By: Robert David, Faculty Director @ Silicon Valley Executive Education
Take a quick glance at any recent mainstream Leadership Development Program (LDP) research and you’ll likely be confronted with some grim statistics:
Korn Ferry reports only 14% of CEOs have confidence in their leadership talent’s ability to execute and expand on business strategies.
Gartner findings indicate only 20% of HR leaders are effectively able to demonstrate the positive impact leadership development has on their company’s overall business.
Between 2009 and 2023, the likelihood of an individual failing in a new leadership/executive role within the first 18 months held fairly steady at roughly 40%.
These stats suggest many truths about the state of leadership development in 2026. Chief among them? Today’s CEOs are treated like leadership development passengers, not drivers.
The above data points—like so many others in our current literature—barely factor leaders into leadership development at all. Instead, the research is often compiled from an HR or CHRO perspective, fashioning LDPs solely as pre-packaged HR deliverables and casting CEOs in supporting roles as peripheral sponsors, lukewarm participants, or basic budget holders.
This framing is no accident; the gap between “CEO as passive LDP observer” and “CEO as proud LDP architect” is very real. And yet, my perspective from the executive development side of the table tells me we need to let CEOs take the LDP wheel.
Consider these more positive metrics:
TeamStage uncovers 62% of “successfully completed” business projects are backed by “supportive” sponsors.
Gallup finds a full 69% of employees who “strongly agree” their leaders make them “feel enthusiastic about the future” are actively engaged at work.
A Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning paper cites an i4cp/ATD report pointing to a “strong correlation” between enlisting leaders as hands-on teachers for formalized LDPs and positive “market results and learning effectiveness.”
With this collective case for robust executive LDP involvement in mind, we’re faced with a few burning questions: How can a CHRO or CLO influence upward? How can they get CEOs more heavily invested as architect drivers of LDPs across entire organizations—from the C-suite on down?
I submit the following answers:
Be specific: Don’t pitch a program. Pitch executive action.
A common mistake most CHROs make is presenting an LDP as a sort of conceptual philosophy for CEOs to endorse. But for an LDP program to be truly successful, it must be far more concrete. And executives should be given a definitive set of asks to get it off the ground.
Before pitching to your CEO, be sure to assess key stakeholder “needs, gaps, opportunities, and strategic priorities” and let these inform your program structure. Securing this foundation for your LDP—though mind-bendingly rare in many instances—is something both industry leaders and behavioral scientists can get behind:
Forbes Councils Member David James warns, “People naturally align their political capital with initiatives that have momentum and serve their own strategic agendas. If [an LDP] isn’t getting traction at the top, the most likely explanation is that it isn’t addressing anything executives are actually worried about.”
Meanwhile, leadership scientist and Behavioral Sciences author Dr. Jaason M. Geerts notes the right amount of pre-pitch prep allows development experts to “…ensure that the purpose, priorities, desired outcomes, personnel, and content of leadership development will best serve the organization as it evolves,” adding, “This engagement also increases the likelihood that contributors will share ownership of the success of programs.”
To develop your own refined pitch, I recommend bringing three time-bound asks to your CEO and/or relevant executives:
- A commitment to a 90-minute working session (as opposed to a kickoff speech) in which they’ll personally define five leadership behaviors the LDP strategy will require over the next 18–24 months. Note: These should be behaviors. Not competencies. Not values. Tangible behaviors tied to specific bets the company is making on leadership development.
- An early pledge to engage in specially defined, regularly recurring appearances (e.g., teaching a module, conducting a fireside Q&A at a scheduled cadence, etc.), so C-suite participants can put these dates on the books before their calendars fill up with other obligations.
- A set seat in the succession/calibration review for the organization’s top two layers, for which the executive will be tasked with making definitive calls re: 15 to 20 actual people (not just rubber-stamping slides with employee bios).
It’s worth highlighting none of these asks demands the executive/CEO “believe” in or endorse leadership development. Rather, they require around six hours of face time and a handful of genuine, actionable decisions. CHROs/CLOs will discover these two things—time and decision-making— are much easier “yesses” that inspire true ownership, if only because once someone makes a call, they’re more likely to be invested in whether the call was the right one moving forward.
Use your board. Not your stat sheet.
Market-trend research outfit Proshare recently recommended that those learning professionals having trouble landing executive LDP “buy-in” should look outside the immediate C-suite for help.
And with good reason.
Obviously, what we’re after here is more than a submissive buy-in, but this recommendation still fits our purpose. Here’s why:
CHROs/CLOs effective in securing rigorous participation from executives tend to work board relationships just as hard as CEO relationships.
Their logic? CEOs already know their talent bench is thin and that leadership development is a proverbial “nice to have.” These facts alone aren’t enough to move the needle on LDP ownership. What does move the needle is when the board comes around asking questions.
If CHROs can get “Top-Tier-Layer Bench Strength” on their board’s talent/succession agenda as a standing item, odds are their CEO will start treating LD like a matter of personal accountability, rather than just a routine HR metric. This will help shrink the gap between a passive, numbers-based LDP sign-off and an active reclaiming of LDP initiatives.
Start at the top and be flexible.
“It’s important…to let them think to some degree it’s their idea.”
So says Ashley Amiri, VP of Training and Guest Experiences for Huky Entertainment, on mapping development efforts to executive needs.
This brings up a critical point to keep in mind as you build out an LDP and present it to your C-suite: Learning development needs room to grow, certainly, but move too fast or push too hard and executives might withdraw their time and interest.
I suggest you remain nimble and start “small,” focusing on engaging executives via the three specified asks above. If you come on too strong with “We need this activated now across VPs, directors, managers, and individual contributors,” what you’re offering is a templated program at scale—and programs like that are easily delegated and quickly forgotten.
But if you encourage your CEO to complete the recommended asks for their direct reports and for one layer below (i.e., get them showing up to teach, making succession decisions, and passionately investing their time while owning the results), any positive outcomes become a visible proof of concept, and downward flow becomes an obvious next step. You’ll probably find the CEO will ask you to begin extending the LDP initiative down the chain as they look to widen their initial success.
In other words, you’ll have essentially convinced them a downward LDP cascade was their own brilliant idea.
Anchor your pitch to what’s already in play.
Amiri also observes the battle for leadership development is a battle for attention. On lukewarm executives, she says:
“Knowing what’s important to them is going to help you frame the story more effectively…So, if you can say, ‘You know, we’re doing this leadership development program, and, Bob, I remember when we had that conversation about how great it would be if we had all of our leaders who were fully trained in X, or the impact it would have on the business if our leaders were more proficient at [Y,]’…you’re already [generating participation]because you’re using an interaction you had with them where they were passionate and bought into something.”
This raises yet another crucial leadership development truth I’ve found to be self-evident:
CHROs who can influence CEOs into co-owning LDPs almost always anchor them to a challenge the CEO was already losing sleep over or a passion already keeping them up at night.
Remember that generic, “our leadership bench is weak”-type statements are doomed to compete with everything else for your CEO’s time and consideration. But if you take pains to align your pitch with live problems or passion projects that already occupy executive attention—a failed transition, say, or an upcoming M&A integration, a strategy refresh requiring a deeper talent bench, etc.—your interface transforms into a conversation about relevant, real-time company issues, as opposed to a pitch your CEO can simply kick down the road.
Choose your words carefully.
As the Harvard Business Publishing paper referenced above cautions, most leaders are naturally “time-crunched and overextended,” clinging to more immediate priorities like “dealing with today’s cris[es]” or focusing on results in the here and now.
As such, your LDP approach must be both thoughtful and judicious, with clear, bite-sized assignments that won’t register as dreary life sentences. To do this, make sure your requests are modest and specified: minimal in scale but detailed in their directive. Less “Please own this massive program for us, boss,” and more “Make these definitive decisions, apply them at these specialized levels, at this prescribed cadence, and we’ll be well on our way.”
The most essential takeaway? CEOs don’t resist leadership development ownership in the abstract; they resist being handed a programmed deliverable they had no real say in while they’re juggling so many other demands.
Ask them to demonstrate their leadership expertise through precise decision-making and pre-determined participation tied to real-world challenges, and they’ll feel more like they’ve made a personal stake in an ongoing journey toward progress.
And ownership will follow.
In short: Hand them the keys, let them drive, and soon…they’ll own the road.
Sources:
https://brimco.io/leadership/leadership-statistics/
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-asia/four-steps-to-success-for-new-ceos
https://teamstage.io/project-management-statistics
https://www.gallup.com/learning/474638/effective-leadership-training.aspx
https://www.harvardbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/19687_CL_LeaderLedDev_Paper_Nov2018.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11505461/#B7-behavsci-14-00955
https://proshare.co/articles/getting-leadership-buy-in-for-training-initiatives-the-role-of-ld-professionals?menu=Business&classification=Read&category=People https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMfGfPi6pqc