White Paper:
A step-by-step approach to personal leadership development
Dr Sharon King Gabrielides
Leadership development holds value for both the organisation and the individual. By facilitating self-awareness, personal growth, and accountability, companies ensure their own long-term success through nurturing attuned leaders who are capable of helping the business and its employees to achieve their goals and strategy. However, many organisations regard learning as a narrow, functional intervention, rather than a multifaceted journey that must focus as much on individual leaders’ internal beliefs and thought patterns, as it does on their practical skill sets.
Traditional leadership development models and executive education courses have applied the same exclusive, expert-based thinking that underpins programmes like the powerhouse of the MBA to personal and transformational programmes designed to grow effective leadership and business acumen. Now described as ‘episodic, exclusive, and expensive’ (Moldoveanu and Narayandas, 2019) and increasingly out of sync with the needs of organisations operating in a complex and changeable world, today’s leaders require holistic leadership development that understands the systemic nature of leadership while putting personal transformation at the core of the journey.