Why leadership development matters
82% of new leaders aren’t given any training, and that has a far greater negative impact than we admit
Being a leader is hard
Have you ever felt lonely, worried you’re not good enough to do your job, wondered if your organisation is deeply dysfunctional, or been afraid everything is about to go horribly wrong?
If you’re nodding, you’re normal.
Pretty much every leader I speak to has imposter thoughts that make them doubt themselves. Many of them put on a mask of who they think they need to be to succeed.
And every organisation exists in its own bubble, so leaders can end up thinking their problems are unique. But they’re not.
Every leadership team struggles with the same things
Being a leader means forever wrestling with issues because you’re human, you lead humans, and we’re all imperfect.
Teams aren’t software you debug.
The good news is your challenges aren’t unique or insurmountable.
And if you get things wrong, it doesn’t make you a bad leader. It makes you human.
Being a better leader starts with self-management
Emotional contagion is real. If you lose your shit, your team will follow. And while a healthy degree of self-doubt keeps you humble; you don’t have to believe all the self-sabotaging thoughts that come along.
Managing your emotions is vital. But were you ever taught how?
Leadership development helps you figure out how your mind works and show you how to use emotions as data.
You create mental space, so you can choose your response to thoughts and feelings rather than reacting in a kneejerk way. Then you learn how to use these skills to lead your team.
Better leaders get better business results
Better humans make better leaders.
If you develop your leaders’ ability to have courageous conversations, communicate clearly, offer and accept feedback, they’ll build better relationships at work and in life.
And leadership is an area where trickledown actually works.
Boost your leaders’ skills to transform your culture, increase trust, reduce stress, and improve results from retention to your bottom line. They’ll then use those skills to develop their team members too.
What happens when you don’t upskill your leaders?
Poor leaders have a big negative impact on your bottom line
Did you know that 82% of managers are promoted without formal training? But organisations don’t join the dots between their lack of investment in leaders and staff churn.
The numbers are sobering:
- Only 23% of employees think their leader is effective.
- 33% of employees cite poor leadership as their reason for quitting.
- 50% of employees with poor leaders are planning to leave.
Replacing a member of staff costs 50% to 300% of their annual salary, depending on the complexity of the role. Not to mention the impact on team members who have to pick up the slack in the meantime, and the decrease in customer satisfaction that goes alongside having stressed-out staff.
Recruiting to replace staff who leave because of poor leadership may be costing you a fortune each year.
How much could you save if staff turnover dropped 20%?
It's not surprising many senior leaders don’t rate learning
This lack of investment in learning becomes understandable when you remember that the senior leaders making budget decisions today began their career in a business environment when training was pretty dire.
Two days of training in small, windowless rooms with a 200-page workbook and 95 slides read verbatim by a “sage on the stage”, while sitting on uncomfortable chairs, and endured a catered lunch of soggy sandwiches.
If that’s all they know of professional development, their cynicism makes sense.
However, what these leaders are missing is that things have evolved in training in the last 20 years. Today leadership development is based on organisational and high-performance psychology and the science of learning. It works and it delivers strong results. It can even be fun!
How good do you want your business to be?
Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got.
If you’re not pushing boundaries or learning new skills you’re going to stay stuck with the status quo.
Progress all comes down to vision. If you don’t have a sense of how much better your organisation could be, you’re not going to invest in doing things differently.
But if you’re ambitious and hungry for more, leadership development offers enormous ROI.
I’d love to talk with you about what your leaders and teams need so they can grow, stretch, and achieve their goals.
Get in touch
If you’d like to find out more about how I can help you level up your leadership, get in touch through my contact form, or book your free, 30-min chemistry check.
I’m here to support your managers to show up in their full power and become the high-trust, high-impact leaders you need
My approach
Effective leaders put humanity first
1: Self-awareness is the foundation of leadership
Know your strengths so you can play to them. Understand your motives, values, and goals so you can act with integrity. Keep your shadows in front of you, they can only take you down from behind.
3: Cultivate relationships
Solid relationships smooth friction in high-pressure times. When the inevitable shit hits the fan, you don’t have to waste time negotiating who’s who in the zoo and who’s got the bigger desk. You can pull together to navigate crises faster when you’ve built trust.
5: You don’t need all the answers
Respect the insight, knowledge, and wisdom of your frontline team. They do the work and they’ll have ideas for how to improve things. Provide space for your team to come up with the answers. Guide, support, and cheerlead them as they do.
2: Compassion for yourself and others is essential
Cut yourself some slack. You’re human, you’re dealing with humans, and we’re all messy, imperfect people. Making mistakes isn’t an issue. What matters is how you fix it when you get things wrong.
4: Cultivate curiosity
Explore possibility. Imagine how much better things could be. Embrace positive rebellion. If rules get in the way of good work, break them. If you hear the words, “That’s the way we’ve always done things,” it’s a good sign you’re looking at an outdated rule.
6: Take one step at a time
Break stuff right down. You don’t have to do everything at once. What’s one thing you can do that will help improve your situation? Take that step because if you don’t do that, none of the rest will happen. Because Rome wasn’t built in a day, but part of it was.
The week I turned 18 I left my reserved Kiwi family and went to live with a wonderful, kind, chaotic, exuberant family in Brazil for a year.
I discovered a whole other side of me. Free from others’ expectations I was playful, high energy, and influential. But when I came home, the pressure of my environment meant I fell back into being pre-Brazil Daria.
It took 10 years to unbottle my true self again. Not only was that intolerable personally, but it held me back professionally.
And that experience taught me how environment shapes how safe you feel to show up in your full, authentic power. Today, when I encounter organisations where people treat one another like 2D robots, I know that—without trusting relationships—they’re throttling their team’s potential, and when they face the inevitable crisis, they won’t get through intact.
Top: With my Brazilian and New Zealand families in 1995
Bottom: With my host sister Paola and her son Raphi in 2015
What happens when new leaders aren’t given any training
At a neighbourhood barbecue when I was seven, a group of us kids wanted to go to the playground up the road.
The adults told me—the youngest one there—to make sure everybody was back at 5:00pm.
But when it was time to go back, the other kids wanted to keep playing.
I still remember how I felt crushed by my responsibility and terrified I’d fail.
That was a classic first-time leadership experience. I’d been put in charge but not given any training, tools, or strategy. And my authority hadn’t been conveyed to the other kids.
I was doing my best to meet my KPI, but there was no teamwork or support. And 82% of new managers are in the same boat.
Even with support, leadership is tough
When I became a manager, my first boss was an amazing mentor and coach. It was also a great organisation to cut my teeth because they did communication training for everybody. Yet even with that support, I struggled.
How much worse is it for all the new leaders who don’t get help?
If you haven’t had leadership training, you’ll have skill gaps
In my last corporate role, I was nominated by my fellow managers to lead professional development for team leaders and middle managers. And I remember being surprised people got so much out of the first sessions because, in my mind, it was fairly basic stuff. How could they not know it?
Today, I know better—82% of managers are promoted to leadership without any training. They can go years without receiving any dedicated leadership development. Most leaders don’t know the fundamentals of leadership because they’ve been let down by the system. And that’s not their fault.
I’m here to fill that gap, supporting senior leadership teams to level up together and giving new managers the practical tools they need to lead. Most importantly, I’m here to build high-trust, high-impact leadership teams that understand the power of making it safe for people to be their full selves.
I like to think 18-year-old Daria would approve.
Invest in your leadership skills
I offer 1:1 leadership coaching, group sessions, and leadership development programmes packed with practical tools, energising exercises, and real-life application. If you’d like to find out more about how I can help you level up your leadership, get in touch through my contact form, or book your free, 30-min chemistry check.
