The LDS Wheel design notes: Closing the gaps in leadership development
There are many gaps in leadership development. There’s a gap between what organisations invest and the leadership capacity they actually gain. There’s a gap between what leaders know and what they consistently do. And then there’s a gap between research and reality — the scientist-practitioner divide. I’m passionate about closing all three.
The LDS Wheel is my attempt to start bridging the gaps in leadership development. It represents my synthesis of current research on leadership development systems, combined with more than 20 years of practice designing and implementing leadership initiatives within organisations.
A leadership development system (LDS) is the sum of an organisation’s deliberate choices about how leadership is developed in service of its purpose, values, and strategy. It’s all the interventions, activities, methods, processes, and practices that leaders experience and engage with, not only as individuals, but collectively.
Moving from programs to systems is critical because even the best-designed program fades when leaders return to unchanged contexts. To make the impact last, organisations need to go beyond isolated initiatives to a connected, adaptive infrastructure—an LDS—that weaves leadership into daily operations.
The LDS Wheel seeks to capture the essential features of an effective LDS so that organisations can maximise their organisation’s return on investment in leadership development.
Using the LDS Wheel, organisations can:
Audit their current approach
Shape new initiatives
Engage stakeholders and secure buy-in
Identify relevant evaluation metrics
Prioritise areas to strengthen over time.
In short, it was created to help organisations apply research in practice now.
A closer look at The LDS Wheel
Like any wheel, each part of The LDS Wheel matters. The hub represents interconnection: In an effective LDS, all dimensions interact, influence, and strengthen one another, with the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. The spokes denote five key dimensions, providing the LDS with structure and balance:
Adaptability – keep leadership development alive by listening, learning, and evolving in response to changing needs.
Coherence – align to your organisation’s true north: purpose, values, and strategy.
Scope – build leadership at every level with a multi-faceted mix of approaches.
Integration – embed leadership into everyday work and people practices.
Continuity – sustain development over time so progress compounds into lasting impact.
The rim provides momentum and accountability. It comprises two enablers that hold the system together and ensure it moves forward:
Sponsorship – senior leaders championing, resourcing, and modelling leadership.
Evaluation – measuring outcomes to ensure development delivers value and continuously improves.
The LDS Wheel: A research-informed approach to building an effective leadership development system.
The research foundations
Reconsidering Leadership Development: From Programs to Developmental Systems (2024) by David Day and Laura Dannhäuser.
This seminal paper provides a strong call to action to rethink traditional, programmatic (or, as the authors note, “insane”) approaches to leadership development in a more holistic, systems way. Not least because “sending a changed person back into an unchanged system is an exercise in futility” (p. 3). The authors’ discussion of leadership development through the lens of open systems thinking was particularly influential in shaping the Adaptability dimension of the LDS Wheel.
Maximising the Impact and ROI of Leadership Development: A Theory- and Evidence-Informed Framework (2024) by Jaason Geerts.
This paper is the most comprehensive compilation I’ve seen of evidence-informed, “gold-standard” elements and strategies (65 in total!) that can be implemented as a foundation, as well as before, during, and after programs, together creating an “Optimising System”. While still tethered to programs, the ‘Foundational Models’ and ‘Evaluation’ categories of this system were valuable in defining the Coherence, Scope, and Integration dimensions of the LDS Wheel, as well as the Sponsorship and Evaluation enablers.
Coherence, Continuity, and Comprehensiveness in Shaping Leadership Development Systems in Swedish Companies (2025) by Gunilla Avby, Ingela Bergmo-Prvulovic, Annika Engström and Sofia Kjellström.
This study explores the relationship between organisational leadership development identity and leadership development practices. It highlights that three critical aspects – coherence, continuity, and comprehensiveness – define the interdependency between leadership identity and an LDS. A closer linkage creates high interdependency, resulting in a stronger and more effective system, while weaker links reduce this interdependency and the ability of the system to advance organisational objectives.
These findings significantly contributed to shaping the Coherence and Continuity dimensions of the LDS Wheel. I chose not to include “comprehensiveness” as a single dimension, but instead to split it out into Scope and Integration. I believe this to be more practically instructive, as organisations may find the definition of comprehensiveness I took from this paper too all-encompassing to be actionable.
I also chose to anchor the LDS Wheel to organisational purpose rather than identity, as I believe organisations identify more strongly with the former concept. As Marco Ferreira Ribeiro and his colleagues note in their article Exploring Purpose-Driven Leadership: Theoretical Foundations, Mechanisms, and Impacts in Organisational Context (2024), “organisational purpose is rooted in the deepest level of an organisation’s identity” (p.12). It also acts as a “‘north star' and offers a unifying thread that connects the myriad activities, objectives, and stakeholders of an organisation, enhancing coherence in decision-making processes” (p. 5), which is consistent with my definition of Coherence within the LDS Wheel.
Nine Principles for Enhancing Leadership Development Practices in Organisations (2025) by Anna Fabisch, Sofia Kjellström, Marlene Ockander, and Gunilla Avby.
This study aimed to explore the factors that practitioners collectively identify as crucial for enhancing leadership development in organisations, resulting in nine key principles, six of which are directly relevant to the LDS Wheel:
Principle 1: Support core operations, aligned with vision, business strategies, and values (Coherence)
Principle 3: Maintain overall direction over time (Continuity)
Principle 5: Utilise mixed methods (Scope)
Principle 7: Engage all individuals expected to take leadership roles (Scope)
Principle 8: Foster ownership among top managers (Sponsorship)
Principle 9: Follow up with mixed techniques (Evaluation).
In all nine principles, the authors identified diverse views based on the practitioners’ experiences, which they interpreted as paradoxical tensions (e.g. a focus on developing individuals versus groups). The authors’ discussion of tensions contributed to the definition of the Adaptability dimension of the LDS Wheel, given that the friction of tensions can often result in evolution, such that “organisations capable of balancing seemingly contradictory qualities can navigate challenges, develop sustained performance, and foster innovation” (p. 2). The findings from this study further identified three generic aspects to managing tensions: deliberately and systematically selecting leadership development methods, integrating these with business strategies and HR activities (Integration), and continuously improving them (Evaluation).
Transformations Towards an Integrated Leadership Development System – A Longitudinal Study in a High Performing Public Organisation (2024) by Anna Fabisch, Sofia Kjellström, and Marlene Ockander.
This is a unique longitudinal study, exploring how a leadership development system evolved over 30 years, during a time when the organisation became increasingly high performing. The results revealed three pervasive changes: 1) From a system for business-specific learning to one for system-wide learning, 2) From a system for personal development to one for customer-oriented quality development, and 3) From a leadership development system consisting of leadership development programs to one that is integrated into regular meetings and simple rules. This third change links strongly to the Integration dimension of the LDS Wheel, consistent with the view that “leadership development mainly occurs in everyday life” (p. 10).
For each of the three changes identified, the authors highlight the tensions that arose during the transformation (e.g. business-specific vs system-wide; personal development vs quality improvement; formal programs vs everyday routines), which provided the opportunity for learning and adjustment and is consistent with the Adaptability dimension of the LDS Wheel. The authors also emphasise the role of experienced senior leaders (Sponsorship) in promoting and protecting the Continuity of the vision, by both preserving and evolving the existing leadership strategy to find a balance between contradictory perspectives (Adaptability).
Putting it all together
The LDS Wheel draws directly from this evidence base, translating insights from research into a practical model for business and HR leaders making key decisions about leadership development investments. It provides both a diagnostic lens and a design tool — helping practitioners move beyond fragmented initiatives toward systems that genuinely strengthen leadership capacity.
In essence? The LDS Wheel is designed to bridge scholarship and practice: connecting what we know with what we do, so leadership development delivers on its promise.
Interested in sharing more on the LDS Wheel with your OD or L&D team? Feel free to contact me for Lunch ‘n’ Learn options to support their professional development.
References
Avby, G., Bergmo-Prvulovic, I., Engström, A., & Kjellström, S. (2025). Coherence, continuity, and comprehensiveness in shaping leadership development systems in Swedish companies. Leadership. 1-25.
Day, D. V., & Dannhäuser, L. (2024). Reconsidering leadership development: From programs to developmental systems. Behavioral Sciences, 14, 548-561.
Fabisch, A., Kjellström, S., Ockander, M., & Avby, G. (2025). Nine principles for enhancing leadership development practices in organizations. International Journal of Training and Development, 1-13.
Fabisch, A., Kjellström, S., & Ockander, M. & Avby, G. (2024). Transformations towards an integrated leadership development system—A longitudinal study in a high-performing public organization. Leadership, 20(3), 105–124.
Geerts, J. M. (2024). Maximizing the impact and ROI of leadership development: A theory- and evidence-informed framework. Behavioural Sciences, 14, 955–1,002.
Ribeiro, M. F., Gomes da Costa, C., Ramos, F.R. (2024). Exploring Purpose-Driven Leadership: Theoretical Foundations, Mechanisms, and Impacts in Organisational Context. Administrative Sciences, 14, 148-182.