Traditional leadership learning programmes are in need of revision. In spite of a massive emphasis and investment in leadership education, the return on this investment has often disappointed. This in part can be explained by traditional models of developing leaders not keeping pace with the rapidity and complexity that characterize the context in which leaders are required to lead. Jack Welsh has been quoted as saying that when, “the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight”. Keeping pace with this rate of change and developing leaders with sufficient adaptive intelligence is the challenge of leadership education programmes. At the heart of every leadership development programme there is a need to return to the fundamental question: ‘What is leadership and how do I learn it?’ It is a questions that serves as the custodian of several important questions that in turn will give shape to the educational / developmental context:
- What is leadership?
- How do I learn it?
- How do I learn it?
- How do I learn it?
MBA programmes have traditionally focused on knowledge acquisition in a classroom setting. There is need to understand leadership development as a process in which there is as much emphasis on character development as there is on knowledge / skills acquisition. The majority of leadership theory holds that both character and skills are required for effective leadership. The emphasis on the latter has partly been due to how we have chosen to measure the programmes in which substantial investment has been made. We know how to do the ‘external’ aspects of leadership development but this needs to be balanced by a new emphasis on internal approaches to learning leadership. Some of these internal approaches and tools would include disciplines such as reflection, narrative, conversation, visioning and inquiry.
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