Lately, I have been thinking about my work and why it matters.
Many years ago, I left my career in financial services. It took me a long time to leave. I kept trying different roles and companies hoping that one of them would focus on more than portfolio returns. It wasn’t a surprise – just a mismatch in the job description and who I was. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but I wanted to work for an organization that valued both the bottom-line and its people equally.
When I finally decided to cross over from the business side to the people side, someone said to me, “You mean you are giving up your career in investment management to do something so touchy feely?”
At the time, I had the same doubts. As a new coach, I struggled to make the case for leadership development. I bought into a prevailing narrative that developing your people was a nice to have, but that when the stakes were high, the focus had to be on revenue and margins.
Now many years later, having worked with hundreds of organizations and thousands of leaders, I see things very differently.
Traditionally, leadership development is thought of as feel-good. Whether it is executive coaching, team dynamics, conflict management or culture change, the focus is typically on optimizing individuals and teams, but there is something even more critical at stake.
Leadership development reduces systemic exposure before it shows up in performance.
The impact may begin with individuals, but it compounds at the system level.
What Organizations Are Actually Buying
What Organizations Say They Want & What is Actually at Stake When an organization reaches out to me, they may frame the work as optimization, but what they are really asking for is help managing systemic exposure, whether financial volatility, retention costs or execution breakdown.
What appears to be a coaching objective is often an early signal of structural strain.
A common request I hear is for support for a senior leader who is highly competent and deeply trusted, but hesitant around conflict. It sounds straightforward, but it is more than just optimization. It is about reducing systemic exposure.
In this case, the risk is decision latency. When a leader struggles with conflict, they may put off difficult decisions or revert to consensus, neither of which is good for the business. Over time, that behavior reshapes how the system operates.
When leaders fail to lead, teams struggle. When teams struggle, cultures fracture. It isn’t long before performance follows.
The connection between leadership behavior and business outcomes is not philosophical. It is structural. People development is not a discretionary investment. It reduces systemic exposure before it becomes visible in performance.
While I have witnessed this over and over again, I am now in the midst of some engagements that have brought this idea to life in a different way for me.
Below are a few examples of stated objectives versus what is really at stake.
When evaluating any leadership investment, two questions clarify what is truly at risk:
- What’s the cost of the status quo?
- What is really at stake here?
Organizations often frame leadership development as growth, which is absolutely true but incomplete. It also addresses systemic exposure that, left unexamined, becomes visible in performance.
Starla Sireno is recognized as one of the top executive coaches in NYC. Starla is in the business of transforming executives into better leaders and better humans. Inquire how to work with Starla or her team.