Leadership Development: Why It Still Matters in 2025
Background
In 2010, after many years working in Apprenticeship Development, both as a trainer and a manager, I moved into a Management Development Coach role. At the time, I didn’t realise just how much experience I’d gained over the years — and how much it would continue to grow. By 2014, I had been promoted to Operations Manager with responsibility for over 30 Management Development Coaches. This not only deepened my understanding of management development but also cemented and expanded my own leadership skills.
A recent 2025 YouGov survey stated that 82% of people entering management roles in the UK still have no formal leadership training — a statistic I can directly relate to. This was further supported by findings showing that 33% of managers and 29% of employees leave organisations due to negative relationships with their managers.
Personally, I don’t believe this is a coincidence.
Over my career, I have experienced some excellent management and leadership development — but from a very small number of line managers. Three to be exact: Anita D, Phil W and Dave H (if you know, you’ll know). However, it didn’t come from a structured leadership programme designed to develop me as a manager — which is a shame because on many occasions over the years, I’ve had to learn from my mistakes. And some of those mistakes I regret to this day. Sadly, this remains the case for so many managers out there even in 2025.
So you can imagine my excitement when I was given the opportunity to develop not only a Senior Management/Leadership Programme but also a Middle Management/Leadership Programme for the UK arm of a global damage restoration business.
What followed has shaped my thinking about how to approach this type of development — and how it could be made accessible to smaller UK businesses, not just corporate giants.
For clarity, throughout this blog when I refer to a ‘leader’, this includes individuals at every level, regardless of their job title or pay grade. Leadership is about actions, not job descriptions.
Why Should You Develop Your Managers and Leaders?
Well, fundamentally, you don’t have to. You can leave them to find their own way, and plenty of people will tell you that’s perfectly effective. The question they should ask themselves is: what is the cost of doing nothing?
Where there isn’t a budget line, there generally isn’t a focus — so doing nothing costs nothing, right? Wrong. I refer you back to the earlier part of this blog where I highlighted the percentage of people leaving organisations due to poor management relationships.
This statistic applies to managers themselves too — it’s an issue at every level of an organisation.
If we take those numbers as our guide, the cost of not developing your people is much higher than most realise. From UK recruitment costs, lost productivity, disrupted teams and increased staff turnover to the hidden cost of goodwill being eroded. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen organisations trade on employee goodwill, asking more of people while offering little in return. And by the way — I don’t necessarily mean financially.
Some people even feel embarrassed to admit that their team needs a leader, when in fact the most effective managers are often those who are no longer operationally needed, because the team functions well. Both realities can be true.
Effective leadership is about building a team that
delivers great results independently. It’s important to remember that leadership isn’t a rank, job title or pay grade — it’s the actions and behaviours of an individual that defines a great leader.
Training and developing leaders, in my experience, is about helping them understand the positive impact they can have on those around them. Yes, there may be elements of strategy planning, business acumen and financial insight — but the bulk of what most people need is personal awareness. Awareness of their behaviour, their impact and how they can improve it.
How Leadership Development Links to Business Performance
Leadership development is often seen as a luxury expense, with return on investment (ROI) difficult to track. There are academic models for proving ROI, but they’re often too complex, time-consuming and costly for most businesses to implement.
In my experience, the most effective approach is to build a development programme alongside a business improvement project. This way, delegates implement their learning in real-time, tackling a real issue in their business. It might be a cultural challenge affecting staff retention or a
poor process draining productivity — the opportunities are endless.
This approach drives both leadership capability and measurable business improvements at the same time.
What Results Can You Expect?
A question I get asked all the time: “What kind of results can we expect from this?”
It’s both an easy and difficult question to answer. The impact on the delegate is clear: the cadence of the learning matches the pace of resolving a real issue in their workplace. They can see tangible results from their actions, aligned with the content they’ve been given. It also applies a healthy level of pressure through multiple short-term deadlines.
Using a facilitated learning approach ensures the most valuable learning comes from the
conversations, shared experiences and practical application — not just from the theory delivered by a trainer. This also builds strong cross-functional working relationships that support the business long after the programme ends.
From the organisation’s perspective, they see their leaders grow and mature while actively improving business performance. A final presentation to the senior leadership team or board, outlining each delegate’s journey, their project, the obstacles they overcame, and any financial or operational impact achieved, helps bring the return on investment to life.
In larger organisations, I’ve seen results equating to hundreds of thousands — even millions of pounds.
Summary
In short — you can have it all. You can improve the skills and confidence of your leaders, increase staff engagement and boost business performance, all through well-designed, practical leadership development programmes.
Who wouldn’t want that in 2025?
Dave Bownes
Director,
Haynes Oliver Limited
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