How to Create a Leadership Development Plan
A leadership development plan sets out how leaders will develop the skills, behaviours, and experiences they need to succeed.
The strongest plans go beyond training alone, combining development goals, coaching, feedback, and measurable behaviour change so that leadership growth translates into improved performance.
See how EZRA supports leadership development
Align the goals of the programme with the wider goals of the business
Leadership development delivers the greatest value when it's tied to a business need rather than treated as a standalone initiative. Before building a programme, identify the outcomes leaders need to support. These might include:
Improving employee engagement
Strengthening succession pipelines
Supporting organisational change
Increasing retention
Improving collaboration across teams
From there, identify the leadership behaviours most likely to support those goals. If collaboration is a priority, that might mean strengthening communication, coaching, and influence. If the focus is transformation, adaptability and change leadership become more important.
Talk to your employees
Plans are far more likely to succeed when they're informed by the people they're designed to support. Speak with current and aspiring leaders to understand where they feel confident, where they need support and what challenges they're facing day-to-day. These conversations often surface development priorities that aren't visible from performance data alone.
Ask questions such as:
Where do you feel most confident as a leader?
What aspects of leadership do you find most challenging?
Which skills or behaviours would have the biggest impact on your effectiveness?
What support would help you develop further?
Input from employees, managers, and stakeholders can help identify development priorities that might otherwise be missed. Just as importantly, people are more likely to engage with development when they've had a hand in shaping it.
Address your leadership development goals and create an action plan
Once you've identified the behaviours that matter most, turn them into clear development goals and actions. The key is to focus on observable behaviour change rather than broad aspirations.
The EZRA Management Coaching programme, for example. focuses on six core skill areas – each targeting a specific behaviour change:
Emotional intelligence
Target behaviour: Recognising your own emotions and reading others accurately, so you can respond rather than react.
Communication
Target behaviour: Providing clearer direction and expectations, so people know what to do and why.
Leading change
Target behaviour: Guiding people through uncertainty with clarity and confidence, rather than leaving them to figure it out alone.
Influence
Target behaviour: Building buy-in across stakeholders without relying on authority to get things done.
Developing self
Target behaviour: Strengthening self-awareness, reflection, and personal growth habits that sustain leadership over time.
Leading for inclusion
Target behaviour: Creating an environment where different perspectives are heard and valued, not just tolerated.
Each goal should include clear expectations, specific actions, timelines and success measures. Development becomes much more effective when goals move beyond aspirations and become practical plans.
Consider a test run
Before rolling a leadership development programme out more widely, consider running a pilot. A smaller-scale launch allows you to gather feedback, refine the experience, and identify potential issues before investing further. It also provides an early indication of whether the programme is developing the behaviours it's designed to improve.
When evaluating a pilot, consider:
Should participation be mandatory or voluntary?
What is a realistic timeline for implementation?
What risks or barriers could affect adoption?
How will feedback be collected and acted upon?
Have any additional development needs emerged?
How will success be measured?
How to measure the impact of a leadership development plan
A plan is only valuable if it produces measurable improvement. To assess that improvement, you need to define success before development begins. Some of the most useful indicators include:
Behaviour change scores. Have leadership behaviours improved over time?
360 feedback. Do managers, peers and direct reports see meaningful progress?
Goal attainment. Are people achieving the development goals they set at the start?
Business outcomes. Is leadership development contributing to retention, engagement, performance, or succession goals?
Tracking these measures helps understand whether development efforts are translating into real-world leadership improvement rather than simply programme participation. With EZRA Measure, that progress can be tracked over time through behaviour change scores, goal attainment, and longitudinal 360 feedback. Measuring improvement is only part of the picture, however. Many organisations also want to understand the wider business value their investment is creating. That's where measuring the ROI of leadership development becomes important.
