On What Organisations Ask Leaders to Carry

Looking back, I can see that this question has been with me longer than I realised.

In an earlier phase of my career, much of my work involved helping organisations navigate large-scale change and restructuring. Those assignments showed me that transformations realised far more of their intended value when the required leadership capability and presence were in place.

That realisation drew me, over time, more deeply into leadership assessment and coaching.

More recently, I have found myself returning to the question from the other direction. Coaching is most useful when it keeps both in view: the leader, and the organisational context they are trying to carry.

When is a competency gap truly individual—and when is it also being shaped by the system around the person?

The leader and the context

I do not ask this to diminish the importance of individual capability. Competencies such as building trust, developing talent, collaborating across boundaries, delivering through others, showing resilience and exercising sound judgement are real and necessary.

Nor do I ask it to understate the value of coaching. Leaders do need to grow—sometimes significantly—in how they see themselves, how they relate to others and how they respond under pressure.

And yet, context matters too.

This becomes especially visible during organisational transformation, when leaders are expected to align people, steady teams, collaborate more effectively and deliver through ambiguity—often while roles are shifting, incentives are unclear, pressures are rising and the wider system is itself unsettled. Leadership expectations can evolve faster than the clarity, reinforcement and organisational support required to sustain them.

What the system may be reinforcing

None of this removes personal responsibility. It does mean that coaching cannot stop at, ‘How does this person need to develop?’ It also has to ask, ‘What is the surrounding system making difficult, costly or unlikely?’

In a transformation context, there may be a further question worth asking: is this the moment for deeper capability building—or is the leader still carrying too much uncertainty for that capability to take root?

• A leader may appear hesitant to delegate while working in a context that rewards personal heroics.
• Another may seem weak on developing talent while operating in a system where exporting strong people reduces one’s own leverage.
• A third may be seen as overly controlling in an environment where accountability is high, support is low and failure is remembered longer than trust.