Ldp Analysis

Three principles which underpinned this LDP are worth highlighting. Firstly, each emergent junior talent in this LDP had to select a mentor within the organization. A mentor was required not only to help the participant to develop a clear, realistic, personal and professional development plan, but also to regularly meet with their mentee to monitor developmental progress, provide feedback and support them as they worked through frustrations and mistakes in their work. Secondly, emergent junior talent had discussions with their respective mentors to ultimately self-select and prioritize three of the eight leadership competencies to be developed over the 11 months of the programme. Day et al (2008) advises that it is necessary that the design

In the development plan, each emergent junior talent specified a range of relevant activities and their deadlines for execution. The developmental activities were all aligned to each of the three self-selected leadership competencies. At the end of the programme, each participant submitted a portfolio for assessment of their leadership development. Day (2010:42) underscores that “it is not the quantity or quality of the experience that matters in the long term development of skill; rather it is a direct function of the amount of deliberate practice that is undertaken over a considerable period of time”. According to Revans (1983:54) ‘there can be no learning without action and no (sober and deliberate) action without learning”. Cognizant of the temporal dimension of leadership development, Dixon (1993:248)

First and foremost, development differs from training which is essentially about “procedures and processes used to teach proven solutions to known problems” (Day, Harrison and Halpin, 2008:129). Aptly, development entails “altering one’s way of making meaning”, and enhancing “individual`s capacity for being able to quickly make sense of the environment and adapt effectively by learning their way out of problems” (Day, Harrison and Halpin,2008:129). To understand development, there is need to link evolving actions to interactional outcomes in order to depict process which explains why and how things change, stay the same, regress or progress. Ontologically, leadership development focuses on a social relational process (Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber, 2009), which is distinctive from “leader development” whose focus is the individual who is a leader (e.g. development of intrapersonal aspects in form of human capital; what leaders do and their behavioural outcomes). With this nuance, leadership development “refers to a function of between-individual process [and] involves the creation of social capital primarily at the group, team and organisational level” (Day, et al,