Are we mistaking leadership potential for readiness?

A client recently asked a question that surfaces, in one form or another, across many organisations: “How is it that leaders we identify as high potential sometimes struggle in more complex roles?”

This question quietly sits beneath almost every serious leadership discussion. It often emerges when organisations begin to sense a growing unease. Significant investments have been made, yet expectations remain frustratingly unmet.

Organisations invest considerable resources in identifying leadership potential. Individuals are selected with care, often based on strong cognitive capability, relevant experience, and demonstrable competencies. High-potential pools are created, development programmes designed, and succession plans constructed. And yet, many of these individuals later plateau, struggle, or underperform as the complexity of their roles increases.

The usual explanations follow quickly and usually stem from behavioural or motivational factors. People lack ambition or resilience. They resist change. Or the organisation has failed to engage them sufficiently. These explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete. They leave a more fundamental constraint unexamined.

Potential is not only about what people can do. It is about how they make sense of the work they are asked to do.

The assumption most leadership potential assessments leave unexamined

Most approaches to assessing potential rest on an implicit assumption: that work itself is understood in broadly the same way by everyone. Differences between individuals are therefore interpreted in terms of skills, experience, personality, or motivation. Development is framed as accumulation: more knowledge, more exposure, more confidence.

What is rarely examined is whether people actually experience the work in the same way. In reality, they do not.

Two leaders may have similar intelligence and track records, yet operate from very different internal logics. They prioritise different signals, take responsibility for different outcomes, and decide with different time horizons in mind. This is not a matter of personality. These differences determine what responsibility, risk and time actually mean in the role. In other words, they reflect how a person makes meaning of work.

When future potential is mistaken for present capacity

From a developmental perspective, leadership potential is directional, rather than immediate. It points to what someone may grow into over time, not what they can reliably carry today.

Many organisations fail to maintain this distinction. Individuals are assessed for future potential and then placed into more complex roles that already require a level of sense-making they have not yet developed.

The pattern that follows is consistent and rarely accidental:

• The individual feels overwhelmed, confused, or constantly behind the curve.
• Decisions that seem obvious to senior leaders feel ambiguous or risky.
• Feedback is received as personal rather than developmental.
• Under pressure, behaviour narrows to familiar responses, that shows up as caution, rigidity, and control.

From the outside, this is labelled a performance issue. From the inside, it feels like being asked to operate in a reality that is not yet fully accessible.

Why support interventions rarely close the gap

When assessed leadership potential does not translate into expected contribution, organisations typically increase support. Leadership programmes, mentoring and coaching are introduced. These interventions can be valuable, but they have limits.

Training and mentoring build skills. Coaching can strengthen reflection and behavioural awareness. But neither, on its own, changes how someone understands responsibility. This becomes visible when roles move from executing defined tasks to carrying open-ended responsibility over time. At that point, development depends on whether a person’s existing way of thinking can still resolve the problems they face.

People grow when that logic reaches its limits, when familiar approaches no longer work and responsibility exceeds what feels obvious or manageable. This shift cannot be accelerated through encouragement.

The role of organisational context

Leadership potential does not unfold in isolation. It does not take shape in isolation. Role design, decision authority, time horizons and accountability structures set the boundaries of what can realistically be carried.

When these conditions are misaligned with a person’s current way of making sense of work, even highly capable individuals struggle to sustain contribution.

For example, assigning long-term strategic accountability within an environment dominated by short-term incentives and operational pressure creates structural tension. The role calls for long-term judgement; the system rewards short-term execution.

In such contexts, potential is not merely unrealised but structurally limited.

A different way of understanding potential and readiness

At a certain point, many leaders cross a threshold in how they interpret talent and performance. Not by adopting another framework, but by changing the way they look at these.

From that point, leaders see more clearly what people are capable of, why they are capable of it, and why others are not yet. Patterns in organisational and sector evolution become visible at the same time as the increasing demands leadership must carry as complexity grows.

The central question then shifts.

No longer: Why don’t people live up to their potential? But rather: What level of complexity does this role truly require — and how is that complexity currently being experienced by the person in it?

When leaders start to see how people make sense of responsibility, uncertainty and value creation, familiar frustrations reorganise. What once appeared as resistance or underperformance becomes intelligible. Misplaced talent becomes visible. Development stops being generic and becomes precise.

From assessing leadership potential to enabling development

Assessing leadership potential remains necessary, but it is only the starting point. Real development requires disciplined alignment between people, roles and organisational conditions. It requires clarity about accountability, patience with developmental timing, and the willingness to design work that stretches without overwhelming.

When this alignment is in place, individuals can deliver the level of impact the role requires. When this alignment is missing, even the most accurate assessment of potential will not lead to sustained impact in the role. Perhaps the more important question is not whether someone has potential…

…but whether the role demands a form of sense-making they have not yet had the opportunity to develop.

How often do we confuse readiness with promise?