Purpose This study investigates the gap between the rhetorical emphasis on soft skills and their limited practical integration within leadership development systems in Zambian organisations. It specifically investigates how organisational systems and contextual dynamics shape the institutionalisation of relational competencies. It further explores how organisational cultures, human resource systems and leadership mindsets shape the prioritisation of relational competencies such as emotional intelligence and communication. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a qualitative interpretivist design, drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with senior leaders and a focus group with seven leadership practitioners across public, private and non-governmental organisations in Zambia. Data were analysed using a six-phase thematic analysis approach, with iterative coding and theme development across the qualitative dataset. The analysis was informed by transformational leadership theory and emotional intelligence theory as interpretive lenses. Findings Despite rhetorical commitment to soft skills, leadership development systems privilege technical expertise and task performance. The findings reveal a systemic decoupling between espoused leadership values and organisational practices. Soft skills are perceived as innate personal attributes rather than developable competencies, resulting in weak institutionalisation within leadership curricula and performance frameworks. Misaligned organisational systems (including recruitment, appraisal and promotion mechanisms) reinforce this marginalisation. This misalignment constrains leadership effectiveness and reinforces reliance on externally imported development models. Research limitations/implications The study is context-specific to Zambia, limiting statistical generalisability. However, the findings offer analytically transferable insights into organisational and institutional conditions shaping leadership development in emerging-economy contexts. Practical implications The study advances a soft skills leadership competencies framework that conceptualises relational, emotional and communicative capabilities as developable and assessable leadership competencies. The framework supports the integration of soft skills across organisational systems rather than as standalone training interventions. It further provides a basis for embedding soft skills within recruitment, performance management, leadership development and promotion systems. Originality/value This article provides a systems-oriented explanation of why soft skills remain marginal in leadership development by conceptualising the rhetoric–practice gap as a form of institutional decoupling shaped by organisational systems and contextual dynamics and how this gap can be addressed without advancing a new leadership theory.
Phiri et al. (Tue,) studied this question.