The LDS Wheel™
An organising principle for understanding, designing and strengthening leadership development systems.
For decades, leadership development has focused primarily on changing leaders.
Organisations invest in leadership diagnostics, coaching, programs and other development experiences because they want leaders to think differently, behave differently and create better outcomes.
Many of these investments add value. They build insight, capability and confidence, and give leaders the opportunity to step away from the pressures of everyday work to think more deliberately about how they lead.
Leadership programs, especially, have become the dominant approach to developing leaders.
It’s not hard to see why.
A program can be clearly budgeted, purchased, communicated and scheduled. It has a beginning, an end and a defined group of participants. Providers can package their expertise into a recognisable offer, while organisations can point to something tangible and say, "This is how we're developing our leaders."
But even when a leadership program creates genuine change, what happens when leaders go back to work?
They return to the same meetings, expectations, priorities and performance pressures. They're met with line managers who may or may not reinforce what they've learned, people practices that may send conflicting signals, and organisational norms that quietly communicate what leadership really looks like.
Sometimes organisational conditions help new leadership behaviours take hold. Other times they pull leaders back into old ways of operating.
This is the limitation of relying too heavily on formal development experiences. They're typically bounded and episodic, whereas the organisational conditions that shape leadership behaviour are continuous and pervasive.
Programs matter. They just can't carry the whole load.
Organisations shape leadership behaviour more powerfully than programs alone.
From more activity to a stronger system.
Of course, many organisations don't rely on programs alone.
They invest in leadership frameworks, talent reviews, and succession planning, along with 360-degree feedback, mentoring, toolkits, and a raft of other initiatives.
But having more leadership development activity doesn't necessarily mean having a stronger leadership development system (LDS).
Different initiatives may use different leadership models, target different populations, and reinforce different expectations. While each may offer value, together they can feel fragmented.
A strong leadership development system is more than the sum of its activities.
It connects formal development initiatives with the organisational conditions that shape leadership behaviour every day, including leadership expectations, people practices, development opportunities, and the roles line managers and sponsors play.
The challenge isn't simply deciding which activities to invest in. It's about understanding how these influences interact and designing them intentionally to reinforce one another.
Research into leadership development systems points in a similar direction.
Day and Dannhäuser (2024) argue that leadership development is continuous, adaptive and shaped through ongoing interaction with the organisational environment rather than occurring primarily within programs.
In a 30-year longitudinal study, Fabisch and her colleagues (2024) traced how one organisation's approach evolved from being centred on programs to being integrated into regular meetings, everyday routines and the broader business system.
Similarly, Avby and her colleagues (2025) found that leadership development was more effective when closely connected to an organisation's strategy, history and identity, rather than functioning separately.
Together, this research reinforces what I've increasingly observed in practice: leadership development needs to be understood and designed as a system, not merely as programs or collections of initiatives.
Recognising the importance of a systems perspective is one thing.
Knowing how to apply it when making leadership development decisions is another.
That's where an organising principle becomes useful.
The LDS Wheel™.
The LDS Wheel™ is an organising principle for understanding, designing and strengthening leadership development systems.
It offers seven lenses through which organisations can intentionally design the conditions that make new leadership behaviours more likely to take hold and endure.
Its value is not only in the individual dimensions, but also in how they interact. Some reinforce one another, while others create productive tensions that need balancing.
The goal isn't to maximise every dimension independently, nor is it to advance every dimension simultaneously.
The real utility comes from understanding how the dimensions work together and from prioritising those most likely to have the greatest impact on leadership development effectiveness, given the context.
Adaptability
Adaptability is the leadership development system's capacity to learn and evolve as the organisation and its environment change.
Leadership priorities are rarely static. A shift in strategy may require different leadership behaviours. Growth may demand new ways of working across teams. Changes in regulation, technology or customer expectations can expose leadership challenges that weren't visible when the system was first designed.
An adaptable system notices these shifts. It uses feedback, evaluation, organisational data and anecdotal evidence to refine leadership priorities, development approaches and supporting practices over time.
The aim isn't constant change. It's thoughtful evolution.
The design question becomes: How will your LDS continue evolving as your organisation changes?
In practice, this might mean reviewing leadership priorities alongside strategic planning, using evaluation findings to refine existing initiatives, or adapting development approaches as new organisational needs emerge.
Adaptability keeps the system relevant without losing what makes it recognisable.
Coherence
Coherence is the extent to which leadership development reflects and reinforces what the organisation is trying to achieve and become.
Every leadership development investment sends signals about what leadership matters. When performance expectations, talent processes and everyday conversations tell the same story, leaders experience greater clarity about what good leadership looks like.
When they don't, leadership development becomes disjointed.
A leadership framework may emphasise collaboration while reward systems continue to favour individual performance.
A program may encourage empowerment while decision-making remains highly centralised.
Different providers may introduce competing language and models, leaving leaders to reconcile multiple versions of what “good” leadership is.
Coherence doesn't require every initiative to look the same, but it does require a recognisable throughline.
The design question becomes: How will leadership development reinforce the organisation you're trying to build?
In practice, this might involve clarifying a small number of leadership expectations linked to strategy, aligning development and people practices to those expectations, and ensuring leaders encounter consistent language across recruitment, performance, development and talent conversations.
Coherence enables leadership development to go beyond developing individuals to building culture.
Scope
Scope considers how comprehensively leadership is developed across the organisation, including who is developed, where development happens and how leadership capability is built.
A narrowly defined system often concentrates on formal programs for select leadership groups.
A broader system recognises that leadership is developed across levels, through many different experiences and in many different places. This includes formal learning, peer learning, stretch assignments, project work and the everyday challenges of leading.
Scope isn't about providing everything to everyone.
It's about ensuring leadership development reaches everyone, and everywhere it needs to be.
The design question becomes: How broad and deep is our approach to who we develop, where development occurs and how leadership capability is built?
In practice, organisations may connect formal leadership programs with mentoring, on-the-job projects, peer learning and line manager coaching. They may create development pathways for people before they enter formal management roles, while also supporting established leaders to continue growing.
Scope ensures leadership development is an experience for many, not an event for a few.
Integration
Integration is the degree to which leadership development becomes embedded in everyday work and organisational practices.
Leadership development often sits alongside the organisation, whereas an integrated system makes it part of the organisation.
Leadership develops through strategic planning, performance conversations, team meetings, project reviews, and everyday interactions where leadership is continually exercised.
It also becomes woven into the organisation's people practices.
Recruitment signals what leadership matters. Onboarding begins shaping expectations. Performance and talent processes reinforce them, and succession decisions reveal which behaviours the organisation genuinely values.
The design question becomes: How will leadership development become part of the way work gets done?
In practice, this might involve equipping line managers to coach during regular one-to-ones, building reflection into existing team rhythms, or using real organisational challenges as development experiences.
With integration, development becomes part of leading, not something separate from it.
Continuity
Continuity provides the throughline that allows leadership development to build meaning and momentum over time.
Many organisations don't stop investing in leadership development. They repeatedly start again.
A new executive introduces a preferred leadership model. A new provider brings different language. A new trend reshapes the programs on offer.
Each initiative may be worthwhile, but collectively, frequent changes in direction make it difficult for leadership capability to accumulate.
Continuity doesn't mean preserving programs indefinitely or resisting new ideas. It means maintaining a recognisable philosophy while allowing the system to evolve.
The design question becomes: How will leadership development maintain a clear throughline while continuing to progress?
In practice, this might involve retaining consistent leadership values while refreshing how they are articulated, connecting each initiative to previous investments, and ensuring changes in executive sponsorship don't automatically trigger a total reset.
Continuity lets leadership capability grow instead of continually starting over.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is the active role senior leaders play in shaping, enabling and reinforcing leadership development.
It can often be interpreted as transactional or ceremonial - a sponsor approves the budget, opens the program, appears in a video, receives an evaluation report.
Those contributions can certainly help, but sponsorship can be much more than that.
Sponsors help define why leadership development matters and what it needs to achieve. They contribute to its design, give leaders permission to invest time in it, remove barriers to application, advocate for it, and consistently model the leadership behaviours the organisation is trying to develop.
Their involvement signals that leadership development isn't simply an HR initiative operating at the edge of the business. It's part of how the organisation delivers its strategy.
The design question becomes: How will senior leaders actively shape, enable and reinforce leadership development?
In practice, this might include involving sponsors in co-design, clarifying the role they'll play throughout an initiative, asking them to reinforce leadership expectations in business forums, or creating visible opportunities for them to model the behaviours the organisation is seeking to strengthen.
Sponsorship isn’t a launch activity. It's an ongoing leadership responsibility.
Evaluation
Evaluation is how a leadership development system learns and improves over time.
Most organisations evaluate individual programs. They measure attendance, satisfaction, confidence and, increasingly, changes in behaviour or performance. Those measures matter, yet a systems perspective also asks a broader question: Is the organisation becoming better at developing leaders?
That changes what evaluation is for.
Rather than simply judging the success of a single initiative, evaluation helps organisations understand how well the overall LDS is working. It highlights where different parts of the system reinforce one another, where they create friction, and where the next improvement is most likely to strengthen the whole.
No single measure provides that answer.
It emerges by bringing together different forms of evidence, such as leadership assessments, program data, qualitative feedback, sponsor observations, talent and succession patterns, engagement results, and business outcomes, and using them to inform future design decisions.
The design question becomes: How will we know whether our LDS is becoming stronger over time?
In practice, this might involve defining success at both the program and system levels, periodically reviewing the organisation's LDS against the seven dimensions of the LDS Wheel™, and using those insights to guide future investment rather than simply reporting on past activity.
Evaluation doesn’t simply measure leadership development. It helps improve it.
Putting the LDS Wheel™ to work
The real value of the LDS Wheel™ is to inform decisions, not simply describe the qualities of a strong leadership development system.
Zooming out, you can use it to review an organisation's overall approach to developing leaders. Where is the system working well? Where do different elements reinforce one another, and where might they create friction? Which improvements are likely to make the greatest difference?
It can also be applied when designing a new leadership initiative. Rather than focusing exclusively on the participant journey, the LDS Wheel™ encourages organisations to consider the conditions that will support the program's success from the outset.
For example, involving sponsors, business leaders, and internal practitioners in defining a leadership challenge can do more than improve a program's design. It can clarify leadership expectations, strengthen sponsorship, engage line managers, and establish reinforcement and evaluation approaches that remain useful long after the program ends.
These are not simply implementation activities. They are opportunities to strengthen the LDS itself.
Importantly, the LDS Wheel™ isn't a checklist where every dimension needs equal attention. Its value lies in helping organisations see the relationships between dimensions, recognise where the system helps or hinders leadership development, and make deliberate choices about where to invest their effort.
Sometimes that will mean designing a new program. Other times it might mean aligning leadership expectations with people practices, strengthening line manager involvement, improving evaluation or creating greater continuity between existing initiatives.
The point is to make those decisions with a clearer understanding of the whole system.
A different starting question.
The LDS Wheel™ doesn't diminish the importance of leadership programs. It broadens the decisions organisations make about leadership development.
Instead of starting with "What leadership program do we need?", organisations can ask a more useful question:
What needs to change in the way we develop leaders to create the greatest impact?
That question may lead to a program, changes to the organisational conditions surrounding it, or a combination of both.
It also creates a broader opportunity to invest in leadership development that achieves two things:
Develops better leaders today, while strengthening the organisation's capacity to develop leaders tomorrow.
Organisations shape leadership behaviour more powerfully than programs alone.
The difference is how intentionally they do so.
That's where the LDS Wheel™ can help.
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. Behavioural Sciences, 14, 548-561.
Fabisch, A., Kjellström, S., Ockander, M., & Avby, G. (2025). Nine principles for enhancing leadership development practices in organisations. 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 organisation. Leadership, 20(3), 105–124.