Leadership Training Works Better With Community

The dominant model of leadership development is individual. Executive coaching, self-paced courses, leadership books read alone on airplanes. There’s value in all of these. But they share a fundamental limitation: they treat leadership as a solo endeavor, as a set of personal traits to be developed in isolation. The problem is that leadership doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in the space between people. And the skills of leading — listening, adapting, building trust, navigating conflict — are inherently relational. They can only be developed in relationship.

This is why community-based learning is so powerful for leadership development. When you practice communication skills with actual people — not case studies, not role plays with predetermined outcomes, but real human beings who surprise you and challenge you and respond in ways you didn’t expect — you develop a different kind of competence. You learn to read subtle cues. You discover your default patterns under pressure. You get immediate, honest feedback from people who are in the same vulnerable position you are. That shared vulnerability creates a bond that solo learning simply can’t replicate.

At CSz Portland, every one of our programs is built on this principle. We don’t deliver content to passive audiences. We create environments where participants learn from and with each other. The facilitator’s job isn’t to be the expert dispensing wisdom. It’s to design experiences that allow the group’s collective intelligence to emerge. And when that happens — when a room full of professionals starts genuinely building on each other’s ideas, supporting each other through difficult moments, and celebrating each other’s growth — the learning goes deeper than any individual program could reach.

There’s also a practical benefit that often gets overlooked: the relationships formed during community-based training persist after the program ends. Participants leave with a network of peers who understand the principles they’ve been practicing. They hold each other accountable. They continue learning together informally. In organizations where multiple team members go through the same program, we see cultural shifts that no amount of individual coaching could produce. Because culture isn’t what individuals believe — it’s what groups practice together.

If your organization is investing in leadership development and seeing disappointing returns, consider whether the format might be the issue. Not the content, not the facilitator, not the participants — the format. People learn leadership by practicing it with other humans. The more we can create those opportunities — structured, supported, and genuinely engaging — the more we’ll see leadership development that actually develops leaders.