The Most Common Leadership Skills Gaps in Growing Organizations
- LMSPortals
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
Leadership is the engine that keeps a growing organization moving forward. When it is strong, teams stay aligned, problems get solved quickly, and people know what success looks like. When it is weak, growth becomes chaotic. Processes slow down. Tension rises. Talent leaves.
Most companies do not struggle because they lack smart people. They struggle because their leaders are underdeveloped or overstretched. As businesses expand, the skills leaders need do not stay the same. Expectations rise faster than most managers can keep up with. That gap creates friction that eventually shows up in customer experience, innovation, revenue, and morale.
This article breaks down the most common leadership skills gaps in growing organizations, why they happen, and how companies can fix them with practical development strategies. It also highlights how LMS Portals helps organizations close these gaps through tailored course development services designed to build capable leaders at every level.
Why Leadership Gaps Grow as Organizations Expand
As teams scale, problems that were once small become much bigger. Decisions multiply. Communication becomes harder. Misalignment spreads faster. Leaders who could once manage everything by instinct now need structure, clarity, and skills they may not have had to use before.
Leadership gaps tend to grow because:
People get promoted for performance, not leadership readiness
High performers often become managers even if they never received training to lead.
Leaders are too busy to learn
Growth accelerates workload. Development gets pushed aside.
Roles change faster than capabilities
Leaders who were strong in a small team struggle with the demands of larger cross functional teams.
Training programs lag behind company needs
Companies invest in product and operations first, then scramble to fix people issues later.
When these gaps are unaddressed, the organization risks creating a cycle of mismanagement that slows progress and drives attrition.
The Most Common Leadership Skills Gaps
Below are the leadership weaknesses that show up most often in growing organizations. These gaps are not about personality traits. They are about teachable skills that any leader can build with proper support.
1. Strategic Thinking
Fast growing companies often suffer from tactical thinking at the leadership level. Managers focus on putting out fires, not steering the ship. As teams get larger, leaders must shift from “doing” to “directing.”
Common signs of this gap:
Priorities change constantly.
Teams feel reactive instead of intentional.
Leaders struggle to connect daily tasks to long term goals.
Decisions happen without considering downstream effects.
Strategic thinking is essential for forecasting, resource planning, and aligning teams around what matters most.
2. Communication and Clarity
Strong communication becomes one of the hardest skills to maintain during growth. Messages get distorted as they move across layers of leadership. Leaders often think they communicated clearly because they sent an email or mentioned something in a meeting, but the team heard something entirely different.
Signs this gap exists:
Confusion about roles and responsibilities.
Repeated misalignment on goals.
High volume of rework.
Deadlines missed or misunderstood.
Communication is not about talking more. It is about speaking with precision, listening actively, and creating shared understanding.
3. Coaching and People Development
Growing organizations need leaders who build other leaders. Yet most managers struggle to coach because they have never been coached themselves. Coaching requires patience, structure, and the ability to ask the right questions.
When coaching skills are missing:
Managers default to command and control.
Employees plateau instead of grow.
Feedback is vague or infrequent.
High performers become disengaged.
Companies that invest in coaching capability at every level see faster performance improvement and stronger retention.
4. Delegation
Many leaders in expanding teams hold onto tasks they should be passing down. Sometimes it comes from perfectionism. Sometimes from fear of losing control. Sometimes from not trusting their team or not knowing how to delegate effectively.
Delegation gaps cause:
Burnout at the leadership level.
Bottlenecks that slow projects.
Teams that feel underutilized.
Leaders who never learn to build bench strength.
Effective delegation frees leaders to focus on strategy and empowers employees to take ownership.
5. Change Management
Growth involves constant change. Systems evolve. Teams restructure. Processes shift. Leaders who are uncomfortable with change create anxiety and slow transitions.
Specific struggles include:
Poor communication around why change is happening.
Resistance from teams due to lack of guidance.
Low adoption of new tools or processes.
Complaints that “things moved too fast” or “no one explained the plan.”
Change management is the difference between a smooth transition and an organizational stall.
6. Emotional Intelligence
Technical skills carry someone only so far. As teams grow, emotional intelligence becomes a core requirement. Leaders who cannot read emotions, manage conflict, or show empathy create fractures that spread quickly.
Signs of poor emotional intelligence:
Frequent misunderstandings.
Escalating team conflicts.
Leaders who react instead of respond.
Low psychological safety.
High EQ leaders build trust, communicate with intent, and help people work through problems without drama.
7. Decision Making
Fast growing companies move quickly. Leaders must make decisions with incomplete information and still stand behind them. The problem is when leaders avoid decisions, rush them, or rely on instinct instead of structured thinking.
Decision making gaps show up when:
Teams wait too long for direction.
Leaders depend heavily on senior executives for answers.
Decisions flip flop.
Risks are either avoided entirely or taken blindly.
Good decision making is a balance of data, judgment, and clear criteria.
8. Accountability and Performance Management
As organizations grow, accountability becomes harder. Leaders who were once hands on now oversee multiple layers of work. Without strong performance management, expectations blur and results decline.
Symptoms of this gap:
Underperformance goes unaddressed.
Leaders complain that “people are not doing what they should.”
Goals are set but not reviewed regularly.
Team members say they do not know how success is measured.
When leaders lack accountability skills, entire departments feel it.
Why These Gaps Matter
Leadership gaps may sound small, but their impact is large. When they go unresolved, organizations experience:
Slower execution.
Higher turnover.
Conflicting priorities.
Poor customer experiences.
Missed opportunities for innovation.
Engagement scores that decline year after year.
Strong leadership is a competitive advantage. Weak leadership is a hidden cost that compounds over time.
How Organizations Can Close Leadership Gaps
Most leadership gaps can be fixed with three components:
Awareness. Leaders must understand exactly what skills they need to grow.
Training. Practical, job relevant learning experiences build new habits.
Reinforcement. Leaders need ongoing coaching and practice to make new skills stick.
Companies that treat leadership development as a continuous process outperform those that treat it as a one time workshop.
This is where structured learning programs, digital training, and scalable content development become essential.
How LMS Portals Helps Organizations Build Stronger Leaders
Growing companies need leadership development that moves at the same speed as their organization. LMS Portals supports this by offering a complete learning platform combined with customer course development services that give organizations everything they need to train leaders with precision and efficiency.
Here is how LMS Portals helps close leadership skills gaps.
1. Custom Course Development for Leadership Training
Many companies know what skills their leaders lack but do not have the time or internal expertise to build the right training. LMS Portals creates custom leadership development courses based on your goals, culture, and challenges.
Our team designs programs that cover the full spectrum of leadership needs, including:
Strategic thinking and planning.
Communication and alignment.
Coaching and performance development.
Delegation and workload management.
Emotional intelligence.
Conflict resolution.
Decision making frameworks.
Change management.
Accountability systems.
Each course is built to be practical, actionable, and relevant to real work scenarios. We translate your business context into learning experiences that help leaders understand not just what to do but how to do it.
2. Fast and Flexible Content Production
Growing organizations cannot wait months for leadership training. LMS Portals delivers content quickly and adapts as your needs evolve. If your company changes direction, restructures, or adopts new processes, your leadership courses can update in step with those changes.
This ensures training stays aligned with your business instead of becoming outdated.
3. A Platform Built for Scalability
Leadership development should scale as the company grows. LMS Portals offers a platform that makes it easy to deliver training across multiple departments, locations, or business units.
You can:
Launch leadership pathways for different levels of management.
Track participation and completion.
Measure progress with built in analytics.
Provide ongoing reinforcement through microlearning and follow up modules.
Everything stays organized, accessible, and transparent.
4. White Labeling and Integration
Organizations that want a branded leadership academy can fully customize the LMS Portals experience. The platform fits into your existing systems and keeps the learning experience consistent with your company identity.
This improves adoption and gives leadership development the presence and credibility
it deserves.
5. Continuous Support and Optimization
LMS Portals works alongside your team to refine content, add new modules, and respond to emerging skill needs. We help you design long term development strategies, not one time training events.
As your organization grows, we ensure your leadership capabilities grow with it.
Building Leaders for the Next Stage of Growth
Every growing company faces leadership challenges. The question is whether those challenges become barriers or building blocks. Leadership gaps are not a sign of failure. They are a sign of evolution. The key is addressing them early, clearly, and consistently.
Organizations that invest in developing their leaders create teams that move with confidence, communicate with clarity, and adapt with less friction. They improve retention, speed, and culture. Most importantly, they build an environment where people know how to succeed and feel motivated to contribute.
Leadership is not a fixed trait. It is a skill set. With the right training and reinforcement, anyone can improve. LMS Portals helps organizations do this at scale, with custom course development that turns leadership principles into everyday practice.
Growing organizations need leaders who can guide teams through complexity, motivate diverse groups, and make thoughtful decisions under pressure. When those leaders are supported with the right training, growth becomes smoother, faster, and more sustainable.
About LMS Portals
At LMS Portals, we provide our clients and partners with a mobile-responsive, SaaS-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch a dedicated training environment (a portal) for each of your unique audiences.
The system includes built-in, SCORM-compliant rapid course development software that provides a drag and drop engine to enable most anyone to build engaging courses quickly and easily.
We also offer a complete library of ready-made courses, covering most every aspect of corporate training and employee development.
If you choose to, you can create Learning Paths to deliver courses in a logical progression and add structure to your training program. The system also supports Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) and provides tools for social learning.
Together, these features make LMS Portals the ideal SaaS-based eLearning platform for our clients and our Reseller partners.
Contact us today to get started or visit our Partner Program pages