Leadership Development Shouldn't End When the Classroom Training Does
We're Teaching People About Leadership. Are We Giving Them Enough Opportunities to Learn How to Lead?
THE CULTURE PRESCRIPTION™ | THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL
By Sharra Schewee-Blair
Think about the last time your organization sent a new manager or supervisor to leadership training.
They probably learned about communication, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, accountability, coaching, or performance management.
They may have participated in group discussions, completed assessments, practiced difficult conversations, and returned to their departments with new perspectives and a few practical tools.
That's valuable. In fact, I believe formal leadership education is essential.
But I've spent more than two decades leading people in healthcare, and there's a question I keep coming back to.
What happens when the training ends and the actual leadership begins?
What happens when that manager returns to an understaffed department, an overflowing inbox, competing operational priorities, and employees who need answers?
Who helps them translate what they learned into the decisions they make every day?
And perhaps more importantly, who helps them recognize when their leadership approach isn't producing the results they intended?
That's the part of leadership development I believe deserves more attention.
The Classroom Provides Knowledge. Experience Develops Judgment.
I have benefited from leadership education throughout my career. I've also learned that understanding a leadership concept and successfully applying it are two different things.
Consider something as familiar as having a difficult conversation.
We can teach leaders communication frameworks, provide scripts, and explain the importance of preparation, active listening, and accountability.
But then comes the actual conversation.
The employee becomes defensive. New information emerges. Emotions surface. The leader realizes the situation is more complicated than anticipated.
Suddenly, knowing the framework isn't enough.
The leader must exercise judgment, recognize when to adjust their approach, understand organizational expectations, and sometimes acknowledge that the next step requires expertise beyond their own.
These are the moments when leadership education becomes leadership practice.
And they're precisely the moments when access to coaching, mentoring, and continued development can make a meaningful difference.
We Promote People for Their Performance. Then We Expect Them to Lead.
This is a challenge I've observed throughout my healthcare career.
Organizations often identify strong individual contributors and promote them into supervisory or management positions.
These employees understand their departments. They're dependable, knowledgeable, and frequently the people everyone turns to when something needs to get done.
Then we give them responsibility for other people.
Their success suddenly depends on an entirely different set of capabilities.
They must learn to delegate instead of doing everything themselves. Coach instead of constantly providing answers. Address performance concerns, navigate conflict, develop employees, and create accountability while maintaining relationships.
Meanwhile, the operational responsibilities haven't disappeared.
I've experienced this transition myself.
Earlier in my career, I believed being a good leader meant maintaining control and ensuring things happened the way I thought they should.
Experience eventually taught me that my responsibility wasn't to become indispensable.
It was to help other people become capable.
But that realization took time, reflection, mistakes, and opportunities to learn from people around me.
Imagine how much more intentional that development could have been with a structured process that connected education, practical application, mentoring, and ongoing feedback.
That's an opportunity I believe organizations should explore.
Leadership Development Needs to Reach Beyond the Classroom.
I don't believe the answer is necessarily more training.
I believe we need to think more carefully about what happens between training sessions.
A manager might attend an excellent course on coaching employees. But unless that manager has opportunities to practice coaching, receive feedback, reflect on the experience, and try again, the organization may never realize the full value of its educational investment.
The same applies to communication, accountability, employee engagement, change management, and high reliability.
Leadership development should be a continuous process that connects learning with actual workplace experiences.
What might that look like?
Imagine a frontline supervisor participating in a leadership development program.
They begin by identifying their strengths, development needs, and the operational challenges they're experiencing.
They receive targeted education that introduces relevant leadership principles and practical tools.
But instead of completing the course and moving on, they're given opportunities to apply those concepts in their own departments.
They might practice conducting more effective one-on-one conversations, improving communication during team huddles, delegating responsibilities, or developing an employee who demonstrates leadership potential.
They meet periodically with a mentor or coach who helps them reflect on those experiences.
They discuss what worked, what didn't, and what they might approach differently.
Their direct leader reinforces the learning, supports their development, and helps connect their progress to organizational expectations.
Over time, the organization evaluates whether those developing capabilities are translating into observable leadership behaviors.
The goal isn't simply to produce leaders who have completed training. It's to develop leaders who can consistently apply what they've learned.
The Missing Connection Between Organizational Development and Operational Reality
I believe there's another opportunity worth exploring.
Healthcare organizations often have talented professionals working in organizational development, human resources, education, quality, safety, and operational leadership.
Each brings important expertise.
Organizational development professionals understand learning, organizational behavior, change management, and leadership development.
Operational leaders understand the everyday realities of managing departments, balancing resources, supporting employees, and meeting organizational expectations.
But the connection between these areas isn't always as intentional as it could be.
Leadership education becomes more meaningful when the people designing development programs understand the environments in which participants must apply what they're learning.
Likewise, operational experience becomes more valuable when it's supported by established leadership principles, structured development, and appropriate organizational expertise.
These disciplines shouldn't compete.
They should reinforce one another.
I see considerable opportunity for experienced operational leaders to contribute to leadership development through mentoring, program design, coaching, and practical application.
Not to replace an organization's existing development infrastructure, but to strengthen the connection between leadership education and operational practice.
That connection is particularly important for frontline supervisors and managers, whose everyday behaviors directly influence employee experiences and how organizational expectations are translated into daily work.
From Leadership Education to Leadership Development
This thinking has helped shape the direction of The Culture Prescription™.
My goal is to develop resources and services that help individuals and organizations move beyond isolated educational experiences toward more intentional, ongoing leadership development.
The approach I'm building follows a practical progression:
DIAGNOSE → LEARN → APPLY → MENTOR → REFLECT → REINFORCE → MEASURE
It begins with understanding the leader's development needs rather than assuming everyone requires the same training.
Education provides foundational knowledge.
Workplace application creates opportunities to practice.
Mentoring and coaching help leaders work through real challenges and develop judgment.
Reflection encourages self-awareness and continuous improvement.
Reinforcement helps new behaviors become consistent practices.
And measurement allows organizations to evaluate progress, identify remaining gaps, and adjust their development strategies.
This approach can complement an organization's existing leadership education, human resources, organizational development, and high-reliability initiatives.
It also creates opportunities to tailor development to different leadership populations, including emerging leaders, new supervisors, experienced managers, and clinical team leaders.
The objective isn't to create another program that leaders complete and eventually forget.
It's to help organizations establish a development process that continues supporting leaders as their responsibilities and challenges evolve.
Leadership Development Is Also Culture Development
There's another reason I believe this matters.
Every leadership development initiative has the potential to influence organizational culture.
When leaders consistently demonstrate effective communication, create clarity, encourage employee development, and respond constructively to concerns, those behaviors influence the environments their teams experience.
In healthcare, this connection extends to high reliability.
Organizations can educate employees about safety principles, speaking up, situational awareness, and deference to expertise.
But leaders play an important role in creating the conditions that allow those principles to become everyday behaviors.
Do employees feel comfortable raising concerns?
Do managers recognize when someone else has greater expertise?
Are leaders reinforcing organizational expectations through their own actions?
These aren't questions we can fully address through classroom education alone.
They require consistent leadership practice.
That's why I believe leadership development and organizational culture should be considered together.
When we develop leaders, we're also investing in the environments those leaders create for other people.
Where The Culture Prescription Fits
The Culture Prescription™ was built around five interconnected leadership principles:
CONNECT: Develop relationships and create environments where meaningful communication can occur.
VALUE: Recognize individual contributions, perspectives, and potential.
CLARIFY: Establish expectations, communicate direction, and create accountability.
IGNITE: Develop people through coaching, empowerment, and meaningful growth opportunities.
LEAVE BETTER: Strengthen people, teams, and organizations through intentional leadership.
These principles provide the foundation for the leadership development programs, mentoring opportunities, educational resources, and organizational consulting services I'm building.
They also reflect something my own leadership journey has taught me.
We don't become effective leaders simply by accumulating information.
We develop through experience, reflection, feedback, meaningful relationships, and a willingness to continually improve.
And organizations have an opportunity to make that development far more intentional.
Perhaps the question isn't whether we're providing enough leadership training.
Perhaps it's whether we're providing enough support for leaders to turn that training into everyday leadership practice.
Because leadership development shouldn't end when the classroom training does.
That's where the real work begins.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharra Schewee-Blair is the founder of The Culture Prescription™, an author, and a healthcare operations leader with more than 20 years of leadership experience.
Her work focuses on frontline leadership development, mentoring, organizational culture, and connecting leadership principles with the everyday realities of healthcare operations.
She is the author of The Culture Prescription: Leadership Practices for Connecting, Valuing, Clarifying, Igniting, and Leaving People Better Than You Found Them
Through The Culture Prescription™, Sharra develops practical leadership education, mentoring, coaching, and organizational consulting resources designed to help individuals and organizations translate leadership knowledge into consistent leadership behaviors.
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Created by Sharra Schewee-Blair
Published by Culture Prescription Press
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