The Top 20 Leadership Challenges | Center for Creative Leadership (2024)

UNLEASH LEADERSHIP SUCCESS

The Top 20 Leadership Challenges | Center for Creative Leadership (2024) | Research from over 48,000 leaders identifies the exact challenges preventing leadership success at every organisational level, revealing dramatic post-pandemic shifts and providing targeted strategies to unlock leadership potential.

👀 DID YOU SEE?

✨ OVERVIEW

This comprehensive research from the Centre for Creative Leadership examines data from over 48,000 leaders across 7,000 organisations globally to identify the most common leadership challenges faced at different organisational levels. Using AI-powered language processing to analyse responses, the study identifies and ranks the top leadership challenges faced by frontline managers, mid-level managers, senior leaders, and executives in the post-pandemic era. The research reveals how these challenges have evolved since COVID-19 and provides practical recommendations for addressing them. By understanding these common challenges, organisations can design more effective development initiatives that build critical leadership capabilities and strengthen their talent pipeline.

🧩 CONTEXT

Leadership challenges are universal—anyone guiding a group toward shared results encounters obstacles. However, these challenges differ significantly depending on leadership level and have transformed since the pandemic. The Centre for Creative Leadership has researched leadership issues for decades to stay current with evolving challenges. Using anonymised data from 360 assessments, their research team examined what thousands of leaders identified as their most critical leadership challenges. This comprehensive analysis revealed consistent patterns across industries and geographical regions, creating a framework for understanding leadership development needs in the post-pandemic workplace.

🔍 WHY IT MATTERS

↳ Different leadership levels face distinct challenges— The research shows that challenges vary significantly based on a leader's position in the organisational hierarchy. Frontline managers struggle most with people management and operational issues, mid-level managers battle personal limitations and business challenges, senior leaders face credibility and strategic growth concerns, and executives must navigate dynamic business environments whilst developing organisational strategy. Understanding these level-specific challenges allows organisations to tailor development programmes accordingly.

↳ The pandemic shifted leadership priorities— The research reveals significant shifts in leadership challenges since COVID-19. For senior leaders, limited self-awareness was once the top challenge but has declined significantly, whilst overcoming credibility gaps has become more pressing. For executives, navigating dynamic business environments experienced the most significant increase in frequency—a clear reflection of pandemic-induced volatility and uncertainty.

↳ Leadership issues fall into three core themes— Across all leadership levels, challenges clustered around personal growth limitations, managing people whilst delivering results, and navigating organisational complexity. These themes provide a framework for designing development programmes that address fundamental leadership needs regardless of specific roles or industries.

💡 KEY INSIGHTS

↳ Frontline managers struggle most with people and time management— The top challenge for those in supervisory roles is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes difficulties with guiding direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, managing difficult employees, and adapting communication styles—challenges that have only intensified since the pandemic.

↳ Mid-level managers battle impostor syndrome and personal limitations— Leaders in the middle struggle with doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead—as well as overcoming the doubts of others. With post-pandemic remote and hybrid workplaces creating new leadership cultures, overcoming these personal limitations to make an impact has become even more challenging, with significantly more mid-level managers reporting this issue since the pandemic.

↳ Senior leaders must bridge credibility gaps—Building credibility as an organisational leader has become more pressing for senior leaders post-pandemic. This includes gaining stakeholder trust, enhancing organisational visibility, and strengthening leadership presence. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was their most frequent challenge, but the frequency of this issue has dropped significantly while credibility concerns have risen.

↳ Executives face increasingly dynamic business environments—For C-level leaders, navigating rapid business changes topped their list, experiencing the most significant rise following the pandemic. This challenge involves responding to new regulations, changing market conditions, and evolving competitive landscapes whilst maintaining the talent needed to support continuous change and organisational adaptation.

↳ Collaboration challenges persist across all levels—From frontline managers dealing with team performance to executives influencing organisation-wide cooperation, the ability to build effective collaborative relationships emerged as a consistent theme across all leadership levels.

🚀 ACTIONS FOR LEADERS

↳ Maximise your unique personal value—Recognise your characteristics, behaviours, and habits to identify what may be triggering challenges in your career. Focus on increasing self-awareness and strengthening specific skills. Understand your unique strengths and weaknesses to improve your leadership brand and overcome internal challenges like lack of confidence, fear of failure, and struggle with conflict management.

↳ Master the art of effective delegation—To manage both people and tasks successfully, implement a four-step delegation cycle: 1) Understand your preferences about workload prioritisation and feedback requirements; 2) Know your people's capabilities and development needs; 3) Communicate the purpose behind tasks to give them meaning; and 4) Establish collaborative assessment and reward systems to evaluate task completion properly.

↳ Build boundary-spanning capabilities—To navigate organisational complexity, improve your ability to work across traditional boundaries. Create and lead high-performing teams using a four-component framework: establish a core purpose that all members understand; foster a collective mindset where roles and responsibilities are clear; develop cohesive relationships through psychological safety; and enhance connections across organisational boundaries to drive innovation and collaboration.

🔗 CONCLUSION

The Centre for Creative Leadership's research into the top 20 leadership challenges provides valuable insights for developing more effective leaders at every organisational level. Organisations can design more targeted development initiatives by understanding how these challenges vary by leadership position and how they've evolved since the pandemic. The research reveals that regardless of level, leadership challenges generally fall into three themes: personal growth limitations, managing people whilst delivering results, and navigating organisational complexity. Addressing these fundamental challenges through specific development approaches like maximising personal value, improving delegation skills, and building boundary-spanning capabilities can significantly enhance leadership effectiveness across the organisation.

🎯 KEY TAKEAWAY

Leadership development is most effective when it addresses the fundamental challenges leaders face at their specific organisational level, which requires understanding the universal aspects of leadership and the unique pressures experienced at different stages of leadership responsibility.

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