A recap from our June 2026 Executive Reset – and why every CEO and CHRO in the room left with the same homework.

On June 17th, Candace Goodwin and I hosted our June Executive Reset. I want to share the data that drove the room’s reaction – because I think it should drive yours too.

Here’s the number we opened with: 78% of employees rate their managers as only moderately effective – or worse – at supporting their development. Just 22% are rated truly effective. Only 1 in 50 – about 2% – are rated extremely effective.

That data comes from Energage’s Manager Effectiveness Survey, built on roughly 12,000 responses across 100,000+ organizations. Here’s the part that should make every CEO and CHRO sit up: those numbers come from companies already recognized as Top Workplaces. If this is what the leadership gap looks like among the best employers in the country, the gap is almost certainly wider everywhere else – including, probably, in your organization.

Why This Is a CEO Problem, Not Just an HR Problem

For the CEOs in the room, the question was simple: what does this actually cost us? For the CHROs and HR leaders, the question was different: how do I prove that to a board or a P&L owner who treats leadership development as a soft expense?

Both questions have the same answer. Disengagement, attrition, stalled performance, and an empty leadership bench aren’t four separate problems – they’re four compounding symptoms of one root cause. Top performers leave first when they don’t see a future and replacing them runs 50–200% of their annual salary. Skills go stale without built-in learning. And without a real pipeline, you’re scrambling to fill critical roles externally – usually at a premium, and usually slower than you’d like.

Three Numbers I Put in Front of the Room

We walked through three ROI scenarios that I think every executive should be able to do quick math on:

  • AI Productivity Loss – Employees waste roughly 8 hours a week on ineffective AI use. Across 100 leaders, at an average $50K salary, that’s $530,400 a year in lost productivity. A structured leadership-plus-AI workshop with accountability follow-up requires about a $45,000 investment – for a 12:1 return.
  • The Avoided Conversation – Per a 2013 ATD study, every difficult conversation a manager avoids costs roughly $1,500 in lost productivity, plus eight hours of distraction, per incident. A single facilitated training plus ongoing accountability sessions starts at $15,000 – generating a 3:1 return.
  • Litigation Risk – A 10% probability of an HR-related lawsuit, at an average settlement or defense cost of $5M, is a $500,000 expected-value exposure. A proactive leadership-and-HR alignment program built to reduce that exposure begins at about $25,000 – driving a 20:1 return.

Even with conservative assumptions, the math holds up. That’s the point: this isn’t a values argument. It’s a finance argument – and it’s one CHROs can walk into a CFO’s office with.

What the Room Added

The conversation that followed was, honestly, the best part. One attendee pointed out that unaddressed development gaps create a visible culture problem long before they show up in attrition data.  Unclear leadership leaves a vacuum, and resentment fills it.

Another made the case for partnering with finance before launching a program, not after. Agreeing on metrics and baseline together means nobody’s relitigating the ROI math a year later.

And a theme that came up more than once: this generation of leaders has to be taught to use one-on-ones well. It’s the single highest-leverage tool a manager has, but very few managers know how to run one effectively without guidance.  And very few employees know how to own their own development without a company actively teaching them how to. That’s not a personality gap. It’s a training gap, and it’s closeable.

Leadership isn’t found. It’s built.