Picture this: A group of chickens on a farm notices eagles soaring gracefully overhead. One ambitious chicken declares, “I want to learn to fly like an eagle!” He convinces his fellow chickens to join him at “eagle school” for two intensive days of flight training. The experience is transformative—they all learn to fly beautifully.
On their journey back to the farm, they walk. Halfway home, one chicken turns to another and asks, “Why are we walking back instead of flying? We just invested in all this training!”
The response is telling: “When we get back to the coop, you know it’s not set up to support us. The roof limits our ability to fly, and the farmer wouldn’t let us do it anyway.”
This story, shared by one of our current clients’ operations leaders, perfectly captures the biggest challenge in leadership development today.
The Band-Aid Approach to Leadership Development
Most businesses contact us when they’ve identified a leadership problem they want to fix. They recognize that leadership development is a pain point—and it absolutely is across the agricultural industry. But their approach typically follows the same pattern: “Come in, fix it, be done. Conduct a one-day training. Check. Done.”
This band-aid mentality creates chickens who learn to fly but return to coops that clip their wings.
The problem isn’t the training itself. The problem is the environment these leaders return to after the training ends. When newly trained leaders walk back into workplaces that don’t support, encourage, or allow them to implement their new skills, the investment becomes wasted potential.
A Different Approach: Building Eagle-Ready Environments
Our current client—a multi-location business with leaders ranging from frontline supervisors to managers—is taking a different approach. Instead of asking “Where do we have the biggest problems?” they’re asking “Which locations have environments that will allow people to soar?”
Rather than sending everyone to training immediately, they’re strategically investing in locations that are ready to support leadership growth. Some locations are demanding training, insisting “we need this, we need this,” but the leadership team is making tough decisions: “You’re not ready.”
Why? Because they’re looking beyond the immediate desire for training to the culture and environment these leaders will return to. They understand that sustainable leadership development requires more than teaching skills—it requires creating conditions where those skills can flourish.
The Environment Assessment
Before investing in leadership development, this client evaluates each location’s readiness by examining three critical factors:
- Leadership Support: Are the “farmers” (senior leaders) encouraging the use of new skills and tools, or will they inadvertently discourage innovation and change?
- Cultural Foundation: Does the workplace culture foster growth and development, or does it resist new approaches and maintain status quo thinking?
- Structural Barriers: Are there procedural, or organizational obstacles that would prevent leaders from implementing what they’ve learned?
This approach means saying no to some locations temporarily—not because they don’t deserve development, but because the investment won’t yield results until the environment is prepared.
What This Means for Your Leadership Development
As you consider leadership development in your organization, ask yourself these crucial questions:
What environment are your leaders returning to after training? Will they find support systems that encourage them to spread their wings, or will they encounter low ceilings and skeptical “farmers”?
Are you investing in sustainable change or quick fixes? The difference between the two often determines whether your training investment produces long-term transformation or short-term enthusiasm that quickly fades.
The most effective leadership development isn’t just about teaching people to fly—it’s about creating environments where they can soar. Sometimes that means addressing the coop before sending anyone to eagle school.
Your leaders have tremendous potential. The question is: Are you prepared to let them use it?
Ready to assess whether your organization’s environment supports leadership growth? Consider conducting an honest evaluation of your workplace culture, leadership support systems, and structural barriers before your next training investment. Sometimes the most important work happens before anyone steps into a classroom.