Making Leadership Development Intentional

By Ashlee Jensen, Altum Coaching Services

My last article explored how feeling seen and trusted can help people reconnect with trust in themselves. That trust matters for more than the relationship between a leader and employee: It also creates the conditions for development.

Growth requires vulnerability. To develop intentionally, we must be willing to look honestly at how we are showing up, recognize where our impact may differ from our intent, and try behaviors that may not yet feel natural.

That’s difficult to do when development doesn’t feel safe.

When a leader is struggling, it can be tempting to assume there’s a gap in knowledge, skill, or capability. We may increase oversight, provide more direction, recommend a book or course, or send someone to training.
Sometimes, that’s exactly what’s needed. Training can be incredibly valuable for building knowledge and acquiring new skills. But a performance challenge does not automatically tell us where the problem resides.

Looking Beyond the Skill Gap
A leader can be highly capable and still struggle. The challenge may be a lack of knowledge or skill. But it may also reflect unclear expectations, competing priorities, role demands, individual patterns and preferences, insufficient support, or an environment that makes the desired behavior difficult to sustain.

And sometimes, a leader understands exactly what’s expected but has not yet learned how to translate that understanding into behavior.

There’s often a gap between knowing what to do and being able to consistently do it.

Consider delegation. A leader can learn the principles of effective delegation and fully understand why it matters. But knowing how to delegate is different from recognizing the moment when the pressure is high, something needs to get done, and doing it yourself feels faster, easier, and more certain.

That’s where awareness matters: Can I recognize my instinct to step in? Can I understand what’s driving it? Can I notice the impact it may be having on the people around me? And can I create enough space to make a different choice?

Awareness creates choice. Turning that choice into a new way of leading takes intentional practice.

Development From the Inside Out
Before prescribing development, perhaps we need to create enough space to understand the person experiencing it. Ask them: What are you experiencing? What are you noticing? What feels difficult about this? What support would be helpful?
These questions do more than identify a skill gap. They invite the leader into the developmental process.

And that matters because people don’t experience or integrate development in the same way. We cannot assume two leaders will walk away from the same training, book, or conversation having made the same meaning from it or knowing how to apply it in the same way.

One person may readily connect a new concept to their work. Another may prefer clearly defined expectations, concrete examples, and a clear connection between the concept and how it translates into action. Someone else may need time to reflect, an opportunity to talk through what they are noticing, or support recognizing how their natural tendencies are influencing their behavior.

Effective development begins with understanding the person, not simply prescribing the solution. It also requires enough safety for honest self-examination.

When development feels primarily corrective or evaluative, people may naturally become more guarded. It’s difficult to become curious about our limitations, acknowledge an unintended impact, or experiment with something unfamiliar when we are focused on protecting ourselves.

But when people feel seen, supported, and safe enough to become curious about their own behavior, feedback can become information rather than judgment.

A developmental need does not have to mean, "I’m not capable." It can simply mean, "There’s another way I can approach this.”

Creating Meaning Before Action
Even awareness may not be enough. Trying something new requires effort.  It asks us to let go of what is familiar, even temporarily, and practice something that we may not yet feel confident doing. For an already-compressed leader, that effort matters.

If the reason for changing is little more than "because this is what you were taught" or "because this is what we expect," it can be difficult to sustain the motivation to keep practicing when the old behavior feels easier.

Development becomes more meaningful when leaders can connect what they are learning to something that matters to them. For example: Why does this matter in my role? What impact is my current approach having? How would I like it to be different? What kind of leader am I trying to become?

What looks like resistance may reflect the discomfort of letting go of what feels comfortable and trying something they haven’t yet mastered.

That connection between awareness and action is important. We are not simply asking someone to perform a different behavior. We are helping them understand why the change matters and what becomes possible when they practice it.

From Learning to Practice
Training and coaching can both play important roles in this process, but they serve different purposes.

Training can introduce knowledge, teach skills, and provide useful frameworks. Coaching creates space to explore how that learning intersects with the individual: their strengths, behavioral tendencies, experiences, role, and work environment. It can also help identify the barriers, fears, or patterns that may emerge when someone tries to put that learning into practice.

Much of leadership development then happens in ordinary moments: a difficult conversation, a decision made under pressure, the choice to delegate instead of stepping in, or the moment we pause long enough to recognize our impact.
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The workplace isn’t only where leadership development is applied, but also where much of leadership development actually happens. And with practice, something that initially requires considerable thought and effort can gradually become another way a leader knows how to respond.

Creating the Conditions for Growth
Perhaps before asking "What training does this leader need?" we first need to ask: What’s really happening here? And then: What would help this leader practice something different?

Leadership development is not something we simply deliver to people. It is something we intentionally cultivate with them.
That means creating enough safety for awareness, enough space to understand what the individual is experiencing, enough meaning to make change worth the effort, and enough opportunity to practice a different response.

And once that practice begins, another question emerges: What helps those new behaviors last?

Leadership in Home Care
This is the fifth in a series examining what effective leadership looks like in today's home care environment. The last post explored cultivating trust among your leaders. The next article will focus on sustaining leadership growth over time.

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Ashlee Jensen is the Founder of Altum Coaching Services, with 20+ years of experience in the home care industry, supporting leaders through growth and change. She believes meaningful leadership begins with awareness, deepens through alignment, and is sustained through intentional action.