What Ivey Business School, the Institute of Corporate Directors, and executive coaches are telling us about what actually works

By Candice Faktor

The leadership development industry is at an inflection point.

We're spending more than ever on training. We're producing more content than leaders can possibly consume. We're checking more boxes.

And yet, when Ivey Business School recently polled leaders on what they needed most to navigate 2026, the top answer wasn't "more courses." It was building organizational resilience (44%), followed by adapting to AI and cultivating wellbeing.

These aren't content problems. They're connection problems. Practice problems. Culture problems.

And they require a fundamentally different approach to how we develop leaders.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Traditional Leadership Training

I recently joined an Ivey Business School Impact Live panel on leading in 2026, alongside Rahul Bhardwaj (President & CEO, Institute of Corporate Directors) and Molly Edge (Executive Coach, Ivey Executive Education), moderated by Dusya Vera, Professor at Ivey and Executive Director of the Ian O. Chicken Institute for Leadership.

What emerged was a clear indictment of how most organizations approach leadership development, and a roadmap for what actually works.

Molly Edge put it bluntly: "Checklists. There's a big fix. It's quick, it's dopamine, it's fast. Humans don't learn that way."

She's right. And this is the core problem facing leadership development firms today. Most programs are consumption oriented: watch a video, complete a module, check the box, move on. Organizations invest heavily in content libraries that gather digital dust while leaders struggle to apply anything they've "learned."

The problem isn't the content. It's the model.

What the Brain Science Actually Says

Molly Edge, drawing on her coaching experience and neuroscience research, explained why traditional approaches fall short:

"We know through brain research that conditions need to feel safe and healthy and trustworthy for people to even want to learn to grow. Humans are our greatest asset and it's a very powerful currency."

This aligns with what research consistently shows. A landmark study from UC Davis found that curiosity activates the brain's reward system and enhances activity in the hippocampus, the region responsible for memory formation. When people are curious, they don't just retain the information they're curious about; they retain everything they encounter in that state better. [1]

As Molly put it: "Neuroscience always tells us... what we pay attention to strengthens. So mindset is the engine. Our thoughts predict our behaviors. This is the power of coaching leaders and teams."

Harvard's Amy Edmondson has spent decades demonstrating that psychological safety is a critical driver of learning, innovation, and collaboration. When people feel safe to speak up, share ideas, and admit mistakes, organizations thrive. [2]

The implication for leadership development is clear: you can't check box your way to transformation. You need environments where people feel safe to practice, fail, reflect, and grow together.

The Infrastructure Problem

Here's where it gets practical. During the panel, I raised what I see as the fundamental barrier:

"One of the challenges is that organizations don't have the infrastructure to allow for learning that involves human connection. Many organizations don't have learning systems that are consumption oriented systems, right? It's like, watch these videos that are outdated and let me click that I've watched the video and that's what the organization considers learning."

The science is clear on what works: peer based learning, project based learning, practice based learning, reflection, feedback, coaching. "There is tremendous science that says this is how people learn best," I noted.

But most platforms aren't built for this. They're built for content delivery, not human connection. And that's the gap leadership development firms need to solve.

What Actually Works: Two Case Studies

Molly Edge shared two powerful examples of what happens when organizations get this right.

Case Study #1: A Global Financial Institution

"There's been a study that we did in a really large financial institution... for three years they actually won a global award for using coaching and leadership development to create a strategy of an ecosystem of care, growth and achievement."

What did they do differently? "They realized that in order to retain clients and generate more growth on all business fronts, leaders needed to cultivate conditions to grow their people and teams at the front lines."

The approach: "It really was training, reflection, listening, feedback, collaborative strategizing and it was a very intentional process."

The results: "The quality of client relationships increased. Staff retention increased... enhanced performance metrics and really what surprised everyone out of this study... was enhanced wellbeing in the workplace."

Case Study #2: Joey Restaurant Group

"Joey Restaurant Group won an award for shifting from 'we serve great food' to 'leaders need to think differently about how we're growing extraordinary human experiences at every level of the organization.'"

The challenge: They needed to retain staff and build business across 12 new properties over seven years.

The approach: "They learned habits around people connection. It absolutely served their business objectives."

The results: 30% growth in revenue. 132% increased employee retention.

The Pattern: What These Winners Have in Common

Notice what's present in both case studies, and what's absent.

What's present:

• Intentional, ongoing practice (not one time events)

• Reflection and feedback loops

• Peer learning and collaborative problem solving

• Leadership modeling the behaviors

• Connection to real business outcomes

What's absent:

• Passive content consumption

• Check the box compliance

• One and done training events

• Learning isolated from work

As Rahul Bhardwaj observed from his work with corporate boards: "This learning culture, it's a journey, not a destination... The environments that I've seen this most successful in, it's gonna sound a little counterintuitive... but if it's fun, it lasts a hundred percent and people really want to be a part of that."

He also emphasized the irreplaceable value of human connection: "We all know that when you're together, you have a different type and quality of contact... You start to develop the trust and the relationships you need to help navigate these really uncertain times."

The Question for Leadership Development Firms

If you're running a leadership development firm, the question becomes: How do you deliver this kind of experience at scale?

The science is clear. The case studies are compelling. But the reality is that most of your clients are busy, distributed, and can't fly everyone to an offsite every quarter.

As I noted on the panel: "How do you do this in a world that is incredibly busy? We're all working super hard on actually getting our work done. And so sometimes it's not possible to meet in person. So how do you actually put the tooling in place that allows for human connection, peer based learning, project based learning in your organization?"

This is the infrastructure challenge. And it's why the platform you choose matters as much as the content you create.

What to Look for in a Leadership Development Platform

Based on the panel discussion and the research, here are the capabilities that actually move the needle:

1. Cohort based architecture. Leaders learn best alongside peers facing similar challenges. Your platform should make it easy to create cohort experiences where participants can share, reflect, and problem solve together, not just consume content in isolation.

2. Built in reflection and practice. Molly's point about habits is critical: "It has to come from a place of how do people think differently? What is their values, motivation, and internal rewards system connected to the habit that they want to create?" The platform should prompt reflection, not just completion.

3. Social learning features. Discussion, peer feedback, shared projects. As Rahul noted, the relationships formed through learning together are often as valuable as the content itself.

4. AI that amplifies humans, not replaces them. I said on the panel: "When leaders go into organizations with a mindset of AI being an enabler and a capability builder, and an opportunity for humans to do more human work, the impact of AI on culture radically shifts." The right AI can handle the operational load so facilitators can focus on what matters: coaching, connection, and real conversation.

5. Measurable outcomes tied to business results. Both case studies Molly shared connected learning to real metrics: client relationships, retention, revenue. Your platform should make it easy to demonstrate ROI.

The Opportunity Ahead

Dusya Vera opened the panel with a provocation that I think every leadership development firm should take seriously:

"Leadership isn't just about making decisions. It's about the person making those decisions, about character, as much as competence, about habits of mind and heart that sustain excellence over time."

Character. Habits. Excellence over time.

None of these develop through passive content consumption. They develop through practice, reflection, feedback, and connection, sustained over time, supported by the right environment.

The leadership development firms that thrive in this next era will be the ones who understand this, and who have the infrastructure to deliver it.

The question is: do you?

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‍_Sources:

_{[1] Gruber, M.J., Gelman, B.D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). "States of curiosity modulate hippocampus dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit." Neuron, 84(2), 486-496.}

_{[2] Edmondson, A.C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.}

_{This article draws on the Ivey Business School Impact Live panel, "Are You Ready to Lead in 2026?" (January 2026), featuring Rahul Bhardwaj (President & CEO, Institute of Corporate Directors), Molly Edge (Executive Coach, Ivey Business School Executive Education), and Candice Faktor (Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Disco), moderated by Dusya Vera (Professor, Ivey Business School; Executive Director, Ian O. Chicken Institute for Leadership).}

_{Candice Faktor is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Disco, an AI powered social learning platform that helps leadership development firms, training businesses, and enterprise L&D teams deliver cohort based, human centered learning experiences at scale.}

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