Five years ago, a founder-led engineering firm in the Midwest was operating with a lean team of 15 employees. Today, that same firm has grown tenfold, supporting a workforce of 150 and running at a pace few could sustain without operational stress. The CEO, once closely connected to every hire and project, now leads at a distance, managing through layers of leadership that did not exist a few years ago. The demands on the team have scaled faster than their leadership capacity. Results are inconsistent. Accountability gaps are widening. And internal tensions, once rare, have begun to surface.
The founder knew he needed to invest in leadership development. Yet standing at the crossroads, he was unsure where to begin. Should he coach high-potential engineers in emotional intelligence? Should he train his new frontline managers in leadership fundamentals? Should he align his senior team around a strategic vision and elevate their executive leadership skills? Or should he address a few key relationships that were repeatedly missing targets? Perhaps the right place to start was upstream, with hiring managers who continued to make decisions that put the wrong people in critical roles. These questions are common among growing companies when leadership development becomes too important to postpone.
The Metiss Group has guided dozens of companies through this precise inflection point. The patterns are familiar: rapid growth exposes leadership gaps, and reactive problem-solving becomes unsustainable. Our expertise lies not in delivering one-size-fits-all training, but in helping executive teams define which leadership levers will drive the highest return on effort. Leadership development is not just a learning initiative. It is a strategic business decision with cultural, financial, and operational consequences.
This article will provide a framework for identifying where to begin with leadership development. It offers five potential entry points, each addressing a different business need. Whether an organization chooses one focus area or several, the guidance provided here will help business leaders evaluate trade-offs and invest in leadership development intentionally.
In this article, you will learn:
- Why Strategic Leadership Alignment Is the Strongest Place to Start
- How Improving the Hiring Process Builds Long-Term Stability
- Why Emotional Intelligence Matters for High Potentials
- Where Leadership Fundamentals Fit into the Broader Strategy
- When to Prioritize Fixing Key Relationships
Why Strategic Leadership Alignment Is the Strongest Place to Start
For organizations experiencing rapid growth or complex change, the most effective place to begin leadership development is often at the top. Senior leaders shape culture, set expectations, and model behaviors. If they are misaligned or underdeveloped, efforts to strengthen other layers of the organization will falter.
Start by defining the leadership competencies needed to support the organization’s strategic direction. Then assess the existing leadership team against those benchmarks. This creates clarity about current capabilities and identifies where development is needed most. From there, targeted leadership development plans can be created to close the gap.
This approach also sends a clear signal to the rest of the organization: leadership development is a priority, and it begins with those responsible for the most critical decisions. It builds internal trust and creates momentum. It also prevents mid-level leaders from being asked to change without seeing their own leaders doing the same.
How Improving the Hiring Process Builds Long-Term Stability
When companies are growing quickly, they hire quickly. This speed can lead to poor hiring decisions, which are both costly and disruptive. A single mis-hire can create friction across departments, slow down progress, and drain valuable time from senior leaders.
Improving the hiring process is often one of the highest ROI investments an organization can make. It reduces the likelihood of mis-hires, enhances cultural fit, and helps ensure new employees have both the technical and leadership capacity to grow with the company. Teaching hiring managers how to evaluate candidates for both IQ and EQ—cognitive ability and emotional intelligence—is critical. Hiring assessments, structured interviews, and clear role definitions help sharpen judgment.
If the goal is to stabilize growth and prevent leadership gaps from widening, then ensuring the right people are coming through the door is essential. No amount of leadership development will correct a pattern of poor hiring decisions.
Why Emotional Intelligence Matters for High Potentials
Not everyone currently in a leadership position will be the right fit long-term. That is why organizations should also focus on high-potential employees who are not yet in formal leadership roles but show promise.
Equipping these future leaders with emotional intelligence skills early creates a foundation for future success. Emotional intelligence training helps individuals navigate conflict, understand their own behavior, and communicate more effectively. These are not soft skills. They are strategic differentiators. When high performers lack EQ, they often struggle when promoted into management. When they possess it, they become accelerators of culture and performance.
By investing in emotional intelligence early, organizations increase their bench strength and reduce the risk of promoting technically skilled individuals who cannot lead effectively.
Where Leadership Fundamentals Fit into the Broader Strategy
Many growing organizations rely heavily on technical experts who get promoted into leadership roles without formal training. This creates a dangerous gap. Leaders who are responsible for performance management, team alignment, and communication are often making it up as they go.
Leadership training programs focused on the basics, such as delegation, accountability, and feedback equip these individuals with the tools they need to lead effectively. These programs can also be valuable for more experienced leaders who may never have received formal leadership training and are open to strengthening their foundation.
While strategic leadership sets the vision and EQ training prepares the next generation, leadership fundamentals operationalize both. They turn intentions into actions and ensure that teams have consistent guidance and accountability.
When to Prioritize Fixing Key Relationships
Sometimes the pain is concentrated in a few critical areas: missed deadlines, tension between departments, or repeated communication breakdowns. These relationship-based issues often create cascading operational strain.
Addressing these problems may involve executive coaching, facilitated alignment sessions, or targeted feedback interventions. While this approach is more tactical, it can be a powerful entry point into broader leadership development. Fixing one broken relationship may unlock performance in an entire business unit. It can also model the kind of courage and humility that leadership development demands.
Organizations must assess whether these relationship issues are symptoms of a broader cultural issue or isolated performance challenges. In either case, they cannot be ignored. Leadership development is not just about learning new skills. It is also about repairing the trust and coordination that growth sometimes damages.
Takeaways
There is no universally perfect place to start with leadership development. However, beginning at the top by aligning strategic leadership skills to business goals is often the most effective move. From there, investing in hiring best practices, EQ training for high potentials, leadership fundamentals for new managers, and resolving key relationship issues will yield measurable results.
Leadership development should not be approached as a single initiative. It should be seen as a strategic system, with interdependent parts. When chosen carefully and implemented with clarity, the right starting point creates the conditions for sustainable growth and stronger leadership across the organization.
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