It’s 2026. Leaders Don’t Have Time. And That’s the Problem...

It’s 2026, and if you ask most leaders how they’re doing, the answer is almost always the same. Busy. Not the productive kind of busy. Not the satisfying kind either. Just full calendars, constant decisions and very little space to think.

Leadership today comes with a strange contradiction. The more responsibility you carry, the less time you feel you have to step back and improve how you lead. Growth adds pressure, not margin. Teams need clarity, customers expect more. The business doesn’t pause while you “work on yourself”. So leadership development gets pushed down the list, not because it isn’t important, but because it feels unrealistic.

That’s the time dilemma leaders are living with.

Most leaders don’t avoid development because they don’t care. They avoid it because the idea of committing to a long programme feels disconnected from reality. Taking time out sounds risky. Sitting through theory feels indulgent. And there’s always something more urgent pulling attention back to the day-to-day.

The problem is that waiting for more time doesn’t work anymore. Time pressure isn’t temporary. It’s built into how modern organisations operate. Faster decisions, constant change, people needing direction, and uncertainty as a constant background noise. In that environment, leadership doesn’t improve by accident. It either gets better by design or it stays reactive.

When leaders don’t make time to reflect on how they lead, the cost shows up in other ways. Decisions take longer than they should. Teams become dependent instead of confident. The same problems resurface again and again. Growth becomes harder to manage, not because the strategy is wrong, but because leadership hasn’t evolved with the business.

Ironically, the leaders who feel they have no time to step back are often the ones losing the most time without realising it. Time spent firefighting. Time spent re-explaining decisions. Time spent stepping into problems that should have been handled elsewhere. Over time, this creates fatigue, not just for the leader, but for the whole organisation.

Part of the issue is how leadership development is traditionally framed. It’s often positioned as something separate from the job, something you do away from the business. Courses, workshops, abstract frameworks that sound good but struggle to survive contact with real pressure. That model made sense once. but it doesn’t anymore.

In 2026, leadership development only works if it fits inside reality. It has to run alongside the role, not compete with it. It has to deal with live decisions, real people and current challenges. Otherwise it becomes another good intention that never quite translates into change.

The right kind of leadership development doesn’t add another burden to an already full schedule. It changes how leaders use the time they already have. Better decisions reduce hesitation. Clearer communication cuts repetition. Stronger leadership in teams prevent bottlenecks. Over time, leaders don’t gain more hours in the day, but they stop losing them unnecessarily.

This shifts the question leaders need to ask themselves. It’s not “Do I have time to commit to something like this?” It’s “What is my current way of leading costing me in time, energy and focus?” Because leadership development isn’t really about commitment. It’s about leverage.

Some leaders reach a point where continuing as they are feels harder than doing something differently. Not because things are broken, but because they’re heavier than they need to be. That’s usually when leaders start looking for development that respects their time, challenges their thinking and works with the reality of modern leadership.

Programmes designed with that reality in mind don’t promise quick fixes or dramatic transformations. They focus on practical change, sustained over time, supported by peer challenge, reflection and accountability. They recognise that leadership doesn’t improve in theory but in practice, while the business keeps moving.

That’s the thinking behind LEAD™. A leadership programme built around how leaders actually work in 2026, not how we wish they did. Not as an escape from responsibility, but as a way to handle it better.

Because the real time dilemma isn’t finding space to develop as a leader. It’s deciding whether continuing as you are is really the best use of your time.