She Was Already Leading…She Just Didn’t Call It Leadership
A senior consultant enters a leadership development conversation convinced that she needs to become more of a leader. Yet colleagues already bring her difficult client situations, new team members rely on her judgment, and her recommendations shape decisions beyond her formal role.
Asked about any of this, she does not describe it as leadership.
I’m just the person people come to when something gets complicated.
That response matters for L&D. Leadership development often begins by asking which competencies are missing or need improvement. Starting there can leave existing capability outside the assessment. Before identifying the leadership gap, it helps to look at where leadership is already happening in the workplace.
Leadership Identity Shapes What People Recognize In Themselves
Leadership identity develops partly through how people see themselves and how others respond to them. Researchers DeRue and Ashford describe this as a process of „claiming“ and „granting“: people signal leadership through their actions, while others reinforce that identity by seeking their judgment, following their direction, or trusting them with responsibility.
Yet employees do not always interpret those signals as leadership. Resolving a difficult situation can feel like helping; coaching a colleague can feel like simply doing the job well. That matters for L&D because an assessment based heavily on self-perception may overlook capability already visible in everyday work. Before deciding what someone needs to develop next, look at the leadership others are already asking them to provide.
Some Leadership Skills Are Easier To See Than Others
Leadership assessments readily capture visible behavior: presenting a strategy, owning a major decision, leading a project, or managing a team. Other forms of leadership are easier to overlook because they happen inside everyday work. Several capabilities are particularly worth looking for:
- Contextual judgment
Recognizing when the usual approach needs to change. - Informal influence
Shaping decisions without relying on positional authority. - Conflict navigation
Keeping difficult conversations productive. - Developing others
Helping colleagues strengthen their own judgment rather than simply giving them the answer.
These capabilities are not inherently female. What matters is whether they are consistently recognized as evidence of leadership. Eagly and Karau’s role congruity theory helps explain why that recognition can differ for women. Their research argues that expectations associated with women and expectations associated with leadership do not always align, shaping how women are perceived as potential leaders and how their leadership behavior is evaluated.
For L&D, that makes the evidence used in assessment especially important. Looking beyond formal responsibility and highly visible decision-making can reveal capability already shaping outcomes, colleagues, and the way work gets done.
Before Building The Leadership Plan, Look For Leadership Already In Motion
A leadership assessment does not have to begin with a list of competencies to improve. It can begin with the work employees are already trusted to do. Before building the next development plan, L&D teams can use five questions to uncover leadership capability that may otherwise remain outside the assessment.
The Leadership-In-Motion Check
- Where does this person already influence outcomes?
Look beyond formal authority. Which decisions change because they contributed? Where do colleagues actively seek their perspective before moving forward? - What difficult situations do colleagues already bring to them?
The problems people repeatedly bring to someone can reveal where the team already trusts that person’s judgment. Pay particular attention to ambiguous situations where a process alone cannot provide the answer. - What do they notice before others do?
Early recognition of a client risk, team tension, or flaw in an existing approach can reveal pattern recognition and contextual judgment that a standard competency assessment may never surface. - Where are they developing other people’s capability?
Look for moments when someone helps a colleague reason through a problem, prepare for a difficult conversation, or make a better decision independently the next time. - Which of these behaviors does the employee recognize as leadership?
Compare the evidence with the employee’s own description of their role. The gap between what they routinely do and what they count as leadership can become useful information for the development conversation.
Taken together, these questions shift the starting point of leadership development. L&D gains a clearer map of existing capability before deciding where additional training, coaching, or experience will create the greatest value.
What This Changes For Leadership Development
Once existing leadership becomes visible, the development plan can start from a more accurate baseline. For L&D teams, the shift is practical:
- Start with evidence from the work, not only self-assessment
Look at the decisions employees influence, the difficult situations others trust them to handle, and the people they already help develop. - Name existing leadership behaviors before assigning new development needs
Make influence, judgment, conflict navigation, and development of others explicit when they are already present in the work. - Separate skill gaps from visibility, scope, or recognition gaps
Someone may not need another course on influence; they may need opportunities to use an existing capability with senior stakeholders or in higher-stakes situations. - Build development around what is already happening
Use existing strengths as the starting point for deciding where coaching, practice, or greater responsibility will create the most value.
The result is a more precise development plan: one that distinguishes between leadership that still needs to be built and leadership that is already there but needs to go further.
Conclusion
The employee who enters a leadership program saying she needs to „become more of a leader“ may already be influencing decisions, developing colleagues, navigating difficult situations, and shaping how her team works. A useful development plan starts by making that existing capability visible. From there, L&D can distinguish between leadership behaviors that need to be strengthened, those that need greater scope or visibility, and capabilities that genuinely still need to be built. Before L&D teaches someone how to lead, it is worth asking where they are already doing it.
References:
- DeRue, D. S., and S. J. Ashford. 2010. „Who Will Lead and Who Will Follow? A Social Process of Leadership Identity Construction in Organizations.“ Academy of Management Review 35 (4): 627–47. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.35.4.zok627
- Eagly, A. H., and S. J. Karau. 2002. „Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders.“ Psychological Review 109 (3): 573–98. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.109.3.573