US organizations spend millions of dollars each year on leadership training. Much of these expenditures go toward costly "personal growth" seminars. What are these organizations getting for their money? Conger (1993) says that, without paying attention to transfer-of-training, organizations can get "snake oil" for their effort and expense. Personal growth approaches, as well as conceptual, feedback, or skill-based approaches are also deficient, sometimes even when they are used in combination. This is because all these approaches: rely on mythology, have low content sufficiency, result in little transfer of training, aren't reinforced back on the job by the organizational infrastructure and support processes, fail to take a systems perspective, and are often one-shot attempts at achieving long-term change. This paper describes a process model (Welch, 1994) for an integrated, systems-oriented, developmental approach to leadership development. Additionally it proposes a methodology for implementing the approach and a brief discussion of early-stages of implementation in an ongoing case study. Limitations of the approach are discussed, as well as suggested modifications.
Re-Thinking How We Develop Leaders: A Process Approach to Leadership Development
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