Senior leaders rarely lack experience. By the time we reach significant leadership responsibility, we have accumulated years of meetings, decisions, difficult conversations, change efforts, successes, and mistakes.

Yet experience and development are not the same thing.

We can have the same difficult conversation dozens of times without becoming much better at it. We can lead hundreds of meetings while continuing to dominate the discussion, leave decision rights unclear, or move too quickly past disagreement. Experience gives us opportunities to learn, but it does not guarantee that learning occurs.

Research on expert performance helps explain why. K. Anders Ericsson's work distinguished accumulated experience from deliberate practice. Across domains where superior performance can be observed, improvement is associated with focused work on particular aspects of performance, meaningful feedback, evaluation, and repeated opportunities to adjust. His research also challenged the assumption that years of professional experience necessarily translate into continuously improving performance.

That distinction matters for leadership development.

From experience to practice

Most leadership development still contains a strong exposure assumption. We give leaders stretch assignments, broader responsibilities, training programs, assessments, mentors, and challenging goals. Each can contribute to development. The missing question is what the leader will deliberately practice as a result.

Consider a leader who wants to delegate more effectively. "Delegate more" is an intention, not yet a practice. A more useful developmental target might be: before handing off a meaningful decision, clarify the outcome, define the decision boundary, identify when consultation is required, and resist reclaiming the decision when uncertainty appears.

Now the behavior is observable. It can be practiced. Someone can provide feedback. The leader can reflect on what happened and try again.

The same logic applies to strategic thinking, conflict, coaching, influence, accountability, or executive communication. Broad capabilities become developable when we identify the behaviors that express them in actual work.

The work is the practice field

This is where leadership development becomes much more practical for senior leaders.

We do not need to create a separate simulation for every behavior we want to improve. Much of the practice environment already exists in the work. The next staff meeting, strategy review, talent conversation, customer escalation, or cross-functional decision can become a deliberate practice opportunity.

Before the moment, the leader identifies one behavior to practice and what good performance would look like. During the work, the leader tries the behavior under real conditions. Afterward, the leader reflects and, where possible, gets another perspective.

That cycle can be simple:

Choose one meaningful leadership behavior.
Identify a real work situation where it will matter.
Define what someone would see or hear if the behavior were done well.
Practice it intentionally.
Get feedback close to the event.
Decide what to repeat or adjust next time.

This is different from simply asking, "How did the meeting go?" The reflection stays connected to the behavior being developed.

Feedback changes the quality of experience

One reason experience can plateau is that leaders become sufficiently competent to perform their jobs without receiving precise feedback on how they perform them.

At senior levels, this problem can become more pronounced. People may be less willing to tell us that we closed down discussion too quickly, answered our own question, stepped into a decision that belonged to someone else, or created confusion about priorities. Results may still be acceptable, which makes the behavior easy to repeat.

Deliberate practice introduces a feedback loop.

A coach can observe a specific behavior. A colleague can watch for how often the leader asks before telling. A direct report can describe whether decision boundaries became clearer. The leader can capture a short reflection immediately after the event while the details are still available.

The purpose is not constant evaluation. It is better information for the next attempt.

The organization has a role too

Leadership development is often framed as an individual responsibility. Leaders certainly need to own their growth. But organizations influence whether meaningful practice is possible.

A leader can build personal capacity. The leadership system helps determine whether that capacity becomes organizational capability.

If every development goal remains separate from the operating work, practice competes with everything else on the calendar. If feedback arrives only during formal reviews, the learning loop becomes too long. If leaders are rewarded exclusively for immediate results, experimenting with a new leadership behavior may feel unnecessarily risky.

Organizations can make development easier by integrating it into existing rhythms. A leadership meeting can include a brief reflection on a behavior being practiced. A manager can ask about the practice goal during a one-on-one. A team can use an after-action review following a significant decision or event. Coaching can focus less on discussing leadership in the abstract and more on preparing for, and learning from, real leadership moments.

This is where development begins to connect with the broader leadership system rather than operating as a separate program.

A more useful development question

Instead of asking a leader, "What training do you need?" we might begin with a different question:

What leadership behavior, if practiced more consistently over the next 90 days, would make the greatest difference in your effectiveness?

Then make it concrete.

Where will the leader practice it? What will good performance look like? Who can provide useful feedback? How often will the leader reflect? What conditions in the organization will make the new behavior easier to sustain?

That creates a development process tied directly to the work and to the results the leader is responsible for producing.

Development becomes visible

The value of deliberate practice is not that every leadership capability can be reduced to a mechanical technique. Leadership remains contextual, relational, and complex. Research also does not support the idea that practice alone explains performance in every professional domain.

The stronger conclusion is more useful anyway. Experience matters, but experience becomes more developmental when we approach important parts of our work with greater intention, feedback, reflection, and repetition.

For senior leaders, that can change the development conversation. We do not need more activity for its own sake. We need to become clearer about what we are trying to get better at and use the work already in front of us as the place where improvement happens.

What leadership behavior would make the greatest difference if your leaders practiced it intentionally in the work they already do?

Leadership Development Happens in the Work