Episode 16: Featuring Richard Mirabile, PhD
Most leadership development programs don’t fail because the content is wrong. They fail because of what organizations do, and don’t do, the moment the program ends.
Most organizations send their people through training, bring in capable facilitators, and wait for performance to improve. What they get instead: the same behaviors as before, a team that barely remembers what they covered, and a manager who never knew the training happened in the first place. Richard Mirabile, PhD, calls it the single-shot approach. After more than 30 years of applied research, he’s done watching it repeat.
Mirabile is the creator of SparkEffect’s Leadership Development program, a 16-module facilitated development experience built from decades of research on what genuinely changes how leaders lead. His central argument cuts past content quality and delivery format: most organizations focus almost entirely on the doing side of leadership (results, output, performance metrics) while nearly ignoring the being side. How a leader shows up. Whether they listen. Whether they’ve built enough trust that their team will tell them the truth. That gap is where most programs fail to reach. And it’s what most leaders are quietly struggling with.
The 16-module program Mirabile designed for SparkEffect covers emotional intelligence, mindset, anticipatory leadership, high-performance team dynamics, and more. Each module runs two hours by design, because leaders’ attention is the resource in shortest supply. This episode is a direct look at what that program is built on, and why.
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What You’ll Discover
- Why the “single-shot” training approach almost never produces lasting behavior change, and what the research says about knowledge transfer
- The difference between doing leadership and being a leader, and why most organizations only measure on.
- Why leaders are almost never terminated for technical failures, and what the research shows about what really derails them
- How “facilitated development” differs from training, and why that distinction directly affects L&D ROI
- Where AI falls short in leadership development, and why human connection can’t be replicated for real behavior change.
- What Mirabile’s “to-be list” concept looks like in practice, and how to try it in your next meeting
- How SparkEffect’s Trust Elasticity research connects to leader behavior during organizational disruption
Episode Highlights
[00:55] Richard’s Background: The Jungle Gym Career That Built This Program Richard traces a path from organizational psychology to academia, corporate environments, startups, and consulting, explaining how that breadth shaped his view of what leaders genuinely need.
[02:17] The Single-Shot Approach: Why Leadership Programs Don’t Stick Reinforcement gaps, managers who don’t know what their team just learned, and the pressure to return to business as usual. Richard breaks down why only 10% of training typically transfers, and what it actually takes to move that number.
[05:22] The 16-Module Program: What It Covers and Why From emerging leaders to C-suite executives, Richard walks through the structure of SparkEffect’s Leadership Development program and the principle that guided his module design.
[09:35] AI and Leadership Development: Where Human Facilitation Still Wins Richard and Kim address the argument that AI can replace facilitated development, and explain why the human element isn’t just preferable: it’s functionally irreplaceable for the kind of probing that changes behavior.
[13:05] Doing vs. Being: The Framework at the Center of Richard’s Work Most companies focus on leadership. Richard makes the case that being a leader, how you show up, and not just what you deliver, is equally important and largely unaddressed in standard programs.
[17:03] Why Leaders Actually Derail The research is consistent: people are rarely terminated for technical failures. Richard explains what the data shows about the being-side breakdowns that end leadership careers.
[19:17] Trust, Disruption, and What the Data Shows SparkEffect’s Trust Elasticity research found that 71% of employees experienced significant disruption in the last 24 months. Trust is fractured most between leaders and their direct reports.
[22:27] What Makes SparkEffect’s Program Different Kim asks the direct question L&D leaders need answered: after being burned by programs that didn’t deliver, why is this one worth a serious look?
[33:03] Why Modules Are Built for Two-Hour Formats Attention is a leader’s scarcest resource. Richard explains the deliberate design choice behind the module length.
[34:00] One Thing Every Leader Can Do Starting This Week Richard’s practical close: the to-be list alongside the to-do list, and why even a small shift in how you show up compounds over time.
Key Takeaways for HR and L&D Leaders
You don’t have a training problem. You have a reinforcement problem.
The single-shot approach (one program, one event, back to business as usual) is where most organizations lose their investment. Research suggests only 10% of training transfers to the job without deliberate reinforcement. Richard’s argument isn’t to abandon programs; it’s to build the system around them: manager awareness, coaching support, space to practice, and recognition for trying new behaviors.
The being side of leadership is what truly derails people, and it’s almost never measured.
Most leaders who lose their jobs don’t lose them because of technical or functional failures. They lose them because of how they showed up. Or didn’t. Richard calls this the being side: the quality of listening, the consistency of presence, the ability to create the kind of psychological safety that makes teams tell the truth. Organizations reward doing. The being side is what determines whether that doing is sustainable.
Facilitated development is not the same thing as training.
Training delivers content. Facilitated development surfaces the beliefs that drive behavior: the underlying assumptions about what leadership means, what results require, and what vulnerability costs. Richard’s approach asks probing questions that go below the surface, creating conditions for real self-examination rather than passive absorption.
Trust is the foundation. When it erodes, everything else follows.
SparkEffect’s research found that trust fractures closest to where the work happens, between leaders and their direct reports, not at the top of the org chart. If the trust isn’t there, it almost doesn’t matter what the program covers. Engagement drops. Retention suffers. Performance declines.
AI can supplement leadership development. It cannot replace the human in the room.
AI can surface information, provide frameworks, and personalize content delivery. What it can’t do is probe: ask the follow-up question, notice what someone isn’t saying, or challenge a leader’s core beliefs with the credibility of someone who’s been in that room before.
The to-be list is a practical tool any leader can use this week.
Alongside every to-do list is a to-be list that most leaders have never written. Today I will listen more. Today I will ask before I direct. Today I will let them talk. Leaders who have figured out how to move between these two orientations are, in Richard’s experience, the ones who actually hold up when things get hard.
About Our Guest
Richard Mirabile, PhD, is a leadership development researcher and practitioner with more than 30 years of applied work across organizational psychology, executive coaching, and program design. His career has moved through academia, corporate environments, technology startups, and consulting roles, a path he describes as a “jungle gym career” that gave him a broad, applied view of what leaders across industries and experience levels genuinely need.
Richard is the creator of SparkEffect’s Leadership Development program, a 16-module facilitated development experience designed to address both the doing and the being sides of leadership. His work is grounded in the belief that what a person believes determines how they act, and that sustainable leadership performance requires developing the whole person, not just the professional.
Connect with Richard Mirabile, PhD
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjmirabile/
- Email: richard.mirabile@sparkeffect.com
- Phone: 650-726-6088
Notable Quotes
Richard Mirabile, PhD:
“If the trust isn’t there, it almost doesn’t matter what else you do.”
Richard Mirabile, PhD:
“Are you doing leadership or are you being a leader? That’s the question most organizations haven’t asked.”
Richard Mirabile, PhD:
“What you believe influences what you do. What we believe about leadership — whatever our philosophy might be — very much determines how we function as a leader.”
Kim Bohr:
“Trust fractured most significantly between a leader and their direct reports, regardless of where they were in the organization. It’s not eroding at the top — it’s eroding closest to where the work happens.”
Related Resources
- SparkEffect Trust Study – Research showing that 71% of organizations faced disruption in the last 24 months, but only 36% emerged stronger (https://info.sparkeffect.com/trust-study-2025-download)
About Courage to Advance
Courage to Advance explores how visionary leaders are building the organizations they wish existed, companies that prove business doesn’t have to be dehumanizing. Hosted by Kim Bohr, President and COO of SparkEffect, each episode features executives who refuse to accept that traditional corporate practices are inevitable, sharing the experiments, resistance, and breakthrough results of choosing human flourishing alongside business success.
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