Christopher Sprague: Leadership Dev Is Broken. AI Can Fix It. | Ep 1299

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: Christopher Sprague: Leadership Dev Is Broken. AI Can Fix It. | Ep 1299
Podcast: The Digital Executive by Coruzant Technologies
Date: August 12, 2026
Guest: Dr. Christopher Sprague, CEO and Co-Founder of Anluma Leadership Group
Main Theme:
This episode spotlights the limitations of traditional leadership development, especially its inaccessibility beyond senior executives, and explores how AI and technology can democratize effective leadership coaching for all levels within organizations. Dr. Sprague draws from his diverse background and shares how behavioral science and AI-powered platforms are transforming leadership development for “the middle”—everyday managers who have often been overlooked.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Sprague’s Journey to Leadership Innovation

• Origin Story: High School Calculus Inspiration
  • Dr. Sprague recalls his formative experience with an inspirational high school calculus teacher, Mr. Michael Gersh. The supportive environment led students to happily work hard and excel well beyond expectations.
  • “You work really hard. And then through background and sciences and regulatory environment, I would actually say what I realized was you can get promotions, you can get awards. ... But if you have an opportunity to help someone grow and become more than they thought possible, that is something you'll never forget.” (Dr. Sprague, 05:10)
• Corporate Tenure and Founding Anluma
  • After years in highly regulated industries, Dr. Sprague realized that the workplace could benefit from environments built on the transformative support he experienced and observed early on.
  • This insight led him to co-found Anluma Leadership Group, focused on delivering scalable, tech-enabled leadership development for all.

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The Current Problem: Leadership Development Exclusion

• Executive-Only Focus
  • Traditional leadership coaching has been an exclusive privilege, largely reserved for senior management.
  • The middle tier (“the middle”), making up 65–80% of organizations, remains underserved despite its critical impact on performance and culture.
    • “But if you can have even 10% improvement in the middle, you are talking about a transformed company ... huge business impact with the people that you already have but historically overlooked.” (Dr. Sprague, 07:44)

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Why AI-Powered Platforms Change the Game

• Limitations of Human-Centric Coaching
  • Traditional methods depend on in-person workshops and ongoing human involvement, making mass implementation costly and logistically challenging.
• AI as Enabler, Not Replacement
  • AI can deliver individualized nudges, curiosity-driven questions, and action plans at scale.
  • The tech serves to augment human development, not supplant it:
    • “AI can come in really handy. ... But just because someone has a desire to do something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. The second piece is the environment. ... That’s where actually working with other people is so beneficial. ... To us, it’s really a hybrid approach.” (Dr. Sprague, 09:21)
• Responsible Use of AI
  • AI excels in sparking motivation and tracking progress, but genuine growth still requires human interaction, feedback, and safe environments for trial and learning.

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The Forward Path: Measurement and Accountability

• Business Impact as the True Metric
  • Many organizations track surface-level metrics: workshop attendance, hours logged, etc., but rarely tie efforts to measurable business change.
  • “If people are just doing workshops and coaching and you don’t have business impact, it’s just entertainment. And that’s where we see the shift, and that’s what we’re really pushing to change in the next few years.” (Dr. Sprague, 12:31)
• Expectation Shifts and AI Scaling
  • As technology democratizes access to high-quality coaching, Dr. Sprague predicts organizations will demand actual, measurable behavior change tied to organizational goals.
  • The next 2–3 years will see a push for clarity between leadership interventions and their real-world results, expanding beyond leadership to skills like sales and project management.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Leadership Memories vs. Awards:
  • “You’ll remember the title for your promotions, you’ll remember the name of the award, but you won’t remember what you spent the money on. But if you have an opportunity to help someone grow and become more than they thought possible, that is something you’ll never forget.” (Dr. Sprague, 05:10)
• On the Power of the Overlooked Middle:
  • “… the middle represents typically about 65 to 80% of your company, but yet they're the ones ... that we don't focus on. But if you can have even 10% improvement in the middle, you are talking about a transformed company.” (Dr. Sprague, 07:44)
• On AI’s Role in Growth:
  • “It's not going to be the end all solution, but really help with that. But then it's how do you create that environment? … It's going to be a hybrid approach with people, with insights, with feedback, and likely to a lesser extent AI …” (Dr. Sprague, 09:21)
• On Measuring What Matters:
  • “If you measure business impact, if you measure behavior change, then your expectations change.” (Dr. Sprague, 11:48)
  • “If people are just doing workshops and coaching and you don’t have business impact, it’s just entertainment.” (Dr. Sprague, 12:31)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:20–05:53] Dr. Sprague’s early inspiration and link between education and lasting impact in leadership.
• [06:52–08:12] Why high-quality coaching remains at the top and the business cost of neglecting the middle.
• [08:52–10:18] Where AI coaching adds value, and why human feedback remains essential.
• [11:13–12:48] The future: shifting from “checking the box” to measuring true business impact of leadership programs.
• [13:32–14:04] The problem with current post-training follow-through, and the need for ongoing measurement and accountability.

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Summary

In this insightful and concise episode, Dr. Christopher Sprague makes a compelling case for breaking the executive-only ceiling in leadership development. He walks listeners through how inspirational environments, responsible AI, and a relentless focus on results—not check-the-box compliance—can collectively elevate entire organizations. AI is positioned not as a replacement, but as a crucial tool to democratize growth, especially for the long-ignored “middle.” Ultimately, the future of leadership development will be written by those who choose to measure—and expect—real change.

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Transcript

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Brian]

Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Dr. Christopher Sprague. Dr. Christopher Sprague is a transformation executive, entrepreneur and leadership researcher with more than 20 years of experience leading large scale business, digital and organizational transformations across Fortune 100 healthcare companies. Throughout his career he has led global teams, modernized complex operations and helped organizations navigate change in highly regulated environments spanning supply chain, quality, it, regulatory affairs and human resources. Today, Chris is the CEO and co Founder of Anluma Leadership Group where he is focused on a challenge he believes has been overlooked for decades. Making high quality leadership development accessible to every leader, not just executives. After researching leadership behaviors across hundreds of professionals, Chris and his team have developed a practical leadership framework that combines behavioral science, AI powered coaching, stakeholder feedback, microlearning and real world application into an affordable platform designed for everyday managers. Well, good afternoon Chris. Welcome to the show.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Well, thank you Brian. Really appreciate you having me.

[Brian]

Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it as well. You're hailing in Chicago, I'm in Kansas City. So luckily we're in the same time zone. A lot of times I've got to navigate some time zones to get to the guest. Vice versa. But I appreciate you. So Chris, if you don't mind, I'm going to jump into your first question.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Sure.

[Brian]

Your background is unusual for a leadership expert. You've got a PhD in toxicology and more than two decades leading complex organizational changes across the pharmaceutical industry. From operational turnaround to enterprise wide technology rollouts across global Manufacturing sites. You've said your earliest experience with inspirational leadership wasn't in the business at all, but during your senior year of high school. How did that early moment and career in hard science and regulated operations lead you to found a leadership company?

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Yeah, no worries, Brian. It's a great question. So my senior year of high school illustrates my degree of nerditude. My favorite class was calculus. And not because, I mean, the content was interesting, but it was primarily the teacher. So Mr. Michael Gersh. Mr. Gersh was phenomenal. And in calculus, a lot of times the answers are 0 and 1, but not in his class. It was either our Spanish friend Juan or the number of Ms. Sandstrom's friends. Now, and I don't know how he got away with that with zero being the number of Ms. Sandstrom's friends. I was and am still friends with Karen. She's fantastic. But he created this environment where we happily came to class every day. And sometimes you don't understand the magnitude of a great situation until after it's over. So we go through senior year of calculus. I then go on to University of Delaware for undergraduate, and I decided to take calculus my fall semester. I didn't have to take calculus. I couldn't have taken a lower math. But what I found very quickly was for the other courses I was taking, high school content was done in about two to three weeks. Then you move on to other stuff. But for calculus, we covered more than a college semester of calculus in Mr. Garusch's class. And what I thought was we worked our tails off, but yet we willingly and happily worked hard. And I thought, why isn't the business world like that? Why don't we have environments where people are supported and engaged and it's not just hanging out, but you work really hard. And then through background and sciences and regulatory environment, I would actually say what I realized was you can get promotions, you can get awards. You'll remember the title for your promotions, you'll remember the name of the award, but you won't remember what you spent the money on. But if you have an opportunity to help someone grow and become more than they thought possible, that is something you'll never forget. You'll carry that on for years. So then what I thought was, how can we create an environment like Mr. Girish's classroom, but then also help those leaders at scale? And so that really was, I think, the spark that led to an LUMA leadership group. And what we're trying to do at scale with technology and with AI that's awesome.

[Brian]

I love the backstory. And you're absolutely right. There's always that one teacher, maybe two, that leave an indelible mark on you. And you learned, even though you talked about calculus not being your thing, but you've probably learned a lot about calculus that you probably wouldn't have remembered if you didn't have that same teacher. And we learn the most when we're having the most fun. And that's just an amazing story. And I love what you're doing. You're bringing this to the business world, which we all need. We're just kind of thrown into our career sometimes and, you know, it's happenstance and really we need to find where we fit best. So thank you, Chris. Your central premise is that leadership development has historically been reserved for executive and senior managers. And Aluma and Luma Sorry was founded to change that. Why was. Why has high quality coaching stayed locked at the top for the org chart for so long? And what does it actually cost companies to leave everyday managers without it?

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Absolutely, Brian. So we've really relied on traditional approaches that lean in heavily to humans coaching workshops. They really require human intervention. But now with the advent of AI and really the growth of AI, but also different approaches with technology, we have an opportunity to consider things that before we didn't even think were possible. And when you think the cost to companies, we are really focused in on the middle. Not your low performers, not your high performers, but the middle. And how can we transform the middle? And the opportunity with companies is the middle represents typically about 65 to 80% of your company, but yet they're the ones, they're consistent, they're reliable, that we don't focus on. But if you can have even 10% improvement in the middle, you are talking about a transformed company, not just from a culture perspective and an engagement perspective, but also productivity and revenue. It'll have a huge effect and we're talking about huge business impact with the people that you already have but have historically overlooked because we've relied on those human heavy processes and approaches in the past.

[Brian]

Thank you. That's where I like to say it gets messy in the middle.

[Sponsor Representative]

Right?

[Brian]

You're absolutely right. Spending just, gosh, you can move the needle probably 70% by spending a little bit of focus time in that area. And I really appreciate you highlighting that and helping us understand why that's so important. So thank you. Chris. You're passionate about the responsible use of AI to augment rather than replace human development. And loom. Is AI a patent pending Platform grounded in your leadership model. Where does AI coaching generally add value in someone's growth and where do you draw the line and insist a human has to be in the loop?

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Yeah, our ultimate goal is to enable behavior change that has business impact. So to do that there's really, at a high level, two steps. First is providing a spark or a nudge for people. And this is where AI can come in really handy. It's using curiosity based questions to understand what do you want to do, how can, do you have action plans related to that. But the second piece, you may spark someone and you're really kind of uncovering their motivation or their desires. But just because someone has a desire to do something doesn't mean it's going to happen. The second piece is the environment. An environment where people get to try, they get to fail, they get to learn. And while AI can help there a little bit with reminders and nudges, that's where actually working with other people is so beneficial. It's getting feedback from other people. So to us it's really a hybrid approach where you provide that spark and that nudge and we see that AI can help with that. It's not going to be the end all solution, but really help with that. But then it's how do you create that environment? And it's going to be a hybrid approach with people, with insights, with feedback, and likely to a lesser extent AI, because then that'll help us to ultimately get to that business impact through behavior change.

[Brian]

Thank you.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Appreciate that.

[Brian]

You know, you highlighted a few things. Obviously desire and environment is a big part of that. But AI is absolutely a tool that can help do some of that nudging or documentation or providing feedback. But as always, when we talk about here on the podcast, just about every episode has some sort of layer of AI in it. There has to be that human in the loop. And as much as people are saying AI is going to take every job, that's never going to happen. There will be some jobs, obviously that will be more impacted than others. But I really appreciate what you're doing with your platform.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Platform.

[Brian]

So, Crystal, the last question of the day. You believe technology can democratize coaching? Create organizations where great leadership is the norm rather than the exception as AI power development scales, where do you see leadership growth heading over the next three to five years and what has to be true for us to actually build stronger leaders at scale rather than just adding more tools? Yeah.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

You know what's really interesting is what we measure clarifies what we truly expect so, and Brian, you've probably been in these situations too, where a organization will say, we need to upskill our leadership on X, y and Z behavior. So let's put them through this training. Let's prove them through the workshop. But what do we measure? We measure how many people completed the workshop, how many hours were changed or are trained. But you don't actually measure the business impact. So. And there's. There's a lot of groups, there's multiple groups that are working on that. But what we really see is if you measure business impact, if you measure behavior change, then your expectations change. And so what I would say over the next two to three years, we're really pushing a change in expectations around the impact that we can have. And we're even thinking beyond leadership development. We're thinking about other means or skills that people could acquire, like sales, marketing, project management, that are traditionally expensive but not accessible. So where we're going is we want to see for different areas, including leadership development, that change in what we measure will truly tie to our expectations. And because ultimately we do want to see business impact. Because if. If people are just doing workshops and coaching and you don't have business impact, it's just entertainment. And that's where we see the shift, and that's what we're really pushing to change in the next few years.

[Brian]

Thank you.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

You're.

[Brian]

You're absolutely right. It goes beyond checking the box. You have to have some sort of engagement, some sort of growth, some sort of exercise, whatever that is, to continue to engage folks. Changing that expectation, it takes a little bit of work. Obviously, we talked about that, and then the engagement. But the measurement, you said measurement brings that clarity. And I think that's where you're going to really determine where you need to focus in on that work. Because you're right, I've done that. I've been in many leadership. Different training formations, whatever it is, evaluations, it's, It's. It's the same everywhere. Check the box. Okay, we're compliant, but that's, that's. It takes a lot more than that. So I appreciate your insights, for sure.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

And then, Brian, what happens after you go to those workshops, in those courses, you, you.

[Brian]

All that. All those notes you've taken collect dust in your. In your shelf there, in your office?

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Yeah, 100%. 100%.

[Sponsor Representative]

You.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

You go back to your regular life. You don't integrate. So there's no measurement later. There's no expectation that, okay, did Brian go to this course and did he change? Did he improve and what was the business impact? Yeah. So it really speaks to our expectations around you going to that course.

[Brian]

Absolutely. Thank you again. And, Chris, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.

[Dr. Christopher Sprague]

Yeah, thanks a lot, Brian. Really appreciate it.

[Brian]

Bye for now.