legal risk.
It’s your best chance at building capability before a crisis.
Leadership doesn’t get better with more forms.
It gets better when the right people are empowered to step in early—before it all starts to unravel.