What great leadership takes at each level and where to invest first
Updated: 3 days ago
As a Business head, you promoted one of your strongest managers to run a small P&L.
A year in, it is not working the way you expected.
They deliver. They are respected. Something is missing, and the words available for it are unhelpfully vague: 'Not strategic enough, not yet operating at the level, still too close to the detail.'
But no stakeholder (Business, HR, L&D) is able to tell what the person should be doing differently on Monday.
The feedback words stay vague because the deep shifts are not explicit. Here is one way to look at the leadership levels to understand what it takes to scale a person across them in a way that is actionable.
Level/ Dimensions | Senior manager | Business head | CXO |
Horizon | This quarter's delivery. | The next 1-2 years. | The next 5 years, and what the organisation needs to stay relevant. |
Decides | How the work gets done. | Which bets gets made & what get resourced. | What the business is for. |
Influence | Peers with no authority over them. | Functions that do not report to them. | The industry and the ecosystem. |
Once the horizon, the decisions and the influence are explicit for a level, the real gap between expectation and performance is easier to name.
What adequate and great look like at each level:
Senior manager | Business head | CXO | |
The job | Deliver this quarter through a high performance team. | Identify bets, resource, work 1-2 years out while still delivering the year. | Decide what the business is for, influence the industry while still being accountable for current year. |
Adequate | Deliver with quality without escalations. | Allocate resources to business asks and deliver. | Meet current year business performance goals. |
Great | Build a team that continuously shapes performance and delivers with consistency. | Identify the bets that will catapult the company, say yes to select ones, say no to others. Build coherent capabilities. | Become industry leader that others look up to. |
The gap between those last two rows is where leadership development has to land. Most of it is commissioned against the row above.
Only 32% (Gallup 2026) of US leaders strongly agree they have a clear definition of exceptional performance.
What this changes
If you are the Business head: Read down each column against the people you have, judging horizon by their calendar rather than their job description. Where a level is operating as the column to its left, that is the level to fund first.
If you run L&D: Invest in programs that get you to great and not just adequate.
If you are the HR head: Write promotion criteria in these terms, so readiness is judged on evidence on the next role rather than performance in the current one. Invest in programs that could help people get there.
The manager who stalled was not short of ability. What scaling actually asked of them was never defined in a way they could learn and demonstrate.
Translate the words you already have into terms you can observe & replicate, and you stop buying development on faith.
Written by: Priya Venkatesan, Founder & Partner, Ālokana.
About Ālokana
Ālokana is an executive coaching, training and advisory firm.
We build leadership capability at three levels: future proofing the organisation, with CXOs and top teams (Atlas); choosing the bets worth making, with business heads (Apex); and execution through high performance teams, with senior managers (Ascent).
