• Home |
• About Us |
• Our Clients |
• Our Team |
• Contact Us |
• Testimonials

Leadership Development

Over the past few decades Leadership Development has changed from being primarily a classroom based activity to being supplemented by a range of activities as diverse as high ropes courses and charity based events.

While formal classroom learning is still an important element, development experiences that are likely to have the greatest impact will be those that are closely linked to a person’s ongoing work and development needs. Activities such as 360° feedback, performance coaching, action learning, mentoring etc are increasingly becoming key elements of leadership development programmes.

1) 360° feedback. One of the development activities that has spread rapidly across many organisations is the use of 360° feedback. Feedback is a useful means of developing self awareness and assessing leadership competence. However, it is important to recognise that an assessment activity undertaken in isolation will not be developmental unless it is followed up with activities designed to ‘plug any gaps’ that might exist in a person’s capability.

2) Coaching. Coaching has also become a popular approach to leadership development. The advantage of coaching is that it focuses on the individual’s specific needs and avoids the ‘sheep dip’ approach that can sometimes be attributed to classroom style training.

3) Action Learning. Action learning is a set of development activities in which relevant organisational issues are tacked and resolved by the participants. Combining teaching with a real business issue helps leaders to gain crucial skills as well as allowing organisations to tackle relevant and real time issues.

4) Work assignments. Challenging projects and work assignments can also form a valuable part of a leadership development programme. Using assignments in this way has the added benefit of ‘assessing’ the potential of the leader in a real work situation. In addition, it provides people with opportunities to learn from their work rather than taking them away from it.

5) Team development. This involves leaders working with their teams to maximise performance. Again this is not a classroom activity but one which involves the leader and their team reflecting on and working on real team, interpersonal and business issues.

In summary it is important to recognise that leadership is a key component of jobs at all levels and therefore organisations need to be committed to developing a cross section of personnel and not just those in senior positions. However, in today’s economy it is vital to be able to demonstrate the organisation’s return on the investment it makes in its leaders. A clear link must be made between the leadership development programme and specific organisational outcomes.