Modern Leadership Journal — leadership, change and the work of managing

Two people sitting across a table, each holding a grey mug. — Coaching & AI

Coaching works, and on screen as well as in person

Three meta-analyses find that workplace coaching works. The two that compared formats found remote coaching as effective as coaching in person.

Three meta-analyses since 2014 all find positive effects for workplace coaching, between about 0.36 and 0.6 depending on which studies they admit.
The two reviews that compared formats found no significant difference between face-to-face and remote coaching.
None of the three found that the number of sessions predicts the result.

15 September 2026 · 5 min read

Coaching & AI

Coaching's return can be measured

29 September 2026 · 7 min read

Change & Transformation

Team building improves how teams feel and work together

29 September 2026 · 7 min read

Leadership Development

Feedback works best when it is about the task

29 September 2026 · 8 min read

Signals

All

The Beautiful Mess

Am I the Only Weirdo in This Company?

On why organisations look far more unanimous than they are, because behaviour converges long before belief does. If you have ever run a change programme that met no resistance and then failed anyway, this is the mechanism.

John Cutler · 5 Sept · cutlefish.substack.com

Josh Bersin

US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output

Reads the new Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for 2025 to 2035 and finds labour shortages rather than the displacement everyone is planning for. Useful as a sanity check on workforce plans built on the opposite assumption.

Josh Bersin · 2 Sept · joshbersin.com

One Useful Thing

Agency and Agents

Mollick is the most reliable writer on what AI systems can actually be delegated to at work, as distinct from what they are sold as doing. Relevant to anyone evaluating an AI coaching or development tool this quarter.

Ethan Mollick · 31 Aug · oneusefulthing.org

Josh Bersin

The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies

Assembles the long-run figures behind something most retention programmes treat as a mood: median S&P 500 company tenure has gone from twelve or thirteen years in the 1970s to four or five, the average American worker now sees 2.5 layoffs in a career, and trust in company leadership sits at 19 percent. Bersin reads it as mutual abandonment rather than an employee problem, which is a more uncomfortable framing than the usual one.

Josh Bersin · 27 Aug · joshbersin.com

The number

1,433 €

is what EU employers spent per person trained in 2020, a quarter less in real terms than in 2005

Eurostat · Read the piece

Leadership Development

All 8 →

Leadership Development
Feedback works best when it is about the task
Across 607 effects, feedback improved performance by 0.41 on average. It worked best when it pointed at the task, and less well when it turned to the person.
Analysis · 29 September 2026 · 8 min read
Leadership Development
What companies really spend on leadership development
The 356 billion dollars quoted for leadership development is an estimate of all corporate training in 2015. Its source put leadership training at 3.4 billion.
Analysis · 29 September 2026 · 8 min read
Leadership Development
Managers train less often than professionals
In 2025, 19.4 percent of EU managers had trained in the past four weeks, against 24.1 percent of professionals. German managers sat just below the employee average.
Data · 29 September 2026 · 4 min read

Change & Transformation

All 7 →

Change & Transformation
Team building improves how teams feel and work together
A 2009 meta-analysis found team building has a moderate positive effect, strongest on attitudes and teamwork. An earlier review found none on performance.
Analysis · 29 September 2026 · 7 min read
Change & Transformation
Where Buurtzorg's savings come from
Its nurses deliver home care in 108 hours a year against 168 elsewhere. Once hospital and physician costs are added, the total per client is average.
Case · 15 September 2026 · 6 min read
Change & Transformation
Where the 70 percent change failure rate comes from
A peer-reviewed review traced the claim through five published sources and found no evidence behind any of them. Its originators called it unscientific.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 5 min read

Coaching & AI

All 6 →

Coaching & AI
Coaching's return can be measured
Rated by colleagues against a comparison group, coached managers improve more than others. The 5.7x and 7x returns quoted everywhere were client estimates.
Analysis · 29 September 2026 · 7 min read
Coaching & AI
The AI Act's HR deadline moved. The emotion ban did not
Inferring employees' emotions with AI has been banned since February 2025. The high-risk duties for recruitment tools moved to December 2027.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 6 min read
Coaching & AI
In the only direct test, human coaching came out ahead
The study behind the parity claim compared two trials run two years apart. A direct randomised comparison found effects only for human coaching.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 6 min read

Talent & Retention

All 6 →

Talent & Retention
What losing an employee costs depends on the role
The half-to-two-times-salary figure is published without a derivation. The two meta-analyses of turnover and firm performance disagree by a factor of five.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 6 min read
Talent & Retention
Is anyone staying anywhere any more?
Median US job tenure is 3.9 years, the lowest since 2002. The age breakdown shows most of the decline is composition rather than a collapse in loyalty.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 5 min read
Talent & Retention
Leadership training works best for junior leaders
Development has its strongest measured effect on behaviour at the junior end, and that is the level where budgets are thinnest and the role has changed most.
Analysis · 15 September 2026 · 7 min read