Editor's note: Posts published on From the Workplace are written by outside contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of SHRM.
According to SHRM's 2026 CHRO Priorities and Perspectives report, leadership and manager development ranked as the top HR focus area for the second consecutive year, while budget constraints ranked as CHROs' top challenge. That's the actual operating environment for most HR teams heading into 2026: Build stronger leaders, but do it with fewer dollars, not more.
The good news is that leadership development doesn't scale with budget the way many organizations assume. Some of the most effective development happens without a line item.
Start With Structured Peer Feedback
Most managers already have a rough sense of how their peers see them; they just haven't heard it directly. A short, structured feedback exchange between three or four peer managers, built around a handful of consistent questions, often surfaces more than a generic annual survey does, and it costs nothing but an hour of everyone's time. The value isn't in the tool. It's in the structure and the follow-through.
Make Coaching a Peer Responsibility
Formal executive coaching has real value, but it isn't the only form of coaching that works. Pairing a newer manager with a more experienced one for a recurring 30-minute conversation, not a formal mentorship program with paperwork, just a standing meeting, builds many of the same reflective habits that expensive coaching engagements are designed to instill. The limiting factor usually isn't money. It's whether leadership treats those conversations as real work, not something to cancel when the calendar fills up.
Treat Feedback as a Habit, Not an Event
Formal reviews tend to get the budget conversation because they look like a program. But managers develop faster from small, frequent feedback than from one intensive session a year. A team that normalizes short, regular check-ins, one thing that worked, one thing to adjust, builds the muscle that a single expensive workshop can't replicate.
Know What Actually Needs a Budget
Not everything can be done for free, and pretending otherwise burns goodwill fast. Formal assessments, executive coaching for senior leaders, and cohort-based programs for high-potential talent are worth paying for when the stakes are high enough. The real skill for HR in 2026 isn't stretching every dollar equally. It's being clear-eyed about which few investments actually require real money, and building everything else out of habits, structure, and manager accountability instead.
The Real Shift
None of this requires a bigger line item. It requires HR to stop treating leadership development as something that only happens inside a purchased program and start treating it as a set of habits built into how managers already work.
Given where CHRO priorities (and budgets) sit right now, that shift isn’t optional. For most companies, it’s the only realistic way to keep developing leaders.
Nicole Nadeau is the Founder & CEO of Launch 360, a leadership development and feedback platform for small and mid-sized companies.
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