Your Leadership Has a Ghost Issue. Admit it.

Let me be brutally honest about something I’m seeing in multiple organisations right now:

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Leaders aren’t failing because they’re bad.
They’re failing because they’re leading ghosts.

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Yeah — ghosts. What do I mean?

They’re leading the version of their team they think exists…
Not the version that actually exists in reality, right now.

Here’s what that looks like:

• They assume a high performer is still confident — but the person quietly burned out two months ago.
• They assume a new joiner “should be up to speed by now” — but the person is still figuring out the basics.
• They assume a senior employee “doesn’t need handholding” — but the person is lost in a new transformation project.
• They assume a Gen Z team member needs constant support — but the person actually wants autonomy and ownership.

And here’s where it gets scary:

70%of leadership programs fail‍

‍Only 11% of leaders believe their organisation’s leadership development works

‍‍78% of leaders say empathy is crucial

Yet engagement and alignment are still dropping. This is leadership misalignment at its peak.

People’s ability, confidence, motivation, and clarityare changing week to week —
but leadership styles are staying the same year to year.

And THAT mismatch is what’s quietly killing performance.

Strategy didn’t fail. Talent didn’t fail. Leadership alignment failed. Let me say something uncomfortable:
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Most leaders don’tknow how to adjust their leadership
style because they don’t know what the person in front of
them actually needs.

They’re guessing. They’re assuming. They’re managing based on memory, not readiness.

This is why regression happens.
This is why change feels heavy.
This is why teams look “flat” even though you hired smart people.
This is why managers burn out.
This is why CHROs feel like everything is on fire at the same time.

And THIS is exactly where Situational Leadership® becomes stupidly practical.

Not philosophical. Not academic. Not buzzwords.
Practical. Daily. Real-world leadership.

The model basically forces leaders to stop the guessing and ask:

Once you understand readiness,
you know whether to:

• give direction
• give support
• give freedom
• give challenge
• or get out of the way

That’s why 70% of Fortune 500 companies use it — because it solves the actual leadership problem:
leaders leading ghosts instead of people.

And honestly?

If CEOs and CHROs fixed just THIS alignment problem,
their organisation would move faster than 80% of their competitors.

If this hit home even a little, we put everything into one place in our e-book:

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