Phase-Based Theory Of Leadership Development Essay

This chapter will introduce you to the phase-based theory of leader development. Leaders develop according to three generic phases, where in each phase there is a different ways to learn, also the need for learning stimuli and information needs differ. To enable optimal offering of learning support, insight in the phases is needed when you are setting up a leader-development process in your company.

Theories on development of leaders

There is a vast amount of research on the modern theories and the difference between transformational versus transactional leaders. Although leadership is viewed as a source of power and competitive advantage in many organizations , there is no general model for the development of leaders. One reason is that

Leadership development is the least explored topic within the field of leadership research and theory , even although it seems to be very much a point of interest. According to a 2006 Society of HR Management (SHRM) survey of HR leaders, the number one problem for HR directors is identifying and developing the leadership talent needed for the growth and expansion of their respective organizations . In a similar study conducted in 2007, 44% of the organizational leaders surveyed reported increasing the effectiveness of training as being their first or second priority . In a review of the leadership intervention literature from the last hundred years, only around 100 articles on studies examining the impact of leadership interventions on leader development . They defined a leader intervention as a development step when an experience is generated through the use of “some form of training, introspection, receiving feedback and exercises to increase the effectiveness of how one leads an individual or group” . It was shown that in the last 100 years the average time of leadership development was between one and seven days . This underlines the previously discussed concept of leadership skills as more of a superficial

Your talents hard-wired to improve and develop themselves will start their MBA and the best (as it is very tough to do next to a job) will actually make it. Those who do so obviously have a strong self-development drive, have the individual engagement, as else they would not put all this extra effort into their development. Plus, you will only reimburse fully those who pass their MBA. If you now reward these people by repaying their cost, and on top a form of a completion bonus, you reward those who did it at own risk, and with personal hardship, instead of those who were selected on one moment in their career and sat in relative comfort through an executive MBA, with money and time made available. To further heighten the stakes, you can make the level of reimbursement depend on the level of the grades at the end, combined with what MBA they chose etc. This turns the overachiever-gene’ further on high alert. In this way you will in my view reach those who are prepared to put their best effort in, in confidence they will make it, without waiting for the company to cover the risks. Those are also the people you want leading your company; confident high performers who make calculated risks and are prepared to go out on a limb to achieve a high level