Beyond Upskilling: Why the Future of Leadership Depends on Work as a Space for Growth
“I am a different person at work than I am at home.”
I have heard that sentence more than once in my years of working with companies on leadership capacity development.
Forward-looking leaders partner with us to develop leadership capacity across their workforce — not just among managers — because they recognize its transformative organizational value. First and foremost, it increases people’s capacity to create outcomes and solve challenges in an increasingly complex environment.
There is the old joke of the CEO and CFO talking. And the CFO asks: “What happens if we develop our people and they leave?” —to which the CEO replies: “What if we don’t and they stay?”
Developing your people is crucial, especially right now, since everything is shifting around us, and the acceleration of change due to AI and shifts in global context demand people who are able to handle complexity — something most people weren’t trained for in school.
“When the complexity of the environment exceeds the capacity of a system (natural or artificial) the environment will dominate and ultimately destroy that system.” — William Ross Ashby
Employees need more than just upskilling
Many companies already focus on upskilling and reskilling. They provide lots of skills training and courses to their employees — and sometimes wonder why so few are taking them — unless they are forced to log learning hours.
But upskilling isn’t sufficient. The increased complexity in our environment requires more than just skills acquisition, it requires personal development and capacity building.
Skill and capacity are related but distinct concepts:
- Skill refers to a specific ability or proficiency developed through practice and experience. Skills are usually tangible, like learning to analyze data, negotiate, time management, or using AI tools. They are often task-specific and can be measured and observed. Skills can be acquired, refined, and enhanced over time with training and practice.
- Capacity, on the other hand, is the foundation that enables individuals to acquire and apply skills, adapt to new situations, and navigate complexity. It encompasses the underlying physical, emotional, and mental resources a person has, such as resilience, emotional regulation, adaptability or relational intelligence. Capacity is more about a person’s potential and overall readiness to perform or develop in various contexts.
Skills are what you can do, while capacity is the depth and potential for growth and adaptation in doing them.
Building capacity enhances your ability to acquire and apply skills effectively, especially in changing or challenging contexts.
The End of Work-Life Balance: Embracing Work as a Space for Transformation
But why do so many leaders not see that the workplace is the best place for personal development? Why do they think it’s something to be done outside of work, that work and life are separate? That at work, at best, you should learn some new skills, maybe some time management or AI prompting, but keep that mindfulness training for your private life.
I have never believed in work/life balance. It is a false dichotomy we learned as children when we were forced into school, and thanks to a forced persona we had to take on, we learned to look at it as the opposite of play, of having fun, of being ourselves.
But work is not the opposite of life. Death is.
We spend the majority of our lives at work. If we sever work from personal growth, we waste the greatest opportunity we have for transformation
In some ways, it makes sense. We play different roles, have different personas, we wear different masks (the original meaning of the word persona). You will act differently with our mother, a child, a police officer or a colleague at work. Different strategies are definitely appropriate depending on context.
What is critical, though, is that we choose those personas willfully, rather than having outside environments dictate who to be. Because then we become inauthentic and eventually neurotic.
Neurosis comes from jumping from persona to persona based on external stimulation, reacting to the world around us, and losing our sense of self in the process.
This issue has accelerated during the pandemic and the resulting breakdown of “normal” work experiences with hybrid work, where many employees got a first taste of a new autonomy, and the bifurcation between work and life began to muddle.
Consequently, employees grapple with burnout, anxiety, and the pressures of a rapidly changing world. They are beginning — consciously or unconsciously — to recognize the need for deeper personal transformation. True resilience comes not just from coping mechanisms, but from evolving into more authentic, adaptable versions of themselves.
The Process of Individuation: Ownership of Outcomes
The first part of individuation, of becoming fully yourself, is to understand that while we might use different personas, it is always us, always our core that we operate from. We can then consciously choose the appropriate mask to put on, but we know that it is just that, a mask, and not who we are, our self at the core of everything.
This is a constant process. It is a practice, and something we have to remind ourselves of, especially when outside events or people trigger us.
At LUMAN we developed ARO/IAO as a leadership framework for authentic action and effective creation of outcomes. It is based on two movements:
- ARO — Awareness, Responsibility, Ownership is about processing your input and centering in your authentic self.
– Awareness: Expanding perception and understanding our triggers.
– Responsibility: Moving from reaction to intentional response.
– Ownership: Recognizing our role in shaping reality - IAO — Identity, Action, Outcomes is the choice to commit to your creation
– Identity: Consciously choosing who we are in a given moment.
– Action: Engaging in deliberate, purpose-driven actions.
– Outcomes: Creating results aligned with our authentic leadership.
This simple yet powerful framework is the foundation of our work on leadership. Leadership, crossing a threshold to address the needs of not just the situation, but the future, requires constant evolution. It is a process of becoming rather than simply a thing you do. Becoming your next iteration of self, and supporting others in their evolution toward who they could become.
Work is a great place for that since we spend most of our lifetime there.
Awareness, Responsibility and Ownership at Work
At LUMAN we believe that everyone has the potential to be a leader, that leadership has little to do with title or position, but that leadership is a personal choice. It is the choice to meet the moment, to meet the challenges in front of us from a conscious place, and to do something about them.
It starts with awareness, with expanding our view, whether on the situation or ourselves.
Awareness requires vulnerability
Work provides many moments that invite us to pay attention and expand our awareness — especially, when things are not working.
Awareness requires vulnerability. Whether awareness of ourselves, of new information as we learn (and being confronted with not knowing something or feeling stupid), or of the feedback we receive. We have to be willing to meet the new with openness instead of with fortified walls around us; be willing to take in new information rather than defending who we have been, our persona or old sense of identity.
Especially when you sense your defense mechanism kicking in, that is a great time to step back and expand your awareness, to check in with your body, emotions, your thoughts and what is going on around you. You might have to pause, excuse yourself from an interaction or even a meeting, in order to not simply react to what is in front of you. That requires responsibility.
Responsibility as our ability to respond not react
Most of our behavior is habitual, we constantly react to the world around us. As such, there is nothing wrong with that. Unless these reactions aren’t serving us or others. When we become aware of those situations, of new things, of feedback, we are then also invited to respond to them, to take responsibility for them.
This is not about guilt or blame — responsibility often gets confused with that — but actually about the opposite, about taking back your power in the situation.
Responsibility requires courage. It requires us to step beyond the known and the comfortable. We might have to try something new, something we don’t know yet, we might even fail. It also takes a lot to show up and say “I don’t know” — especially since we were mostly trained that knowing is what brings us safety and success. But that is externally defined success, not our authentic sense of what that means. Being authentic is being in ownership of what is meaningful to you.
Ownership over your reality
Being in ownership of your reality is the foundation of autonomy and agency. Taking ownership of projects and tasks fosters accountability.
Have you sat in a meeting where someone said “Maybe we should just…” — a reason project management fails so often. Without ownership there is no real commitment and no accountability. If I am just going through the motions of a persona to satisfy what is coming at me from the outside, it is not meaningful to me. Only if I have a sense of ownership over my reality and the projects and tasks I take on, will I also ensure that I am driving toward desired outcomes.
Ownership creates accountability, engagement and resilience.
From Ownership to Outcomes
Once grounded in ownership, in their authentic selves and their leadership, employees are no longer hamsters in the wheel, no longer simply going through the motions fulfilling on other’s expectations. They are powerfully choosing how they show up, how they work and grow, and what results they are committed to creating.
Identity as the key lever for outcomes
Most of the time, work is concerned with outcomes. On a secondary level even with the actions that will lead to those outcomes. But rarely do we ask ourselves who we have to be in order to engage in these actions.
In ontological coaching there is the notion that the observer determines the available actions, which in turn can create results. If I want to create different results, I need to engage in different actions. Those might not be available, though, depending on how I define myself.
E.g. if I think of myself as someone who is “just an engineer”, the action of calling up a customer might not be available to me. If I think of myself as an “intrapreneur”, I can cross that threshold. I have seen this many times in our work while guiding the intrapreneurs bootcamps at Siemens. The bootcamps were successful not just because of the innovation skills that participants acquired, but even more so because of the increased leadership capacities we cultivated in the participants — starting with a new identity, a new way of looking at themselves.
Having a new sense of self, a new identity also opened the door for further professional development. Many participants went on to take on new roles with more responsibilities and a new sense of purpose — allowing a much wider array of actions and the outcomes they could create.
Adaptable actions are key in a complex future
Job descriptions are already on the way out. More and more companies understand that an organization can no longer be a static system, but must adapt continuously to changes in markets, customers, and even employee demands. Those companies who realize that things will continue to change, and that this change will only accelerate for a while, focus on roles and outcomes, allowing employees to choose the appropriate actions to take themselves.
Letting employees choose their own actions creates adaptability for the company, but also increases work ethic and personal motivation.
According to self-determination theory, we have intrinsic motivation when we feel a sense of autonomy, mastery and belonging. When we get to choose our own actions rather than having them be dictated to us (or worse, we are being micro-managed); when we are learning as we are doing, and growing in our skills and capacities; and when we have a sense that the outcomes we are creating are actually meaningful to someone else, building a sense of belonging.
Ownership of Outcomes creates engagement, performance and retention
Leadership development is not a feel-good initiative; it is a competitive advantage. Employees who take ownership of their outcomes don’t just meet expectations — they define them. They see challenges as opportunities, drive innovation, and take responsibility beyond their job descriptions.
Organizations that cultivate leadership at all levels foster a culture of initiative, accountability, and resilience. Instead of employees waiting for directives, they create solutions. Instead of attrition due to disengagement, they build lasting commitment.
The future belongs to companies that empower their people to become who they need to be — not just to survive change, but to shape it.
Don’t just react to change — lead amidst complexity
You can react to change or lead it. Reacting to change will leave you stuck and behind the curve, while constantly firefighting. It will ultimately endanger your very existence.
Organizations that invest not just in upskilling, but in building leadership capacity don’t just retain employees, they create visionaries. They don’t just solve problems, they anticipate them. They don’t just survive uncertainty in the liminal space of transformation, they actively shape the future.
At LUMAN, we don’t merely train leaders. We ignite them. We create the conditions for your team to step into their next level of ownership, adaptability, and impact. If you want a workforce that leads — not just follows — let’s talk.
If you’re ready to strengthen your authentic leadership and foster a more connected, purposeful team and workforce, let’s discuss how leadership capacity building can transform your organization toward a new operating system. Connect with me at https://philiphorvath.com or through our organization at https://luman.io
