Beyond the programme: 9 strategic ways to accelerate your leadership pipeline

By Sharon Peake, Founder & CEO, Shape Talent

In today’s volatile market, the competition for leadership is intensifying. Across Europe, four out of five organisations report difficulty sourcing talent [i], and senior hires take 120+ days to fill, with failure costing up to three times salary. Yet recruitment remains a short-term fix. It does little to address the systemic barriers that stall internal talent, particularly women and minoritised groups who still hold just 29% of FTSE 350 Executive Committee roles [ii].

If organisations want resilient, future-ready leadership pipelines, they must balance a “buy” strategy with a deliberate “build” strategy.

The most effective organisations understand that acceleration doesn’t happen in the classroom alone. According to the Center for Creative Leadership’s 70-20-10 framework [iii], 70% of leadership development comes from stretch experiences, 20% from developmental relationships, and only 10% from formal training. Formal talent accelerator programmes are powerful but they cannot be treated as the sole solution. Real impact comes from layering structured programmes with other interventions, such as sponsorship, stretch assignments, coaching, and systemic debiasing to dismantle the societal, organisational and personal barriers that hold talent back.

Yet acceleration without strategic clarity risks becoming activity without impact.

Starting with the end in mind

Development must start with strategy. Acceleration efforts should be anchored in the organisation’s future capability needs, not today’s gaps alone. As technology, AI and market dynamics reshape leadership, the skills required tomorrow will not mirror those of the past.

What’s changing is not just the pace of work, but the nature of leadership itself. Leaders are increasingly required to operate in more complex, ambiguous and fast-moving environments, where clear answers are rare and trade-offs are constant. The role is shifting away from technical expertise and individual decision-making, towards orchestrating systems, aligning diverse stakeholders, and enabling performance through others. Judgement, adaptability and the ability to navigate competing demands are becoming as important as domain expertise. At the same time, expectations around trust, ethics and inclusion are rising, placing greater emphasis on how leaders lead, not just what they deliver.

Without a clearly defined view of what future-ready leadership looks like and how you will measure success, development risks becoming reactive rather than strategic. Only with this clarity can development interventions build the workforce required to deliver long-term ambitions.

Broad training programmes have a place (generally at more junior levels) , but leadership development needs to be far more targeted. I think of it like a marketing segmentation exercise: defining your audience based on specific characteristics, whether that’s high potential talent, future Country Directors, or particular underrepresented groups. The more precise your targeting, the stronger your design and outcomes.

Clarity of audience is critical. Whether focused on women and under-represented groups, technical leaders transitioning into people leadership, or high-potential talent broadly, tight targeting strengthens design and outcomes.

With that clarity in place, the following nine interventions, when deployed deliberately and in combination, can transform a leadership pipeline from fragile to future-ready.

1. Formal talent accelerator programmes: a staple for systematic acceleration for early to mid-career talent

Talent Accelerator Programmes remain a cornerstone of systematic leadership development. Designed well, they combine structured content learning with experiential development: such as sponsorship, rotations, or business projects, creating the scaffolding upon which other interventions can build.

Well-designed programmes can deliver measurable results. In our work, over 66% of participants are promoted within 12 months, 88% report increased impact at work, and recommendation rates exceed 94% across 1,900+ participants globally.

However, accelerators are a foundation, not the full solution. Their impact multiplies when paired with strategic, targeted interventions and systemic change.

Key success factors: clear target audience, multi-mode design, evidence-based methodology.

2. Bespoke Leadership Development Plans (LDPs): hyper-personalised learning for mid – senior leaders

One size never fits all in leadership development. Two leaders at the same level may require entirely different growth pathways. One may need board-level gravitas; another, cross-functional influence or commercial depth.

Bespoke Leadership Development Plans create hyper-focused roadmaps aligned to both individual aspiration and organisational expectation. Through 360-degree feedback, stakeholder input and coaching, leaders receive clarity on where to focus effort for maximum strategic impact.

Crucially, these plans translate insight into action, typically through on-the-job stretch experiences embedded within day-to-day work.

Key success factors: highly skilled coaches, executive support and involvement, alignment to succession planning.

3. Sponsorship programmes: opening closed doors

Sponsorship remains one of the most powerful, yet unevenly distributed, accelerators of career progression.

Research shows that whilst men in general are 25% more likely than women to have a sponsor, senior-level men are 50% more likely to have one. For women and minoritised groups, this sponsorship gap represents one of the most significant organisational barriers to progression.

Research shows that men are significantly more likely than women to benefit from sponsorship; and at senior levels, the gap widens further. Senior level men are 50% more likely than women to have sponsorship [iv]. Without advocacy in closed-door succession discussions, talented individuals remain invisible. Performance alone is rarely enough to drive progression.

Structured sponsorship programmes address this imbalance by training senior leaders to sponsor effectively while equipping participants to maximise those relationships. The result is raised visibility, access to stretch opportunities and direct advocacy in promotion decisions. Sponsorship moves talent from “high performing” to “highly visible”.

Key success factors: strong executive buy-in, clear expectation management (promises of promotion should be avoided), robust sponsor matching.

4. Job shadowing and executive assistant roles: learning by proximity

There’s something powerful about being a ‘fly on the wall’ in strategic decision-making. Job shadowing and executive assistant roles (think more Chief of Staff than PA) place high-potential leaders alongside senior executives, offering real-time insight into strategy, stakeholder management and political navigation.

Beyond observation, these roles often involve preparing briefings, managing complex relationships and contributing to strategic discussions, all within a developmental safety net.

For emerging leaders, this experience demystifies senior leadership and builds the confidence to operate at that level themselves.

Key success factors: clear learning objectives, confidentiality agreements, executives willing to coach and share access.

5. Group coaching: building confidence and capability through collective insight

Group coaching creates peer learning environments where small cohorts solve shared challenges with facilitated support. Unlike traditional training, it harnesses the collective wisdom of the group, allowing participants to learn from each other’s experiences whilst developing their own solutions.

This format suits groups bound by some form of commonality, such as function (i.e. technical leaders), level (i.e. or middle managers), talent category (i.e. high potential talent), or identity (i.e. women, parental leavers, carers, neurodiversity, menopause etc).

Research on group coaching for women shows particularly strong outcomes. Participants report enhanced confidence, clarity on career goals, stronger professional networks, and increased ability to navigate workplace challenges. The power lies in the combination of expert facilitation and peer support: participants realise they’re not alone in facing certain barriers, and together they develop strategies that work. Done well, group coaching can help impart coaching skills and upskill coachees to self-manage their sessions, helping to build a coaching culture within the organisation, lasting well after the formal coaching ends. Group coaching is particularly powerful when incorporated into talent accelerators for even more impact.

Key success factors: small cohort sizes, experienced group coaches, psychological safety and clear focus.

6. Stretch assignments: deliberate discomfort that builds capability

Stretch assignments are targeted projects that push leaders beyond their comfort zones: cross-functional project work, commercial responsibility, frontline rotations or unfamiliar geographies. These assignments build adaptability, empathy, and leadership range in ways that classroom learning simply cannot replicate. They also signal organisational confidence in an individual’s potential.

Selection for assignments should be transparent and fair. Without this, stretch opportunities risk reinforcing existing visibility bias rather than broadening access.

Key success factors: genuine stretch, visible impact, clear success criteria and appropriate support.

7. Employee Resource Group (ERG) leadership: safe space for leadership practice

Employee Resource Group leadership provides a unique proving ground for emerging leaders. ERG leads develop stakeholder management, influencing, budgeting and executive communication skills, often with significant organisational visibility.

These roles combine purpose with practical leadership experience, allowing leaders to demonstrate capability while advancing inclusion priorities on a cause they’re passionate about.

When aligned to talent frameworks, ERG leadership can act as a powerful stepping stone into formal leadership roles.

Key success factors: clear role definition, executive sponsorship, alignment with talent strategy.

8. Executive advisory boards: strategic exposure at the top

Appointing high-potential leaders to advise the Executive Committee on strategic issues creates invaluable hands-on exposure at the highest level. Participants analyse complex business challenges, develop recommendations and present directly senior decision-makers.

The organisation benefits from diverse thinking and fresh perspectives. Participants develop strategic capability, commercial awareness and executive presence.

Visibility at this level can significantly influence succession decisions.

Key success factors: Executive Committee buy-in, structured governance, rigorous selection.

9. Setback residencies: building resilience through controlled challenge

Leadership inevitably involves navigating ambiguity and crisis. Setback residencies, short placements in turnaround or high-pressure contexts, deliberately expose leaders to challenge in a managed way.

These experiences build learning agility, emotional regulation and composure under pressure. Leaders who successfully navigate controlled crisis develop resilience that cannot be taught through theory alone.

Careful matching of challenge to capability is essential; poorly calibrated stretch can undermine confidence rather than build it.

Key success factors: strong development match, structured reflection, senior oversight.

Creating the conditions for acceleration to be effective

Even the most sophisticated blend of interventions will fall flat without the right foundations. Before launching acceleration initiatives, organisations must ensure four critical elements are in place:

1. Diagnose. Use data to understand what is truly blocking progression – and for whom. Without clarity on systemic barriers, investment risks missing the real issue.
2. Align. Connect your talent acceleration strategy directly to business priorities and secure visible Executive Committee backing. Leadership attention signals importance.
3. Debias. Even the best development programmes can’t overcome systematically biased talent practices. Review recruitment, performance management, pay, and promotion processes through an equity lens. Development alone will not overcome biased systems.
4. Engage. Bring middle managers on the journey. Line manager engagement is a key determinant of acceleration effectiveness, and talent retention.

The power of the blend

There is no single route to leadership, but there is a common pattern in what works. Organisations that successfully accelerate diverse talent do not rely on one intervention; they build ecosystems of development where programmes, sponsorship, stretch experiences and systemic reform work in concert.

When designed deliberately, acceleration delivers measurable progression. Promotion rates above 66%, like ours, are not luck: they are the outcome of evidence-based design and executive commitment.

The leaders your organisation needs for tomorrow are already here. The question is: are you building the pathways that allow them to rise?

If you’d like to discuss how Shape Talent can support your talent acceleration strategy, get in touch.

You can download our free Talent Acceleration Playbook: 20 proven ways to accelerate talent into leadership roles, here.

FAQs

Q. What is talent acceleration?
A. Talent acceleration is the deliberate design of development pathways that fast-track high-potential individuals into senior leadership roles. It combines formal programmes with experiential learning, sponsorship, stretch assignments and systemic debiasing – addressing the societal, organisational and personal barriers that often stall progression, particularly for women and minoritised groups. When anchored in future capability needs rather than today’s gaps, talent acceleration helps organisations build resilient, equitable and future-ready leadership pipelines.

Q. Why aren’t formal leadership programmes enough to build a leadership pipeline?
A. Formal programmes deliver only around 10% of how leaders actually learn, according to the Center for Creative Leadership’s 70-20-10 framework. 70% of leadership development comes from stretch experiences, and 20% from developmental relationships such as sponsorship and coaching. Programmes are a cornerstone – not the full solution. Organisations that rely on them alone risk activity without impact. Real acceleration happens when programmes are layered with sponsorship, stretch assignments, group coaching and systemic reform, creating an ecosystem in which leaders can genuinely develop.

Q. How can organisations accelerate the progression of women and minoritised talent into leadership?
A. Accelerating underrepresented talent requires more than standalone development programmes. Research shows senior-level men are 50% more likely than women to have sponsorship – one of the most powerful drivers of career progression. Effective approaches combine structured sponsorship programmes, targeted group coaching, fair access to stretch assignments and executive advisory board exposure with systemic debiasing of recruitment, performance, pay and promotion processes. Development alone cannot overcome biased systems; the most effective acceleration strategies tackle structural barriers and individual growth in parallel.

Q. What is the difference between sponsorship and mentoring?
A. Mentoring provides advice and guidance; sponsorship provides advocacy. A mentor shares insights and supports development. A sponsor actively uses their influence to open doors, advocate in closed-door succession discussions, and put someone forward for stretch opportunities and promotions. Research consistently shows that sponsorship is more strongly linked to career progression than mentoring – yet women and minoritised groups are significantly less likely to have a sponsor. Structured sponsorship programmes that train senior leaders and match them rigorously with talent are among the most effective accelerators of equitable progression.

References

[i] Statista (2025). Employer self-reported difficulty in finding talented candidates for open positions in Europe from 2024 to 2025, by country

[ii] FTSE Women Leaders (2025). FTSE Women Leaders Review: Achieving Gender Balance, February 2025

[iii] Center for Creative Leadership (2025). The 70-20-10 rule for leadership development.

[iv] Center for Talent Innovation (2012) ‘The Sponsor Effect’, New York: Center for Talent Innovation.