Leadership development
activity that improves a person's competency to perform in leadership roles
Leadership development is the process which helps expand the capacity of individuals to perform in leadership roles within organizations. Leadership roles are those that facilitate execution of an organization's strategy through building alignment, winning mindshare and growing the capabilities of others. Leadership roles may be formal, with the corresponding authority to make decisions and take responsibility, or they may be informal roles with little official authority (e.g., a member of a team who influences team engagement, purpose and direction; a lateral peer who must listen and negotiate through influence).
Developing individual leaders
Traditionally, leadership development has focused on developing the leadership abilities and attitudes of individuals.
Different personal traits and characteristics can help or hinder a person's leadership effectiveness and highlight the need for formalized programs to develop leadership competencies.
Classroom-style training and associated reading for leadership development may hail from the possible divergence between knowing what to do and doing what one knows; management expert Henry Mintzberg is one person to highlight this dilemma. A 2015 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that as little as 15% of learning from traditional classroom-style training results in sustained behavioral change within workplaces.
Baldwin and Ford link success of leadership development efforts to three variables:
Individual learner characteristics
Quality and nature of the leadership development program
Support for behavioral change from the leader's supervisor.
Military officer-training academies, such as the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, go to great lengths to accept only candidates who show the highest potential to lead well. Personal characteristics that are associated with successful leadership development include leader motivation to learn, a high achievement drive and personality traits such as openness to experience, an internal focus of control, and self-monitoring.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leadership development” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.