To understand leadership development, it’s essential to examine what the concept means. You can understand leadership development by analyzing the two separate concepts at play here. First, the concept of leadership refers to, “the ability of a company’s management to set and achieve challenging goals, align the organisation through governance, systems and procedures and inspire and motivate others to perform well to gain commitment”, according to W. Drath. Essentially, it is about a team of people or individuals being able to produce direction, alignment and commitment for the organisation to achieve specific objectives. You then have the concept of development, which is about “the act or process of growing or causing something to grow or become larger or more advanced’.

Therefore, leadership development is about expanding a person’s ability to perform as a leader. It’s about teaching a person about leadership and the skills and qualities required to be an effective leader. Therefore, the focus is on essential leadership skills such as the ability to communicate, motivate and inspire others. It will provide the person with new resources and tools to use in order to lead and manage a group forward. In leadership development, people are provided with the tools to make better decisions and to take accountability of their actions.

Leadership skills are not a magical trait you either have or you don’t. More importantly, efficient leadership is not something you can read a book about and after you’re done, claim you know everything about leading. Therefore, development of leadership is essential and unavoidable – and it takes years of practise.

At ThoughtLeaders we are drawing on two decades of leadership experience. We have walked the miles and researched the psychology behind.

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