Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year on leadership development programs. Some firms are experts at these programs. They've been delivering them for decades.

So why would we build an app for leaders if there are so many experts out there?

Number one reason

As you'll see below, 56% of leaders get no leadership training. There are many reasons for this but let's start with this: leadership training is inaccessible to leaders.

Many leadership training programs are too long, too expensive, too theoretical or too complex to use. This puts them beyond the reach of most leaders. They don't have the time, money or energy to get leadership training.

Which means the majority of leaders are learning on the job by trial and error. Which makes a lonely, challenging job even more difficult.

Maybe there’s a good reason not to train leaders. I can’t think of one. But there are lots of reasons why leaders should be trained. Let's review some of them.

1. There are LOTS of leaders

Let's define a "leader" as someone who has several people who report to them. This would include executives, managers, supervisors and team leads.

Precise global figures are hard to pin down but leaders' share of the workforce ranges between 10% and 15%. With global employment between 3.3 and 3.5 billion people, this suggests there are 330 million to 525 million leaders in the world.

The numbers in Canada, the U.S., UK and Australia are similar. They suggest a combined total of 41 million leaders.

With all these leaders affecting all those workers, surely training is a good thing.

2. Leaders affect EVERYTHING in organizations

Each leader's impact, for better or worse, is multiplied by the number of people on their team with the following results:

  • Performance differences that equate to 10% of annual sales.

    In my work with retailers and bankers I've seen differences in per capita revenue between leaders ranging as high as 457%. Granted, not all of it is related to leadership; our rule of thumb was that 30% of the performance difference between teams was directly attributable to team leaders.
  • Employee retention. It's by now common knowledge that employees don't leave organizations, they leave bad leaders. Similarly, leaders are less likely to stay when their leaders do little to support them.

    The impact of lost talent—especially excess or unnecessary losses—is expensive, reduces performance, delays projects, loses organizational expertise and causes relational harm inside and outside the organization. In short, poor retention significantly affects organizational risk.
  • Leader succession pipeline. Widespread leadership training builds business continuity and supports consistent culture, values and knowledge.

    That said, while 83% of companies say that developing leaders at all levels is important, only 5% do.
  • Morale and engagement at all levels of the organization affect nearly everything that people do, from attendance to creativity to collaboration to productivity.

When leadership training improves these things it drives significant and long-lasting ROI. However…

3. Leadership training DOESN'T HIT THE MARK

Despite billions of dollars spent every year training leaders, many programs fall short of expectations. Criticisms include it being too theoretical, too generic, out-of-date, too short, not personalized to the leader or their team and difficult to apply.

To top it off, it can be difficult to measure training’s impact because some of its benefits are long-term and diffuse. This causes a real problem for senior leaders who make financial decisions.

Harvard Business School, in their “State of Leadership Development Report,” said 75% of organizations rate their leadership development efforts as "not very effective" and only 18% claim they are "very effective."

Ouch.

4. A MAJORITY of leaders don't get trained

Despite the huge numbers of people in leadership roles and despite their significant impact on an organization's financial performance and risk profile, many leaders have little to no formal training in how to lead.

Gallup's latest global workplace report found only about 44% of the world's managers say they have received management training (meaning that 56% have not).

New managers can fare even worse. For example, 82% of UK managers and 58% of US managers enter their first leadership role without any formal management or leadership training.

Of course, new managers DO gain experience in their new roles. Much of this will rely on what they learned from their former managers or their current peers/mentors. This on-the-job learning without any formal training sees them at risk of ending up as "accidental managers" who learn mostly by trial and error.

Does this feel like the best way to prepare leaders?

5. All of this is compounded by how WORK HAS CHANGED

The nature of work has changed radically since 1880. The modern workplace hires people for their minds rather than their muscles. Teams rely significantly on collaboration whether it be in innovation, problem-solving or customer service. Workplace tools are far more complex and change constantly.

Untrained leaders or, perhaps worse, leaders who have learned on-the-job from older leaders, may well fall back on traditional "Linear Leadership" behaviors that rely on hierarchy and authority rather than coaching and collaboration.

This leaves far—far!—too many modern teams being led with out-dated leadership styles.

YIKES!

Taken together, the above points are an alarming commentary on leadership training. It’s often expensive, out-dated, complicated, impractical, impersonal and inaccessible—an altogether dissatisfying experience that leaves leaders, their teams and their organizations unhappy and underperforming.

With these things in mind, we decided to reimagine leadership training from a clean whiteboard. What could we do with fresh insights and modern tools?

In my next posts I’ll walk through our reimagined solution, why it works and then how it works. And I’ll invite you to try it out for yourself for free.

Warm regards,

Alex

The Circular Leader app will be available for your iPhone or iPad in Q3 2025 and a short time later on Android devices. The app is FREE, with no time limit. Get it and use it forever, at no cost.

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