SHRM’s 2026 CHRO Priorities and Perspectives report found that 46 percent of CHROs cite leadership and manager development as their top priority — for the second consecutive year. Two years at the top of the list. Two years of budget, attention, and organizational commitment.
And engagement is still falling. The pipeline is still thin. Managers are still burning out at 87 percent weekly. First-time managers are still failing at 60 percent within two years.
The priority is right. Something about the method is not.
What two years of #1 priority has produced
The most honest read of this data is that organizations have been investing in leadership development using approaches that do not produce the outcomes they are funding them to produce. The intent is correct. The design is not. And the gap between intent and design is precisely where two years of #1 priority has quietly disappeared.
The design flaw is not subtle. Most organizational leadership development still defaults to the event model: a program, a cohort, a workshop, a retreat. These events are often excellent in content, skilled in facilitation, and completely ineffective at changing what managers do on a Tuesday afternoon three weeks after the program ended. The environment takes back the behavior that the event temporarily displaced, and the manager continues leading the way they always have.
Why the event model persists despite the evidence
The event model persists for reasons that have nothing to do with effectiveness. It is easy to plan. It has a clear start and end date. It produces an attendance record, a completion certificate, and a budget line that looks like action. Leadership development that changes daily behavior is harder to design, harder to measure, harder to report, and requires changes to how work is structured, not just how training is scheduled.
Organizations that have moved to behavior-based development models report the same finding repeatedly: the investment required to produce lasting behavior change is lower than the investment in events that produce temporary alignment. The ROI is better. The design is just more difficult.
What the 7% who are making progress on continuous learning have in common
Returning to Deloitte’s finding — only 7 percent of leaders making progress on continuous workforce development — the common element in the organizations achieving this is design, not budget. They have built development into the daily workflow rather than separating it into a scheduled event. They measure behavioral outcomes, not attendance. They reinforce new behaviors through daily practice structures that outlast the program by months.
These are not exotic practices. They are design decisions that any organization can make. The barrier is not capability. It is the willingness to build something that is harder to schedule and harder to report but actually changes the behavior it was funded to change.
Where AI transforms what is possible
AI makes behavior-based development more practical than it has ever been. A manager who receives a brief daily prompt connected to their real work, uses AI to prepare for a specific leadership moment, reflects briefly on what happened, and receives lightweight accountability to their development goals is running a more effective development program than the one that required two days out of the office and a hotel conference room.
This is not a reduction of development ambition. It is a redesign of development method to match what behavioral science has been saying for decades: change happens through practice, feedback, and time — not through exposure, inspiration, and certificates.
The business case
The second consecutive year at #1 CHRO priority is not evidence of organizational commitment. It is evidence of an unsolved problem. An organization that has genuinely developed its managers does not need leadership development to remain a top priority indefinitely — because the managers it has developed are building the pipeline, retaining the talent, and delivering the engagement that makes the next generation of development easier.
So the question for every CHRO heading into another year of this priority: is the method changing — or are we about to spend another year of #1 priority producing the same outcomes that made it #1 priority again?
Recommended reading from jordanimutan.com:
1. Why Your Leadership Training Isn’t Working (And What To Do Instead)
4. Bridging the Gap: Addressing the Lack of Formal Development for Middle Managers
Most leadership training is forgotten after the seminar. 