Leadership Quality: Vitamin or Medicine in Your Organisation’s Success?

“We’ve been running leadership training  for years, but we still get feedback about poor leadership.”

Sound familiar? Disengaged teams. High turnover. Stalled innovation. Slipping revenue. Despite all the workshops, offsites, and motivational speakers, leadership quality still isn’t improving. What’s going wrong?

Too often, leadership development is treated as a one-off event—or a series of them—instead of what it truly is: a strategic, continuous process, deeply and uniquely tied to your organisation’s mission, vision, and values. Done right, leadership is both a vitamin (preventive and foundational) and a medicine (corrective and healing). The key is knowing when—and how—to apply both.

The Not So Hidden Cost of Bad Leadership

Let’s be clear: poor leadership is expensive.

• Gallup: Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement.

• MIT Sloan: Toxic leadership and culture are 10x more predictive of attrition than compensation.

• SHRM: Replacing a mid-level employee can cost 50–150% of their salary—and that’s just one.

These aren’t soft metrics. They represent real financial losses, declining morale, and stalled momentum.

So – Vitamin or Medicine?

When leadership is treated like a vitamin, it’s part of your business’s daily immune system—proactively building resilience, trust, and performance from the inside out.

When it’s only used as a medicine, it becomes reactive and expensive since it is already hurting (badly). 

The good news? You can shift from short-term fixes to a long-term advantage with the five high-leverage practices as shared below: 

1. Codify What “Great Leadership” Means for You

Stop borrowing from mainstream trends and/or bestselling frameworks. Your organisation deserves its own definition (= Leadership AVATAR).

Do this:

• Identify core leadership competencies that serve your mission, strategy, and culture.
• Use real data: 360 feedback, engagement surveys, onboarding and exit interviews to evaluate it.

2. Connect Leadership to Business Outcomes

Leadership gains credibility when it drives measurable results.

Do this:

• Track team-level metrics (engagement, retention, productivity) by leader.
• Recognise and reward how leaders achieve results—not just what they achieve.

3. Make Development Normal—Not Crisis-Only

Development shouldn’t be reserved for “fixing” struggling leaders. It should support and accelerate the growth of promising ones.

Do this:

• Provide development at pivotal moments: promotions, team transitions, or scaling phases.
• Combine internal mentors and coaches with experienced external ones.

4. Develop Leaders Early And Never Stop

Leadership is not a milestone. It’s a muscle that strengthens with continuous use.

Do this:

• Build core leadership habits (e.g. feedback, conflict resolution, inclusive decision-making) early—starting at the individual contributor level.
• Make development a continuous loop, not a one-time bootcamp.

5. Make Self-Awareness a Leadership Multiplier

Even the most skilled leaders can become blind spots if they lack self-awareness.

Do this:

• Use tools like 360 reviews, Pulse checks, emotional intelligence assessments, and reflective journaling.
• Embed self-awareness into your leadership model—not as an add-on, but as a core pillar.

Leadership is not a perk—it’s the engine behind your strategy, execution, and culture. It’s the vitamin that builds resilience. The medicine that cures drift and disengagement.

And the infrastructure that keeps everything working—especially under pressure.

Don’t Forget the Dosage – Each and Every Day 

Your competitors are investing in AI, tools, and marketing. But if you invest in those plus better leaders—who make smarter decisions, build stronger teams, and inspire action—you’ll outperform them in the long run. Because leadership is your most renewable competitive advantage. Not an event. Not a title. Not a phase. Hence, don’t wait for symptoms. Build a strong leadership immune system for your organisation now.