Leadership Development Plan: How to Create a Plan for Real Leadership Growth
A leadership development plan usually gets built the same week HR asks for one, and then it sits in a folder until the next review cycle.
I spent over a decade in corporate Learning and Development watching that happen, and now I coach the people it happened to. They're smart, they've been promoted at least once, and they're still running into the same two habits that keep stalling them out. More training doesn't fix that, and neither does a plan that lists skills instead of behaviors.
What works is a plan that spells out what you'll do differently, who you'll practice with, when you'll practice, and how you'll know it worked. That's what we're building here, with a 90-day example you can copy.
What Is a Leadership Development Plan?
A leadership development plan is a written roadmap for the leadership skills and behaviors you're strengthening, plus the specific ways you'll go about it. Companies use them to prepare managers for bigger roles, and you can write a personal one without anyone's permission, which is what most of my clients do once their employer's version turns out to be a checkbox.
A useful one covers:
Where you're strong right now, in specific terms and not "good communicator"
The one or two behaviors getting in your way
Leadership development goals written as things you'll do rather than things you'll be
The real work situations where you'll practice them
A timeline short enough that you'll remember it exists, and a way to measure change that involves asking other people
Notice what isn't on that list. No course catalog, and no aspirational adjective about the leader you hope to be someday.
Why Most Leadership Development Plans Die in a Google Doc
The gap between wanting to lead better and leading better is well documented. Research from the Chartered Management Institute found that 82 percent of people who step into a management role have had no formal management or leadership training, which is how we end up with a whole layer of the org chart running teams on instinct. Gallup puts the stakes plainly, estimating that managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in team engagement.
So the person with the least training holds the most influence over how a team feels about coming to work. Your plan is one of the few pieces of that you control, and a real one earns its place two ways.
It makes the vague thing specific
One newly promoted manager I worked with came in convinced she needed to get better at strategy, and two sessions later it turned out she'd never told her team what "good" looked like. You can't work on all of it at once, and trying is how people end up working on none of it.
It makes growth measurable
"Become a better communicator" is a nice intention and an impossible thing to track. Compare that to holding weekly one-on-ones for 90 days and asking each person at month end whether your priorities were clear. Now you've got a behavior, a window, a way to measure it, and someone else's read on whether it's landing.
How to Create a Leadership Development Plan in 7 Steps
Creating a leadership development plan doesn't need to be complicated. It needs to be specific enough that you know what to do on a Tuesday afternoon.
1. Start with a real look at how you lead now
Before you decide what to improve, get an accurate read on your starting point. Ask yourself:
What am I known for when I'm at my best?
What feedback have I received more than once, from more than one person?
Which situations reliably make me shrink or overcorrect?
What would my direct reports say about working for me if I weren't part of that conversation?
Your own read is useful and incomplete. Every 1:1 client I work with takes the Energy Leadership Index assessment first, because it shows how you show up on an ordinary day versus under stress, and those are usually two different leaders. Some add the ELI 360 to compare their self-rating against how their raters see them across 36 leadership competencies, which tends to be a humbling hour. Then pick the one or two areas that would change the most about how your week goes.
2. Write two leadership development goals, not ten
Good leadership development goals are specific enough to tell you what to do.
Instead of "improve my leadership skills," try this: delegate the two recurring reports I keep redoing myself, and let my senior analyst own the client update deck through Q3.
Instead of "improve communication," try this: give feedback within 48 hours of the thing happening, then ask how that conversation landed. The second version tells you what a good week looks like.
3. Pick the leadership skills that match where you're headed
There are more leadership skills worth building than you have quarters, so choose based on the role you're growing into.
Communication. Setting expectations and explaining the reasoning behind a decision, so people leave the meeting with the understanding they thought they had walking in.
Delegation. Moving from doing the work yourself to owning the outcome while someone else does it, which is the transition new managers underestimate most. Building stronger delegation skills for leaders can help you give your team more ownership without feeling like you have to stay involved in every detail.
Emotional intelligence. Regulating your own reaction when the feedback stings or the project slips.
Decision-making. Making calls without complete information, consistently enough that your team can predict how you'll respond.
Conflict management. Addressing disagreement directly instead of waiting for it to resolve itself, which it won't.
Executive gravitas. Communicating so senior leaders take your point seriously, which has very little to do with being the loudest voice on the call. Developing stronger leadership presence can help you communicate with more confidence and credibility when the stakes are higher.
4. Turn each goal into behavior you can practice this week
This is where most plans fall apart, because a goal without a behavior attached is a wish with a deadline. For each goal, answer one question: what will I do differently, starting Monday?
For delegation, that might mean picking two tasks a week that someone else owns start to finish, briefing on the outcome rather than the steps, giving that person authority inside the scope, and scheduling a midpoint check instead of hovering in Slack. The closer those behaviors sit to work you're already doing, the better they survive a busy month.
5. Build in learning you can apply within a week
Your plan can pull from books, workshops, mentoring, stretch assignments, and coaching, and the conversation you're dreading counts as a rep too. Before starting coaching, it can also help to think through the questions to ask a leadership coach so you can get clearer about what you want to work on and what kind of support would be most useful.
The filter is simple: does this give me something I can try before I forget it? Coaching earns its place when the behavior you're changing is protecting you from something, like perfectionism or the fear that if you stop doing the work yourself you'll stop being valuable. For leaders who have never worked with a coach before, understanding what to expect from leadership coaching can make the process feel much more concrete.
6. Give it 90 days
A twenty-goal annual plan is a fast route to abandoning all twenty. For each goal, write down five things: the goal, the behavior you'll practice, when you'll practice it, how you'll measure it, and who's supporting you.
7. Measure the behavior, not the attendance
Finishing a course tells you that you finished a course. If your goal was feedback, the signals look like this: you're giving it closer to the moment, your team asks more questions in one-on-ones, the conversation you used to avoid finally happened, and somebody told you a piece of your feedback was useful. Build other people's observations into how you measure, because you'll notice your effort long before anyone else notices your impact.
Leadership Development Plan Example: 90 Days on Delegation
Here's what a real leadership development plan example looks like for a manager who keeps taking the work back.
The goal. Delegate the work I keep reclaiming so my team owns more of it and I get four hours a week back for strategy.
What's happening now. I reassign work and then rewrite it at 9pm because it isn't how I would have done it. My senior analyst has stopped volunteering for stretch projects.
What I'll do differently for 90 days.
Choose two recurring tasks each week that someone else owns start to finish.
Brief on the outcome and the deadline instead of walking through my steps.
Give the person authority to make decisions inside that scope without checking back.
Hold one 15-minute midpoint check instead of monitoring progress all week.
Ask each person at month end how the handoff felt and what I could have given them earlier.
Support. Biweekly coaching sessions to work through what surfaces, plus a monthly conversation with my manager about what I'm pushing down and what I'm still holding.
How I'll know it worked. I'm not rewriting deliverables at night, my analyst has asked for a stretch project without me prompting it, my calendar shows four hours of protected strategy time, and my manager notices I'm bringing prepared points to leadership meetings.
What Millennial and Gen Z Leaders Run Into
Most of my clients are Millennial and Gen Z professionals, and their leadership development plans have to account for something the standard template ignores. They were handed the title without the training, then told they should have figured it out.
Millennials got promoted through a decade of flat org charts and lean L&D budgets, so plenty of them learned management by copying whoever managed them, which, given that 82 percent number, was probably someone who never got trained either. Gen Z leaders came up through remote onboarding and learned to read a room through a grid of muted squares.
Both groups keep getting told they need more executive gravitas, and almost nobody defines what that means. That pressure can also feed imposter syndrome in leadership, especially when you're expected to sound confident before you feel fully confident in the role.
If that's you, build one behavior into your plan about how you ask for feedback, because you'll get less of it unsolicited than your older peers did and you'll be evaluated on things nobody said to your face. If you manage a mixed-generation team, add a behavior about how you deliver it. The Gen X manager who says "you did this well, but here's where you missed" and gets defensiveness back isn't dealing with a fragile employee, she's dealing with someone raised to hear feedback on the work as feedback on the person.
Common Leadership Development Plan Mistakes
Trying to fix all of it at once. Four development priorities is four ways to make no visible progress.
Writing goals nobody could observe. "Be more strategic" is not something anyone can watch you do.
Counting training instead of change. A workshop gives you language, and practice gives you the skill.
Skipping the feedback loop. Build in a monthly check with someone who'll tell you the truth.
Writing it once and never reopening it. Your role will shift and your team will shift, so a plan you don't revisit is a document rather than a practice.
Who Needs a Leadership Development Plan?
Aspiring leaders benefit before they ever get the title, because the fastest way to get promoted into leadership is to already be doing it. First-time managers need one most, since the jump from individual contributor to people leader is the hardest transition in a career and the one companies support least.
For managers making that transition, leadership coaching for new managers can provide a practical space to work through delegation, feedback, communication, and the shift from doing the work to leading the people who do it. Senior leaders tend to focus theirs on influence, organizational culture, succession, and developing the leaders underneath them.
Leadership Coaching in Chicago and Beyond
I'm based in Chicago and work with leaders here and across the country over Zoom, so plenty of my clients are people I've never shared a conference table with. What I hear from Chicago professionals is the pace, whether they're consulting downtown, in finance near the Loop, inside a health system on the North Side, or scaling something out of Fulton Market. Promotion still goes to the strongest individual contributor, and leadership development is expected to happen on your own time.
A leadership coach helps you step back from the churn, look at the patterns in how you lead, test a different response while the stakes are still low, and turn a leadership development plan into behavior you can sustain. If you're still figuring out whether coaching is the right support, learning what a leadership coach does can help you understand where coaching fits into your development. It's also a place to work through what you can't take to your manager, like managing a peer who wanted your job.
Build a Leadership Development Plan You'll Come Back To
Start with an accurate read on where you are. Choose two behaviors worth changing. Write down what you'll do differently and when you'll practice it, then ask someone you trust whether they notice a difference in 90 days.
If you want a partner in that, my 1:1 coaching programs run four or six months and get built around your leadership development plan and the situations you're living in right now. Every engagement starts with the Energy Leadership Index assessment, so we're working from data instead of guesses. I also run workshops for teams and speak for organizations that want to develop their Millennial and Gen Z leaders before they burn them out.
Book a discovery call and let's build the version you'll come back to!
Frequently Asked Questions About Leadership Development Plans
What should a leadership development plan include?
A leadership development plan should include your current strengths, the behaviors getting in your way, two specific leadership development goals, the actions you'll practice, a timeline, how you'll measure change, and who's supporting you through feedback, mentoring, peer accountability, or coaching.
How long should a leadership development plan be?
There's no required length. Ninety days works well for a first plan because it's short enough to hold in your head and long enough to show real behavior change. Annual plans work too, as long as you review them monthly rather than filing them away.
What are examples of leadership development goals?
Strong leadership development goals pair a behavior with a timeframe. Examples include delegating two recurring tasks each week, giving feedback within 48 hours of the event, running weekly one-on-ones with every direct report, and bringing one prepared point of view to each leadership meeting.
How do I know if my leadership development plan is working?
Look for changes other people can observe, not just effort you can feel. Ask your manager and your direct reports whether they've noticed a difference in the behavior you've been practicing. If nobody can point to a change, the plan needs different actions rather than more time.
Can leadership coaching be part of a leadership development plan?
Yes, and it's often the piece that makes the rest of the plan hold. Coaching helps you interpret feedback, translate goals into behaviors, work through what's blocking the change, and stay accountable when the plan collides with a busy quarter.