Leaders need to learn together and focus on real issues
Over the last three decades, the resources and energy devoted to leadership development in corporations has skyrocketed. You would be hard pressed to find a major corporation that has not invested millions in leadership initiatives for its executives and managers. But has the investment in these efforts paid off, however the return is measured? Perhaps more importantly, for a CEO evaluating the various levers to improve organisational performance, would we select leadership development versus the alternatives?
My colleague Trina Soske recently wrote about this subject on the Harvard Business Review website (
http://blogs.hbr.org/imagining-the-future-of-leadership/2010/06/time-to-shift-the-paradigm-of.html). Writing in partnership with Jay Conger, Chair of Leadership Studies at Claremont McKenna College, Trina contends that the return on investment in leadership development has fallen short of its potential.
Trina makes a strong case for a shift from a focus on developing individual leaders towards a more collective style of leadership development – after all, the exercise of leadership in organisations is not an individual act. Nobody leads in a vacuum and development programs need to take this into account. The complexity, interconnectedness and transparency of today's organisations mean that no one individual can get much accomplished by themselves. Most challenges and opportunities are systemic. Leadership is distributed and change now requires a collective sense and a coordinated set of actions.