The pillar leaders love most, and skip

Hi Nik,

Every Friday I share one thing I have observed in the field of commercial leadership. This week it is about development, the second most common gap across the leadership diagnostics behind my Ownership Gap report, and the one that looks least like a problem from the outside. Here is what it actually costs when it goes unaddressed.

This week in the field

Development came out second lowest of the four CODE pillars, just above Ownership itself. The pattern underneath the score was consistent. These were leaders who named developing their people as the part of the job they enjoyed most, and were not doing it.

What it means in practice

This was not indifference. Every leader in this group spoke about wanting to develop their people. What was missing was structure, in several cases nobody had ever shown them how to run that conversation in the first place. Left unaddressed, this is the gap that quietly caps how far someone on your team can grow, and how long they stay while they wait to find out.

"I probably do not have career conversations enough at all. I have never been trained on how to structure that, or how to navigate conversations where there is not a clear next step." A commercial leader in adtech and media, recently stepped up into a wider role. From The Ownership Gap, B2B Culture Coach, September 2026.

What to try instead

The fix isn't finding more time, it's taking the conversation out of the 1:1 entirely. Put a single 30-minute career conversation on the calendar once a quarter, separate from your regular catch-ups, and protect it the way you'd protect a client meeting. This one act tells your team you care about their future, and that you're taking it seriously. Three questions carry the whole thing: where would you like to progress next, what's one thing getting in the way of that right now, and what's one thing I can do to help before we speak again. Take account of what gets said, so you have an anchor to follow up next time you sit down together. Over time it builds a picture of the individual's progression and what they need.

This was one of the first conversations I'd have with my team every year, to start the year with a fresh outlook on where everyone was individually heading and how I could help them get there. Over time it worked as a tracker for progression, and it gave us both ownership, mine in supporting them, theirs in owning their own career decisions.

The question to sit with

When did you last have a career conversation with someone on your team that was not really about this quarter?

Curious where you'd score on this? Take the free CODE Leadership Scorecard, five minutes, free.