Why leadership development at the top still matters
I didn’t expect to be standing in front of more than 200 people last week.
At the Australasian College of Health Service Management (ACHSM) Asia–Pacific Health Leadership Congress in Darwin, I presented research on the CEO experience—what attracts, retains, and develops public hospital CEOs. But what made the session land wasn’t the data. It was the CEO standing beside me.
She spoke about what keeps her in the role and what’s shaped her as a leader. Three board chairs who invested in her development. A peer network she’d built and maintained over years. These weren’t nice-to-haves. They were why she was still there, still growing, still committed.
Her honesty filled the room in a way research findings alone never could.
And it raised a question I’ve been thinking about ever since: why is access to what she described so inconsistent?
This question goes to the heart of leadership development at the top, where complexity is highest and support is often least structured.
Executive development is mostly left to chance
The research confirms what many senior leaders already know. The relationships that matter most at the top—developmental board chairs, strong peer networks, executive coaching —are what help retain leaders and continue to develop them once they’re in role.
But access to these relationships is largely left to chance.
Some leaders have developmental board chairs. Others don’t.
Some build strong peer networks. Others are too isolated or stretched to make it happen.
Some organisations fund executive coaching—six sessions, perhaps, enough to start but not enough to sustain. Others expect leaders to sort it out entirely themselves.
And this isn’t just happening in health. It shows up wherever leadership is complex and accountability is high—education, government, professional services, corporates.
Development thins out at the highest level
It’s not that nothing exists. Executive education programs exist. Peer coaching cohorts exist. Conferences like Darwin exist.
But they’re supplementary, not structural. Optional, not embedded. Often self-funded, self-initiated, or offered in doses too small to make a lasting difference.
Compare that to what happens at other levels.
A graduate gets an induction program, a mentor, a cohort—built in and resourced.
A middle manager gets leadership development as part of the role—expected and funded.
A senior leader gets whatever they can piece together, if they have the awareness, energy, and luck to make it happen.
Why is development at the level where complexity is highest the most dependent on chance?
Systems haven’t adapted to what’s needed
I don’t have a complete answer. But I have a hypothesis.
Senior leadership development can’t be standardised the way programs for emerging leaders can. It needs to be contextual, relational, personalised. That makes it harder to budget for, harder to measure, harder to roll out systematically.
So instead of finding new ways to support it, we’ve settled for token gestures that check a box without actually meeting the need.
The people carrying the most complex load, in the most visible roles, are expected to fund and arrange their own sustainability. Not because they don’t need development, but because what they need doesn’t fit the model.
The consequences are predictable
When developmental relationships are present—like they were for the CEO in Darwin—they transform what’s possible.
When they’re absent, we lose talent, capability, and the conditions for leaders to keep growing in the roles we most need them to stay in.
In the health research, 88% of CEOs said peer relationships with other CEOs were essential. A third had executive coaches. Many credited board chairs with shaping their leadership.
There was no formal onboarding for new CEOs. No structured support. Just figure it out.
And when asked about recent system reforms, 47% said they were now planning to stay in the role for a shorter period than previously intended. For regional and rural CEOs, that figure was 64%.
That’s not a sustainability problem.
That’s a design problem.
A question for every senior leader
If you lead at a senior level, what is actually developing you right now—not your team, but you?
If the answer is “not much” or “I’m not sure,” that’s not a personal failing.
It’s a gap worth closing.
Image by Sanket Barik from Pexels
