How to Develop Better Leaders Inside Your Company

By Malcolm Gurley, President

Gurley Leadership Solutions Inc.

Most companies promote their best individual performers into leadership and then hope for the best. The top salesperson becomes the sales manager. The strongest engineer becomes the team lead. Then everyone is surprised when the skills that made them excellent at the job turn out to have almost nothing to do with leading the people who now do it. Good leaders do not just emerge. They are built.

After 35 years inside Fortune 100 and manufacturing organizations, I can tell you that the companies with strong leadership at every level did not get lucky. They developed their leaders deliberately, and it is one of the highest-return investments any organization can make.

Why Do My Best Employees Struggle When Promoted to Leadership?

This is one of the most common and costly patterns in business. You promote your strongest performer, and they struggle, because the skills that made them excellent as an individual contributor are almost entirely different from the skills required to lead. Being the best at the work does not prepare someone to get great work out of other people.

In my experience with organizations across Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area, the struggle almost always comes down to a predictable set of gaps:

• They were promoted for their technical skill, with no development in how to actually lead
• They keep doing the individual work they were good at instead of leading their team
• They have never learned to delegate, so they become an overloaded bottleneck
• They struggle to have difficult conversations, give feedback, or hold people accountable
• Nobody is developing or supporting them in the transition; they are left to sink or swim

None of this means they were the wrong choice. It means they were promoted and abandoned instead of promoted and developed. That gap is entirely fixable. Learn more about Malcolm Gurley's approach to developing leaders inside organizations across Durham Region.

Why Is Deliberate Leadership Development Worth the Investment?

Developing your own leaders is one of the highest-return investments a company can make, and the evidence is compelling. When you build leaders internally, you retain institutional knowledge, strengthen your bench, reduce the cost and risk of external hiring, and lift the performance of every team those leaders touch.

The manager is the pivot point. Gallup research found that 70 percent of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. That means every leader you develop well does not just improve their own output. They lift the engagement and performance of everyone who reports to them, which multiplies the return across the organization.

The bottom-line impact follows. Gallup's meta-analysis of more than 183,000 business units across 53 industries and 90 countries found that teams in the top quartile of employee engagement achieve 23 percent higher profitability than those in the bottom quartile. Better leaders build more engaged teams, and more engaged teams produce measurably better results. Visit the FAQ page for common questions about how the program works and what organizations typically see.

What Kind of Development Actually Builds Better Leaders?

Not all development works. A one-time seminar or a generic online course builds awareness but rarely changes behaviour. What actually develops leaders is structured, applied, and sustained over time, with real support along the way.

The DDI research is clear on what works: internal promotions are 3.7 times more successful when leaders participate in structured cohort development programs, and significantly more successful when they receive regular manager support and sequential, building learning rather than a single event. In other words, leadership is developed through applied practice over time, not absorbed in an afternoon. That is exactly the difference between development that sticks and development that fades.

What Do the Major Training Organizations Say?

Seven Steps to Develop Better Leaders Inside Your Company

Here is the sequence I use with organizations across Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Pickering, and the broader GTA to build strong leaders from the people they already have.

1. Identify potential early, not just performance. Strong performance in a current role does not guarantee leadership ability. Look for people who lift others, take initiative, and think beyond their own tasks, and start developing them before you need them.
2. Develop leaders before you promote them, not after. The costliest mistake is promoting someone and then leaving them to figure leadership out alone. Build the skills ahead of the role so they step up ready.
3. Teach delegation first. The single hardest shift for a new leader is moving from doing the work to leading the work. Delegation is where most new leaders fail, and where deliberate development pays off fastest.
4. Build the hard interpersonal skills. Giving feedback, having difficult conversations, and holding people accountable are learnable skills, not personality traits. These are what separate a capable leader from a struggling one.
5. Use structured, sustained development, not one-off events. Real behaviour change comes from applied practice over months, with support along the way. A single seminar builds awareness; a structured program builds leaders.
6. Provide ongoing support and accountability. Regular manager support through the transition is one of the strongest predictors of a successful new leader. Development does not end at promotion.
7. Make leadership development a continuous priority. The strongest organizations never stop developing leaders at every level. Leadership training and skills development is what keeps building the bench year after year.

Should I Develop Leaders Internally or Hire Them From Outside?

Both have a place, but developing internally is usually the stronger long-term strategy. Internal leaders already understand your culture, your customers, and your operations, and promoting them signals to your whole team that growth is possible here, which itself drives retention and engagement. External hires bring fresh perspective but carry higher cost, longer ramp-up, and real failure risk, and DDI's research notes that a large share of external executive hires do not work out.

The most resilient organizations build a strong internal pipeline first and hire externally only for genuine gaps. Through a proven program from Leadership Management International, customized to your organization, I work directly with your emerging and current leaders over a structured series of spaced working sessions applied to their real roles and challenges. Behavioural change is tracked. Results are measured. Malcolm Gurley works with organizations throughout the Greater Toronto Area and Durham Region, including Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Pickering, Barrie, and Mississauga.

Frequently Asked Questions About Developing Leaders Internally

How do I develop better leaders inside my company?

You develop better leaders by building leadership deliberately rather than waiting for it to emerge. Identify people with potential early, develop them before you promote them, teach delegation and the hard interpersonal skills, and use structured, sustained development instead of one-off events. A proven program from Leadership Management International, customized to your organization, develops your existing people into capable leaders with measurable results and a return on investment of typically 10:1 or better.

Why do strong performers often struggle as new leaders?

Strong performers struggle as leaders because the skills that made them excellent as individual contributors are almost entirely different from the skills required to lead others. Being the best at the work does not prepare someone to delegate, give feedback, hold people accountable, or get great work out of a team. The problem is usually that they were promoted for technical skill and then left to figure leadership out alone, which deliberate development solves.

Is it better to develop leaders internally or hire from outside?

Developing internally is usually the stronger long-term strategy. Internal leaders already understand your culture, customers, and operations, and promoting them signals that growth is possible, which drives retention. External hires bring fresh perspective but carry higher cost, longer ramp-up, and real failure risk. The most resilient organizations build a strong internal pipeline first and hire externally only for genuine gaps.

What kind of leadership development actually works?

Development that works is structured, applied, and sustained over time, with real support along the way. Research shows internal promotions are far more successful when leaders participate in cohort programs, receive sequential building learning, and get regular manager support, rather than a single seminar. Leadership is developed through applied practice over months, not absorbed in an afternoon, which is why one-off events rarely change behaviour.

Do you work with organizations in Durham Region on leadership development?

Yes. Gurley Leadership Solutions is based in Ajax, Ontario and works directly with organizations across Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area, including Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Pickering, Barrie, and Mississauga, across manufacturing, healthcare, not-for-profit, engineering, and operations sectors. Every program is delivered in person and customized to the specific goals of your organization.

About the Author: Malcolm Gurley

Malcolm Gurley is President of Gurley Leadership Solutions Inc., based in Ajax, Ontario. With more than 35 years of senior executive experience at Fortune 100 and manufacturing organizations including Honeywell, Johnson Controls, and Armstrong Fluid Technology, he helps organizations across the Greater Toronto Area and Durham Region develop better leaders at every level of the business. He is LMI Canada licensed and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Every program is a proven Leadership Management International program, customized to the organization, with a return on investment of typically 10:1 or better. Learn more about Malcolm Gurley and why organizations choose Gurley Leadership Solutions.