Leadership Challenges
From building trust to strengthening your leadership pipeline, the leadership challenges organizations face are measurable and solvable. Explore eight of the most common challenges, what our research says about each one, and the proven, strengths-based solutions that address them.
Why It Matters
Most leadership challenges don't come from a lack of effort or good intentions. They come from a small number of specific behaviors that leaders either do well or don't, and from development efforts that focus on knowledge instead of changing those behaviors.
For more than 20 years, Zenger Folkman has studied what separates extraordinary leaders from average ones. That research lets us pinpoint which behaviors matter most for each challenge, measure where your leaders stand today, and build the strengths that move results.
2M+
360-degree assessments in our research database
20+
Years of research on leadership effectiveness
8
Common leadership challenges, each with a proven path forward
Explore by Challenge
Choose the challenge your organization is facing to see the warning signs, what the research shows, and how to solve it.
01
Move past knowledge transfer. Measurably change the specific behaviors that drive results and build a few of them into signature strengths.
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02
Most managers give advice and call it coaching. Build the ask-first, listen-deeply habits that actually develop people.
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03
Senior leaders plateau on habits built over a career. Data-driven executive coaching is how those habits finally change.
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04
Your best individual contributors are the leadership bench you already have. Develop them before promotion, not after.
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05
Trust is the strongest predictor of whether people follow a leader. Learn the three behaviors that build it and the ones that erode it.
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06
Most important work is done by teams, yet most teams are managed on instinct. Make team effectiveness measurable.
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07
A thin pipeline usually starts with identifying the wrong people. Find and develop real future potential at every level.
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08
Thirty-behavior posters change nothing. Build a short, evidence-based framework validated against real performance.
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Every challenge is different, but the path to solving it follows the same research-backed approach.
01
Validated 360-degree assessments show where leaders and teams stand today, benchmarked against our global research database, so development targets the behaviors that matter most.
02
Our research shows that a few profound strengths separate extraordinary leaders from average ones. Leaders focus their development on the strengths that will have the greatest impact.
03
Individual development plans, coaching, and follow-up pulse surveys keep leaders accountable and show measurable behavior change over time, not just a good workshop.
Latest Study
See the four leadership skills that set exceptional leaders apart, drawn from our latest research, and what they mean for the leadership challenges your organization is facing right now.
Get the ReportLeadership challenges are the recurring obstacles that keep leaders and organizations from performing at their best, such as low trust, managers who don't coach, thin leadership pipelines, or teams that underperform. Most trace back to a small set of leadership behaviors that can be measured and developed.
The challenges we see most often are developing leadership skills that actually change behavior, building coaching skills in managers, coaching senior executives, developing individual contributors into leaders, building trust in the workplace, improving team effectiveness, strengthening the leadership pipeline, and defining a leadership competency framework.
Start by measuring the behaviors behind the challenge with reliable multi-rater feedback. Then focus development on a few high-impact strengths, support it with coaching and a clear development plan, and re-measure to confirm the change is real.
We combine research from more than 2 million assessments with strengths-based leadership development, coaching, team development, and 360-degree assessments. Each solution is built around the specific behaviors our data shows matter most for the challenge you're facing.
Talk with one of our experts about the leadership challenges your organization faces and the best way to solve them.
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