Why Leadership Capacity Building Should Start with Identity, Not Skills
HR Unscripted with David Clift, Chief People Officer at SMS Environmental & Alison Leverett-Morris, Executive Coach & Leadership Consultant
Table of Contents
As organisations head into another year of economic pressure, talent scarcity and accelerated transformation, the question facing every Chief People Officer is the same: how do we build leadership capacity at the pace the business requires?
At SMS Environmental, this challenge sparked a shift away from traditional skills‑focused development and toward a deeper, identity‑led approach that combines behavioural science, practical leadership habits, and real‑time organisational learning.
For Chief People Officer David Clift and leadership advisor Alison Leverett-Morris, leadership capacity building meant shifting focus from what leaders know to how they show up, think and lead in real time.
David begins the story with a simple but human question — one that changed how SMS approached leadership altogether.
A CPO’s Perspective: David Clift on the Leadership Capacity Problem
The Question Behind Every Promotion
As Chief People Officer at SMS, I keep coming back to one, very human question: why do so many of our most talented people struggle after promotion, even when they clearly have the technical skills for the job?
I remember the conversations — late afternoons over coffee, looking at our selection process data and thinking about the person behind the CV — and realising that promotions don’t just ask someone to do new tasks, they ask them to become someone new. That simple observation changed everything for us: it prompted a move away from skills-only development and towards an approach that deliberately supports the human side of stepping up — the identity, the habits and even the neuro-patterns that make leadership stick.
Why Skills-Only Development Falls Short
SMS is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the Water Engineering sector. Rapid growth is a great problem to have, but it creates a specific leadership challenge: we must grow leadership capacity at the same pace as the business. Bigger projects, more complex delivery models, broader geographies and larger client relationships all multiply decision points and require more people who can lead with clarity. If we only scale structures and skills without considering the human systems that sit behind them, promotions become fragile: people are given bigger shirts with no mirror, tailor or fitting room.
Most organisations treat promotion as a skills problem — teach budgeting, improve communication and strategic thinking. Those things matter. But experience taught us that they solve only half the requirements. The other half is about the human being who must become a leader — in identity and internal reward systems, not just capability.
Building Leadership Capacity Through Behavioural Science
That insight led us to engage Alison Leverett-Morris as a leadership coach and advisor, working closely with our senior leaders. Alison helped the team understand how identity sets a ceiling on leadership behaviours — and how that ceiling can be deliberately lifted using behavioural science.
As the work deepened, through real-time observation inside the business, Alison developed a leadership framework powered by neuroscience and psychology. We embedded this through a “Get It Done” programme that translated scientific insight into practical, applied leadership. For the approach ‘conceived and born’ at SMS, Alison was recognised as Most Innovative at the National Facilitator Awards 2023.
The impact of this work has been so significant that Alison now supports SMS to steward and scale leadership capacity across the organisation as our fractional Chief Leadership Officer.
Alison Leverett‑Morris on the Neuroscience of Leadership Identity
When Growth Outpaces the Human System
At a certain point, ambitious leaders ask: how do you integrate growth without collapse?
Leaders understand that business growth demands an upgrade of systems and processes — stronger operational architecture to carry bigger ambitions. But the human side is often neglected. And when it is, momentum slows, execution falters, and pressure rises.
Identity: The Invisible Growth Constraint
The problem is rarely strategy. And the solution is usually not another org chart or HR process. It’s in the deep work between human ears. Because human systems follow the same principle as business systems: you can’t scale an old identity into a new level of performance.
Or put another way: we can’t outperform our self-image.
We can try — but powerful subconscious processes pull behaviour back into alignment with ingrained (often outdated) identity, even as ambition, potential, and purpose drive leaders forward.
That internal conflict is exhausting and creates self-doubt and friction that slows everything down.
This is the internal wall most leaders and managers hit at a certain point. And, unsupported, it can feel like a breakdown — when in truth, it’s a process of breakthrough. Like a snake shedding its skin, leadership growth requires an identity upgrade: becoming the person capable of holding what the business is now asking of you.
This is the human side of business growth — where self-image, potential, and real-world behaviour needs to align with business vision, purpose, and strategy.
My work exists to ensure there is no lag between a business’s operational architecture and its human architecture — so growth can be integrated and sustained without collapse.
What that looks like in practice at SMS
At SMS, leadership development is designed to ensure the business’s human architecture can keep pace with its operational architecture and strategic ambitions.
Development is structured as a deliberate sequence that prepares leaders for deeper identity work and group coaching at each stage — from first-line management foundations, through departmental leadership, to executive-level identity and influence.
A Staged Approach to Leadership Development
Short, practical modules for newly promoted managers that teach the daily rituals that make first-line leaders credible: structured 1:1s, clear feedback, performance conversations, recruitment, delegation and ready-to-use templates.
A middle stage for Heads of Department that teaches strategic and operational leadership — vision, departmental objectives, resource forecasting, finance for non-finance managers and managing managers — all applied to real projects so leaders practice leading at scale.
Executive-level work that consolidates identity, presence and strategic influence: coaching others, presenting to boards, leading through ambiguity and shaping culture.
Embedding Leadership Capacity Through Real Work
Crucially, the courses prepare leaders to get the most from the next level: skillfully facilitated “Get it Done” spaces that bring SLT and cross functional managers together. Real challenges are brought into the room, silos are broken down, blind spots are brought into awareness, leadership is distributed, and behaviour change becomes embodied.
A Closing Perspective: Why Identity‑Led Leadership Matters for Growth
As SMS continues to scale, leadership capacity building has become a deliberate engine rather than a series of isolated interventions. The practical progression developed with Alison Leverett-Morris — short, application-led manager modules, strategic programmes for Heads of Department, neuroscience-informed one-to-one coaching, and hands-on cross-functional “Get It Done” sessions — has created a structure capable of growing with the business.
The results are tangible: more confident managers, clearer delivery and a leadership culture that strengthens rather than strains under growth.
Because of that impact, Alison Leverett-Morris has now been appointed SMS’s fractional Chief Leadership Officer. In this role, she will steward and scale the leadership curriculum, embed neuroscience-informed coaching into performance and succession processes, and strengthen the management layer responsible for translating SLT strategy into consistent delivery across the organisation.
For David Clift, the lesson is simple. “Growth is a privilege – and a test. If you want leaders who don’t just perform tasks but can become the people the role requires, you have to design development for identity as well as skill.”
At SMS Environmental, that choice is already shaping how people lead, how teams deliver and how the business scales. And the work continues.
About the Authors
Alison Leverett-Morris, Executive Coach at ALM Coaching & Consulting Ltd
Alison is a speaker, consultant, licensed psychotherapist, certified neuroscience coach, and former CEO with a master’s degree in leadership. She partners with founders, CEOs, and leadership teams through advisory work, coaching, and applied leadership development — in formats ranging from one-off experiences and interventions to deeper, longer-term engagements.
David Clift, CPO at SMS Environmental
David is Chief People Officer at SMS with over 15 years’ experience in scaling fast-growth organisations, specialising in engagement, leadership development and organisational performance.
