T
TALKING HEADS
Leadership development needs to change
I
Roger Delves
Those responsible
for leadership
development must
lose the baggage
from the past.
62 // Future Talent
t’s hard being a leader in
today’s world. Workplaces
are full of accidental leaders
— professionals with no real
desire or intent to lead, who find
themselves in positions of significant
leadership responsibility.
T h e n t h e re a re t h o s e w h o
want to lead, but find themselves
struggling to meet the challenges of a
fast-moving business environment
where nothing is certain, and thanks to
a combination of technology and global
competition, markets can be disrupted
almost overnight.
For both these groups, the leadership
role can prove to be a bitter cup. They
strive, but they don’t thrive.
It’s not enough just to throw people
into the leadership bear pit and expect
them to succeed. We urgently need to
find new ways to equip individuals with
the skills they need to lead effectively in
our increasingly volatile and uncertain
world. Nothing short of a radical rethink
of the way we approach leadership
development is needed.
Hult International Business School,
working with global management
network EFMD, recently brought
together 12 firms including Bayer,
L’Oréal, Nokia, UBS and Siemens, to
produce a report designed to challenge
conventional leadership development
by rethinking what is needed to help
leaders to thrive.
Leadership development has to be
transformed because in the new world
of work, the traditional approach (where
learning and development professionals
give leaders the recipe) simply won’t
wash. It’s inaccurate, misleading and
inadequate in the complex, demanding
e nv i ro n m e nt t h a t o u r l e a d e r s
inhabit today.
The group agreed that leadership
development should be a continuous
proces s, integrated wi th work ,
rather than a one-off event, and that
experimental learning is the single
most effective way to develop leaders.
Other insights included that leadership
development should be a catalyst
fo r t r a n s fo r m a t i o n a l c h a n g e ,
with increased resilience of both
individuals and the organisation, as a
critical outcome.
The consistent underpinning
narrative is that there is a direct link
between leadership behaviour, the way
people interact with one another, and
the health of the organisation’s culture.
For leaders to be able to drive increased
productivity and better performance,
they must get these three things right:
• personal leadership qualities
• interpersonal relationships
• positive cultures
In today’s uncharted territory, we
need our development interventions
to deliver leaders who are champions
of change, as well as custodians of the
company’s culture and values. Resilient,
reflective, aware individuals who can
create and deepen engagement from
teams and individuals.
Helping leaders to develop in this
way means that those responsible for
leadership development must lose
the baggage from the past. We need
to revise what is learned and how it is
delivered. Review fundamentals and
“It’s not enough
to throw people
into the leadership
bear pit and expect
them to succeed”
engage with profound change. Embrace
new approaches and new philosophies.
Only when we feel we are surrounded
by a swathe of exciting innovation will we
know that we might be the path towards
a vibrant leadership culture on which
our leaders are thriving and not striving.
Roger Delves is dean and professor of
practice at Ashridge Executive Education
at Hult International Business School.
His special interests are understanding
the roles of authenticity, emotional
intelligence, ethics and integrity in
leadership and in decision making.