What 160 Conversations at ATD Told Us About Leadership in 2025 (That Surveys Never Could)
Leadership isn’t broken.
But the way we’ve been developing it might be.
At ATD 2025, we didn’t just showcase ideas — we tested assumptions. Through interactive activities like our Culture Headwinds Wall and Culture Tales, we invited hundreds of leaders to reflect on their own challenges.
What we heard wasn’t just feedback — it was validation.
Leaders from across the globe — spanning industries, geographies, and roles — echoed the same quiet frustrations. And while every conversation was unique, five hard truths kept surfacing, again and again.
Here’s what those 160 conversations revealed:
1. We keep rolling out learning. But very little is sticking.
One leader told us, “Our engagement on LMS and LXP continues to be abysmally low, less than 5%.” The truth? Content without context is noise.
What leaders want isn’t more modules. It’s learning embedded into culture — where behaviors are modeled, expected, and supported beyond the classroom.
If you’re looking to explore why traditional training often fails to create real impact, this perspective on amplifying learning outcomes adds useful depth — Beyond the workshop: 5 essential steps to amplify learning and impact.
Tip: Start by enabling leaders to become facilitators, not just participants. When learning is modeled top-down, it scales across.
2. Our top talent isn’t short on ambition. But they’re running on empty.
Managers are wearing every hat — performance coach, change agent, wellbeing ally. As one L&D head put it: “They’re carrying the load, but not being carried themselves.”
This isn’t a burnout story. It’s a leadership support story.
Tip: Invest in leadership journeys that balance capability and capacity. Growth without clarity is a fast track to overwhelm.
3. We keep hiring for leadership. But we don’t define what good looks like.
From role expectations to culture behaviors, ambiguity is everywhere. “We say we want strategic leaders, but reward fire-fighting,” shared a CHRO.
When leadership behaviors aren’t defined, they default to personality or past experience — neither of which drive consistency.
For a deeper look into how organisations define and align leadership behaviour with culture, this article offers valuable insight — The art of achieving organizational cultural alignment.
Tip: Codify your leadership DNA. Not in lofty values, but in real actions, trade-offs, and what “great” looks like on a regular Tuesday.
4. Feedback feels performative. Not transformative.
Many shared that despite 360s and check-ins, feedback doesn’t translate to forward momentum. Why? Because it’s often episodic, top-down, or feared.
“We’re still in a culture of politeness — or avoidance,” one senior leader admitted.
Tip: Build feedback culture into your learning journeys. Embed safe, frequent, peer-to-peer feedback moments. Make it a habit, not an HR ritual.
5. Leaders know culture matters. They just don’t know where to start.
This came up again and again. It wasn’t apathy — it was paralysis. Everyone’s talking about culture. Few are operationalizing it.
As one global learning head said: “We need to stop describing culture. We need to start designing it.”
Tip: Give leaders tools to translate culture into conversations — what they reward, what they reinforce, and what they walk past.
So, what did we take away?
These weren’t complaints. They were signals.
Signals that leadership development needs a reset — not just in what we teach, but how we design for learning that sticks.
At NamanHR, we’ve always believed leadership isn’t built in classrooms — it’s shaped through ecosystems. And at ATD 2025, that belief found its proof.
Our interactive wall, live demos, and playbook conversations confirmed one thing: learning doesn’t transform leaders unless culture enables it. When culture and leadership design align, change doesn’t just happen — it sustains.
If your organisation wants to move from discussing culture to actively designing and embedding it, this structured solution may be worth exploring — Culture Change Services.
