Look for leadership already happening before you train for it

# The problem: training starts with what's missing Leadership development often begins by asking which competencies an employee lacks. That can miss leadership that already exists in daily work. People—frequently women—may handle complex problems, coach colleagues, or influence decisions without naming those actions as leadership. If L&D relies heavily on self-perception or visible, positional criteria, it can overlook valuable capability.

# How leadership identity forms

# Look for leadership that's easy to miss Certain leadership behaviors show up in everyday work rather than on stage. They include:

• Contextual judgment: noticing when standard processes won't solve a problem and choosing a better approach.
• Informal influence: shaping decisions without using positional authority.
• Conflict navigation: keeping difficult conversations productive so work continues.
• Developing others: helping colleagues reason through problems so they make better decisions independently.

Standard competency inventories often catch visible acts—presentations, formal decisions, project leadership—but not these quieter patterns. That creates blind spots in development planning.

# The Leadership-In-Motion check: questions L&D should ask first Before creating a training plan, examine the work people are already trusted to do. Use these concrete questions:

• Where does this person already influence outcomes beyond formal authority?
• Which decisions change because they contributed, and where do colleagues seek their perspective before moving forward?
• What difficult situations do colleagues bring to them repeatedly—especially ambiguous problems where process alone won't answer?
• What do they notice before others do (early recognition of client risk, team tension, or flawed approaches)?
• Where are they developing other people's capability (helping colleagues prepare for hard conversations or reason through problems so they can act independently)?

Compare these external signals with the employee's own description of their work. Differences reveal capability that assessments based only on self-report will miss.

# How this changes development choices When L&D locates leadership already in motion, development becomes targeted and practical. Instead of prescribing generic leadership modules, teams can: map current influence networks, design stretch experiences that convert informal influence into visible impact, coach people to name and own their leadership, and create role-specific practice opportunities for conflict navigation and contextual judgment.

# Bottom line Begin leadership assessment by mapping where people are already asked to lead. That produces fairer, more accurate development priorities and helps surface leadership that daily work demonstrates but self-perception or formal titles might hide.