Leadership development: integration in context

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change

Leadership development: integration in contextHoward Thomas* and Colin CarnallWarwick Business School, UK

� The study and practice of leadership development has been infl uenced by models of leadership which emphasize behavioural perspectives. The need to understand the impact of a leader on the people they lead is important if it leads people to refl ect on how they interact with others. But the models tend to be either limited to a focus on how to engage others or to be based on a rather static competence framework. Yet leaders must learn to make choices within a more dynamic context.

� The practice of leadership development needs to pay attention to integration in at least two important senses. One relates to the design and delivery of leadership development and the need to focus on both the development of leaders and the development of lead-ership as it is practised in the organization. The latter requires a focus on the choices leaders make and the assumptions and skills they bring to decision-making.

� The second arises out of the fi rst and is based on the assumption that integrated and effective leadership development must be a joint process where responsibility is shared between senior leadership of the company and leadership development professionals. The paper illustrates these ideas through a number of case illustrations drawn from the authors’ recent practice in this fi eld.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

lished, some scholarly and based on research, many personal or anecdotal. Biographies abound. Butour understanding of what leader-ship comprises, and our ability to predict who might make a success of leadership, is prob-lematic at best.

Our understanding of what leadership comprises, and our ability to predict who might make a success

of leadership, is problematic at best

Strat. Change 17: 193–206 (2008)Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.826 Strategic Change

* Correspondence to: Howard Thomas, Warwick Busi-ness School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.E-mail: [email protected].

Introduction

We are fascinated by leadership but there is much controversy amongst both scholars and practitioners about how to discover new leaders, how to develop leadership capability and what distinguishes successful from unsuc-cessful leaders. Today, scholars working in the fi eld of leadership studies agree on one point, above all. As a topic, leadership has and con-tinues to attract considerable attention and seemingly limitless research. Tens of thou-sands of books and articles have been pub-

194 Howard Thomas and Colin Carnall

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change DOI: 10.1002/jsc

Even so, effective leadership is in high demand. This interest has ‘resulted in a bur-geoning of academic programmes in leader-ship studies’ (Northouse, 2004). There are organizations which devote considerable resources to selecting, developing, testing and promoting leaders. The UK and US armed forces fall into this category. Some organiza-tions, public and private, also do so. Whilst the impact of this investment is bound to be less than intended, and the evaluation of these efforts is necessarily complex and multidimen-sional, what cannot be denied is the interest in leadership on the one hand, and the willing-ness of organizations to invest in trying to secure a stream of potential ‘leadership candi-dates’. This may well be a result of the widely accepted view that leaders play a vital role in ‘energizing’ change, innovation and success for their organizations.

But many studies of leadership appear to be wrongly balanced. There may well be too much concentration on the character of the leader at the expense of also seeking to under-stand the longer-term impact a leader has in consequence of the decisions and choices they make whilst in the leadership role. Few would deny the importance of questions of character and understanding aspects of the individual. The most commonly studied issue here was perhaps most tellingly formulated within ‘contingency models’ of leadership. In these models, we look at the extent to which a leader balances ‘concern for the task’ with ‘concern for the people’. It is not our purpose here to diminish these models. Rather we seek to argue that whilst leaders do need to think about that balance, there is another balance deserving of attention — the balance between concern for the present and concern for the future.

What you focus on when thinking about the present may be very different from thinking about the needs for an organization in the future, particularly in a changing world. Whilst the people working in the organization today may not welcome change, the decisions and choices leaders make will often carry fateful consequences for the health of the organiza-

tion in the longer term. The outcomes of these choices may determine future success or failure. It follows that whilst focus on the leader as an individual is important in looking at the role and infl uence that can be brought to bear today, a focus on decision and choice is vital to gaining an understanding of the longer-term impact of any leader. By seeking to comprehend the evidence base and assump-tions on which decisions were based, we deal with material open to analysis. This material is then more readily accessible for leadership development purposes.

Whilst the people working in the organization today may not welcome change, the decisions and choices leaders make will often

carry fateful consequences for the health of the

organization in the longer term

It is worth contrasting this view with that presented in Dotlich et al. (2006) when they discuss ‘whole leadership’. In their view, the problem about leadership development in practice is that leaders are too ‘command and control’ oriented in their approach to leader-ship. More fundamentally, whilst corporate leaders may deliver short-term results, ‘they have not demonstrated the inner fortitude and courage to consistently do the right things in the face of competing stakeholder needs, the constant pressure for performance, and the requirement to keep people engaged and motivated at work’ (Dotlich et al., 2006).

Their approach to leadership encompasses three broad aspects of the problem, namely ‘head’, ‘heart’ and ‘guts’, albeit the latter really relates to intuition and instinct:

Leadership development 195


1. Head Leadership: about rethinking business models, reframing boundaries, rethinking assumptions, developing mind sets, expand-ing knowledge and developing a ‘point of view’.

2. Heart Leadership: about balancing people and business needs, creating trust, creating engagement and commitment, knowing what is important and understanding and overcoming potential derailers (obstacles to change and improvement).

3. Guts Leadership: about taking risks with incomplete data, balancing risk and reward, making tough decisions and persevering in the face of problems.

Of course these are inter-related, not least because leaders can only create trust or engage commitment if they are seen as credible in terms of the other two aspects.

It is interesting to note that these authors do not include the concept of ‘time horizon’ in their formulation. In preparing people for senior leadership roles, an interest in decision and choice appears to be important, especially judging the level of ambition articulated in the strategies of senior leaders. People respond to ambitious strategies which are realistic enough to resonate with them. Here we mean that the core ideas regarding business models and markets must be convincing and implementa-tion plans deemed relevant and comprehen-sive. This often means that the level of ambition is cautious in some respects, but the most important point is that there is a credible ‘fi t’ between the perceived level of ambition and the proposed means to put it into effect. There is also a career path issue. Early on in a career, as people are preparing for fi rst level and middle manager leadership roles, their ability to motivate and inspire their own teams and other colleagues is key. ‘Heart leadership’ con-siderations are paramount, but for senior leaders decision and choice loom larger and therefore ‘head’ and ‘guts’ leadership becomes more important.

At the most simple level, one can distinguish two themes in the study of leadership (although each overlaps the other in terms of some of

the concepts and categories used, each is dis-tinctive in terms of its starting point, modes of reasoning, and so on). These are:

(i) Personal leadership encompasses the characteristics of individuals which caused them to be set apart from others as leaders. These include their education and experiences and the impact they have on others, whether their team, their peers or other stakeholders. We want to understand how they infl uence and inspire people and how they establish the conditions for ‘followership’. The latter has been most evocatively expressed in an article in the Harvard Business Review, where Goffee and Jones (2002) argue that the key to the question ‘Why should anyone be led by you?’ lies in the idea of ‘authentic behaviour’. Authentic-ity is not a new idea but these authors properly seek to locate the analysis of the impact leaders have on others within the leader themselves.

(ii) Strategic leadership refers to the deci-sions and choices leaders make. It is through decision and choice that senior leaders have most impact upon their orga-nization. They need to make the right choices and secure successful implemen-tation. It is common to follow Kotter (1996) in arguing that leadership is differ-ent from management. The latter focuses on the existing arrangements and their performance, the former on change, adaptability and the future. Evidently, this overlaps with personal leadership. The characteristics considered under personal leadership are relevant to the question of whether a leader can inspire people in order to encourage successful implemen-tation of decisions. So what is the real difference? At root it is about time horizon. Personal leadership ideas help us under-stand how well a leader is doing now. Strategic leadership focuses upon the future. Regardless of the ability to inspire others, only if the right decisions and choices are made will a leader have impact



upon the future of the organization in which they work.

Of course it would be proper to note that these two themes will be important for the design and delivery of leadership development in differing combinations, as between young leaders and senior executives for example. See Figure 1.

Case example: Ford 2006

Ford operates in a highly competitive global automotive industry beset by over-capacity, at least in terms of where production is concen-trated. Clearly there is continuing growth in demand and output, in China for example. But faced with continuing competitive pressure, Ford’s domestic production is facing continu-ing losses. In 2006 Ford was the second largest car producer in the North American market. Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford announced that the company must change its business model in order to reverse its losses. In an e-mail sent to all employees, Ford announced that it would consider turning to outside executives and alliances with other car-makers. He also announced that the strat-egy for resolving the company’s problems would be based on three initiatives:

� Accelerating its North American turnaround plan (with a redundancy package likely to affect 35,000 plus jobs out of a North Amer-ican total of 82,000).

� Leveraging its global assets (e.g., selling assets in some cases).

� Leadership.

Ford employs 340,000 people and operates 95 plants world-wide. It owns eight brands, including Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, Lincoln and Aston Martin. It sold 6.8 million cars in 2005, earning $154 billion of revenue. Profi ts in 2005 were $2 billion, but this included $1.5 billion from the sale of Hertz and $1 billion of losses in its automotive divi-sion. Losses in the fi rst half of 2006 were $1.4 billion. Days after this e-mail was dispatched, Ford announced that Bill Ford was to be replaced as Chief Executive by Alan Mulally, formerly head of Boeing’s Civil Aircraft divi-sion. An important element in his appointment appears to have been the credibility he gained from having led the turnaround at Boeing. Fol-lowing the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Boeing’s civil aviation business faced considerable problems. Mulally led a turn-around in which the workforce was cut from 120,000 to 70,000. The time to build a typical plane was cut by half, and Boeing launched what became the fastest selling new aircraft ever, the 787 Dreamliner.

Ford believed its North American turnaround was not going fast enough. In addition, Ford revenues

have been hit by a fall in SUV sales. At the same

time, the company has not been able to introduce

any successful new models

Ford believed its North American turnaround was not going fast enough. In addition, Ford

• PERSONAL LEADERSHIP & EFFECTIVENESS

- 360° feedback

- Psychometric data

- Feedback

- Competence assessment

- Needs independence/non-judgmental/risk free

- Immediate focus

• ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

- Future focused

- Decisions and choice

- Explore “models”; “mind-set assumptions”

- MUST be integrated with business

- Ought to be co-designed/co-tutored

Figure 1. Leadership development.



revenues have been hit by a fall in SUV sales. At the same time, the company has not been able to introduce any successful new models. Thus Toyota now vies with Ford for second place in North America. With income and earnings pressure increasing, Bill Ford was described as too ‘hands-off’ a leader (Sources: London Times, 6 & 7 September 2006).

Clearly, the role, style and decisions of senior leaders are under examination. Whilst ‘per-sonal leadership’ issues are in play here it is also clear that credibility, track record and business impact are at the core of the analysis leading to this change in senior leadership. Thus we are not simply looking at fi nding a ‘hands-on’ leader. The change goes beyond the personal leadership dimensions into looking for a senior leader who can be expected to both understand and embrace the decisions and choices which must be made.

Leadership: emerging thinking and practice

The behaviourists currently hold the fi eld on this question, at least as far as the thinking dominating leadership development as it is practised in organizations. Huge investment has been made in developing competence models which sit at the core of the design of leadership development activities. But one common critique of such programmes relates to a perceived lack of relevance and transfer back to the organization of the learning par-ticipants. Of course many programme designs seek to tackle this issue, often with success. Most commonly this is through an action learn-ing project which looks at a current issue. There is no doubt that value can thus be gen-erated. But, in practice, this is achieved through means which leave the competence model to one side.

A key purpose of this paper is to develop a more general basis for understanding leader-ship and leadership development than is pos-sible through competence models alone. The limitation of the competence approach is that at best it is a static approach, providing a

description of competence strengths and gaps at a particular point in time, whereas the task of leadership is to create the future of an orga-nization. A proper understanding of leader-ship and leadership development must therefore go beyond understanding today’s behavioural competencies into understanding how leaders think about the future, how they come to decide on ambitious plans requiring organization changes before their execution and how they seek to change minds, their own and others, about what is achievable.

A proper understanding of leadership and leadership

development must therefore go beyond

understanding today’s behavioural competencies into understanding how leaders think about the

future, how they come to decide on ambitious plans

requiring organization changes before their

execution and how they seek to change minds, their own and others,

about what is achievable

Such an approach would certainly incorpo-rate the competence approach because we do need to help potential and current leaders understand their own strengths and weak-nesses as leaders, not least in the area of impact upon people, a common issue. Survey after survey shows that how leaders relate to their people is a key issue. But we do need to keep this concern in a proper perspective. Cur-rently, concern for the leader’s impact on people is in the foreground of our view of



leadership development. Concern for people is promulgated as a necessary counterpoint to concern for the task. This is because the main focus of activity is upon helping individual leaders. Whether through the use of psycho-metric tests, 360 feedback tools (almost without exception based on ‘behaviourally anchored’ scales within a competence frame-work) or personal development exercises, it is noteworthy that there is little time for much else in the same depth of analysis other than an action learning project. It is here that the issue of balance arises.

We are not suggesting that a leader should be unconcerned about the impact of their behaviour on others. Ultimately, any leader’s ability ‘to get things done through people’ is clearly important. But this does not defi ne their ability as a leader. Take one obvious example. Why not ask whether Winston Churchill’s behaviour to his political and mili-tary colleagues during the Second World War created tensions in his relationships with them? We know this is true . . . read their memoirs. But these tensions were transcended by belief in a higher cause. If people have no cause worth pursuing, then relationships become everything and the style of the leader looms large. But commit all to a cause and the perspective changes. Thus it is that looking at behaviour is to focus largely on the present. Looking at the mind of the leader as he or she grapples with the future is to look beyond today. Both are important for our understand-ing of leadership and its development in practice.

If you look at the leadership literature you will see that relatively little interest is shown in how leaders think, how they come to judge a strategy as ambitious enough to create advan-tage but yet still achievable. The Strategic Man-agement discipline covers this ground with a concern for implementation and execution of strategy, but the central point is that over the last 20 years or so little attention has been focused on how leaders think, view the world and how they come to judge what is achiev-able. This is interesting for two reasons, as follows:

If you look at the leadership literature you

will see that relatively little interest is shown in how leaders think, how

they come to judge a strategy as ambitious

enough to create advantage but yet still

achievable

(i) Most observers of organizations being led through a period of dramatic change point to the need for mind-set change. Jack Welch of General Electric was perhaps one of the most convincing exponents. Adopting the Schumpeterian notion of ‘creative destruction’, breakthrough change demands new rules, quantum leaps and a radical approach to the balance between autonomy and control . . . emphasizing relative autonomy within a ‘business engine’ geared up to focus on performance. The well-known over-arching rule Welch adopted sets the tone. Be number one or number two in your sector or your business will not stay in GE. Behind the Market Leadership Rule lay objectives for ‘well above average real returns on investments, distinct competi-tive advantage, leverage value from strengths’. But at the core is the willing-ness to create ‘new rules of the competi-tive game’ for GE.

(ii) Many also argue that we live in times char-acterized by greater competition, change, complexity, ambiguity, challenge to sources of authority, anxiety and so on. If this is true . . . and it is hardly a controver-sial argument . . . then we would expect to see a growing concern for how best to prepare senior leaders to make sense of that complexity. In one sense, this is evident in that we increasingly see



arguments for creativity and out-of-the-box thinking as important elements in leadership development . . . note the emphasis on thinking.

Effective strategic leadership comprises the solution of ever-more-complex puzzles. With incomplete knowledge leaders must learn how to analyse the data they do have. What is the real question we need to address is often the real issue. Leaders must hold back from merely offering the solutions of the past. Yet we rush to implement solutions sometimes because we fi nd the hard work of formulating the question properly requires disciplined effort and time. Yet our people want an answer. To many this is what leadership is about . . . fi nding instant answers to our prob-lems rather than the inevitable delay associ-ated with working through problems . . . or even worse, the public recognition that at any point in time some problems may not be soluble. If a company faces problems you will often fi nd trade unions and politicians demand-ing announcements over-night, in order to remove uncertainty for employees and others. Our culture demands answers, both of politi-cal and corporate leaders.

In reality, strategic leadership is often about the ‘long haul’, delayed

gratifi cation

But getting to answers requires we under-stand the question, explore options and so on. This takes time. In reality, strategic leadership is often about the ‘long haul’, delayed gratifi ca-tion. The work of behaviourally focused trainers focuses on more immediate impact. This is why we are so preoccupied with these approaches. They can offer immediate gains and this is important. But for more senior leaders, leadership development work needs to look at the hard choices they must make.

Martin Gilbert (2004) has just published a book looking at Churchill’s war-time leader-ship under the title Continue to Pester, Nag and Bite. One of Churchill’s maxims of leader-ship in war was ‘Improvise and Dare’. And you cannot understand his leadership without looking at the series of speeches through which he articulated his vision of ultimate victory. However, it is more interesting to look at his methods of work. Famous for his ‘Action this Day’ instructions, the other important point may be the extent to which he placed himself in command of the detail of Britain’s war effort so he could challenge colleagues. Amongst the data provided to him regularly were included monthly, weekly or even daily reports on pro-duction, technical developments, manpower, training, tank and aircraft strengths and so on. Additionally, he saw papers on all matters related to war policy, all foreign offi ce and service telegrams (i.e., copies of all messages between the three service ministries and all commanders-in-chief in the fi eld). Once he pos-sessed this information he was in a position to ‘Pester, Nag and Bite’.

To fully understand senior leadership devel-opment, we need to deal both with behaviour and knowledge. Not the knowledge of aca-demic disciplines, but rather working on the process of helping leaders to develop more effective choices. Appropriate patterns of behaviour are important. But how senior leaders come to formulate plans and goals, the information they use and the thinking under-pinning their decisions becomes a relevant target of leadership development activity. A recent survey of leadership throws up an inter-esting and balanced set of fi ndings on leader-ship effectiveness set in the context of this argument. The fi ndings are summarized as follows:

(i) Leaders think the ability to deliver ‘the numbers’ is the most respected leader-ship quality.

(ii) Roughly one-third of internally sourced and promoted leaders fail, usually because of poor people skills or interpersonal qualities.



(iii) 30% of leaders fail to demonstrate the key qualities necessary for effective leadership.

(iv) 25% of organizational plans and strategies fail because they are not properly executed.

(v) ‘Strong’ leadership can enhance the successful execution of plans by 20% or more.

The fi rst result is no surprise, but in rank order of importance the leaders surveyed saw ‘deliver the numbers’, the ability to take ‘tough decisions’ and the ability to ‘create a strategy for success’ as the top three, with interper-sonal skills as only fourth. Moreover, looking at the third fi nding, it is interesting to note that many of these ‘key qualities’ relate more to the ability to cope with ambiguity than with impact upon people, with the ability to learn, handle feedback, cope with complexity and think broadly using multiple perspectives very much in evidence. Finally, turning to the ‘exe-cution of business plans’ the issues identifi ed in the survey are almost entirely focused upon the analytical and performance agenda . . . i.e., Churchill’s ‘Pester, Nag and Bite’. If there is an interest in dealing with people here it looks at how to call people to account.

series of changes since the early 1990s during the incumbency of three successive CEOs including Browne, who has been in post since 1996, having worked with BP since leaving university. Structural changes focused on cutting out layers of management — clarifying fi nancial accountability at business unit level and improving performance in the 1990s were seen, in retrospect, as necessary to build a platform for a transformation of perfor-mance. Most tellingly under the then CEO, David Simon, capital expenditure was reduced, leading to a need to be much more disciplined about focusing exploration spend-ing (for example) on fewer and therefore the best prospects. There was a clear need for scale and for global reach. Thus, there began a series of mergers and acquisitions, positioning the emerging group to be able to deliver improved returns and to expand capital spending, having already fi rst worked on enhancing the effectiveness of capital spending.

All of these moves created a large and frag-mented company by 2000. In fact, from 1995 onwards the company sought to apply four organizational principles:

(i) People work better in smaller units.(ii) But larger organizations create proprie-

tary knowledge and it makes sense to share that knowledge quickly.

(iii) Peer group dialogue and challenge around performance was very different to supe-rior–subordinate discussion of perfor-mance and this difference could and should be leveraged.

(iv) Reputation is a crucial resource both externally and internally.

Applying these principles has led the organiza-tion to recognize a fi fth principle which it has sought to exploit to the fullest possible extent:

(v) Whilst formal or explicit knowledge is important, it is at least as important to share ‘tacit’ knowledge.

(v) Whilst formal or explicit knowledge is

important, it is at least as important to share ‘tacit’

knowledge

BP Amoco case study

BP Amoco is one of the world’s largest, and highest profi le, companies. Led by Lord Browne, this organization is global in its oper-ations and impact, highly profi table and self-evidently a leading business in the energy sector. The company has gone through a



Tacit knowledge (see below) is neither effec-tively captured nor well shared through knowl-edge management systems. You need to bring people together to do so.

This fi fth principle has long been known. Indeed, the original idea of the university and of scholarship — which emphasized tutors and students working either one-to-one or in small groups — was based on this. In any event BP sought to build sharing via a struc-tured process, creating what Argyris (2004) calls ‘productive reasoning’ and what has also been called ‘purposeful conversations’ by establishing peer groups. The business units were organized into 15 ‘peer groups’, each comprising units within a particular business stream. Business unit targets are set within a performance contract. These targets are set through a process of conversations within the business units, within the peer group and with top management. Within this process the peer group represents a powerful source of chal-lenge across the business units as peer groups seek to ensure that each carries its share of the growth in revenues, margins and so on needed to deliver longer-term strategic goals. Peer groups provide a mechanism for deciding resource allocation and for knowledge sharing.

Pivotal to this was the notion that high-performing business units in a peer group must assist underperforming units to improve. Indeed, the expectation is that the top three performers will help the bottom three. The performance of the top three in doing so is measured each year, and this is built into the bonus structure. Overall, therefore, these changes are backed up with both economic incentives and a high degree of transparency.

This is extended via a peer assist process within which executives work to help particu-lar business units work on issues or projects of various sorts. This often spans peer group boundaries and regularly involves many executives committing signifi cant amounts of time to the process. The belief is that everyone gains. The business unit draws on the experience throughout the organization. Those involved see it as a development oppor-

tunity. These peer processes emphasize hori-zontal/collaborative working and dialogue, building the capacity for learning and greater creativity.

In 2001 continued growth required further reorganization with a consolidation of business units, reducing the total number. As has been argued elsewhere, decentralization is a matter of balance. So is knowledge sharing. The BP approach has been to create purpose-ful conversations across the organization. But business units must also sustain ‘business as usual’, so balances must be struck over time. Of course, peer group members have a shared interest in seeing that these balances are main-tained. Nevertheless, one is looking at a con-tinually evolving picture.

The BP approach has been to create purposeful

conversations across the organization. But business

units must also sustain ‘business as usual’, so

balances must be struck over time

The peer processes help create value through the transfer of best practice, via peer advice, shared expertise and by creating a fi rmer basis for major business development/strategic moves. This is supported by organi-zational arrangements which promote but also discipline peer group behaviour. These include the use of incentives and the substantially enhanced economic transparency evolving through the peer group process. In addition, BP’s ongoing investment in the development of people creates an environment in which development is a legitimated activity for exec-utives. This is balanced by making clear at all levels that disciplines are also needed.



The peer processes help create value through the transfer of best practice, via peer advice, shared

expertise and by creating a fi rmer basis for major business development/

strategic moves

In turn, the value of these processes has been reinforced by the defi nition of ‘human portals’. Often not business unit leaders, but rather experienced people who have a multi-plicity of contacts throughout BP, they are people who have been identifi ed as those to whom you can go if you seek expertise. Their role is to ‘connect’ you to that expertise wher-ever it may exist within BP. Again, we have long known that these people are potentially an invaluable resource. Indeed, in some ways when we distinguish between formal and informal organization this is part of the distinc-tion being made.

The point here is that the explicit organiza-tional recognition gives legitimacy to the role and therefore to these people. This has been called applying a ‘behavioural net’ onto a decentralized structure. The organization creates the conditions for cross-unit learning and collaboration, without undermining the fl exibility and accountability for performance at business unit level. At the same time the peer group process drives forward perfor-mance in what after all is a highly ‘connected’ organization. These are complex and evolving balances which need continually to be worked on and with.

These organizational changes seek to balance the obvious advantages of scale (e.g., by pooling purchasing volumes via centralized purchasing) with the benefi ts of decentralized and horizontal networking, in which contact between people, above all, provides for learn-ing. Moreover, it is important to note that leaders lead learning throughout the organiza-

tion. (Sources: Rogan, 2002; Hansen and von Oetinger, 2001.)

So, there is little doubt that leadership development is in demand as organizations seek to face the performance and other challenges of our world. Here we argue that it is important to position leadership development in its specifi c organizational context. The more senior the ‘target audience’ for leadership development, the more important is the

There is little doubt that leadership development is

in demand as organizations seek to face

the performance and other challenges of our

world. Here we argue that it is important to position leadership development in its specifi c organizational

context

context. It follows that at senior level leadership development needs to include a decision and choice perspective. Moreover, at this level it is important that the development process is integrated effectively within the ongoing concerns and challenges of the organization. To this end, it is important that senior level executives be fully involved in the design and delivery of the development effort. Leadership development needs to fi nd ways of helping leaders work on the choices and decisions they make, the ideas underpinning those choices and the business models in use. Moreover, they need to judge the impact and implications fl owing from those choices. Creative thinking is increasingly needed and must be refl ected in programme designs. Fundamentally, if a choice/decision-making emphasis is used then we pay more attention to existing and possible alternative business models using simulation/gaming methodo-logies more signifi cantly, working with senior executives to jointly design and deliver these



solutions. Realism becomes a really central requirement, working with senior executives in design and delivery being a necessary condition of success and technology often a prime facilitator of the development process.

This concern for decision and choice being at the core of leadership development repre-sents a central theme in the design and deliv-ery of a programme of leadership development viewed as an important part of an overall pro-gramme of strategic change at E.ON UK. Here Warwick Business School, E.ON UK, the E.ON Academy (which takes corporate responsibil-ity for supporting effective development in E.ON) and others have collaborated in the design and delivery of such a programme. We now turn to a discussion of how these ideas can be applied through a case example. The main focus of the design is illustrated in Figure 2.

Case example: E.ON UK

This programme is designed for the board and top 180 senior leaders of the organization. The design combines the use of 360 feedback, psy-chometric tests, coaching, the use of a Life

Journey exercise alongside refl ective learning models and exercises. Also important in the design was the use of novels and fi lm as a means of getting participants to think ‘outside the box’. In addition we use a Leaders’ Exer-cise through which participants meet with a range of leaders from various sectors and explore with them their thinking and experi-ence of ‘leading’. Finally, participants work on a board-level issue sponsored by a member of the main board during modules 2 and 3. In module 2 we run a role-play simulation of the Regulator/Utility relationship and a ‘Low Carbon’ scenario exercise. The latter two are facilitated by faculty, one an experienced reg-ulator and one a government advisor on ‘Low Carbon Futures’. All of this feeds into a ‘Chal-lenge of Leadership’ project sponsored by the UK Board in which the briefi ng, the provision of access to data, people and resource during the project work, and debriefi ng, is led by a member of the board. Thus a mix of methods is used including, but not limited to, the use of technology.

The E.ON programme has been particularly interesting. It uses a Life Journey exercise and novels/fi lms as means by which partici-pants are encouraged to refl ect on personal

Learning Cycle

BALANCE

Delivery System

Developingthe

Organization

Participants

‘Blended learning’

Learning Programmes

Networking; Sharing; Peer

challenge

“Organizational profile” and challenges

Developing knowledge and

experience

TheOrganization

Learning outputs Feedback

Co-Design Co-Tailoring

Figure 2. Designing the learning experience.



leadership issues. Throughout there is an emphasis on refl ective learning, but this is bal-anced by the ‘Leader’ exercise wherein par-ticipants meet with and discuss leadership with successful corporate leaders. Here cogni-tive learning plays a part in seeking to learn from how others see the world. For us, there-fore, ‘blended learning’ is not simply about the use of technology. It requires the careful weaving together of the range of leadership development activities into collaborative solu-tions delivered along with clients, including activity in the school — appropriately sup-ported by technology — and activity in the company — also appropriately supported by the technology. The key is to focus on the solution not the technology of delivery.

The E.ON programme has been particularly

interesting. It uses a Life Journey exercise and

novels/fi lms as means by which participants are

encouraged to refl ect on personal leadership issues

On this basis there is a lesser risk associated with technology. The ‘fi rst mover’ issue looms far less large. The key to development is about solutions for clients, developed and delivered with clients, rather than on technology in search of clients. But clearly schools need to be able to access the technology easily and that involves building up expertise and capa-bility and/or being able to access it effectively. The demand from corporate clients is not mainly for technology but for solutions. What business schools need to become more effec-tive at is the design and delivery of client-focused solutions incorporating technology in ways which build upon the strengths of the technology, which is principally related to remote access, speed of delivery, consistency

and the capability to capture and manipulate data. ‘Soft systems decision tools’ and ‘group-ware’ are particularly useful in this context, alongside simulations and scenario models.

Traditionally, business school-based approaches to learning about leadership have emphasized three themes, as follows:

(i) Discipline-based learning via instruction-led sessions on strategy, marketing, operations/service management and orga-nization behaviour working with devices such as case studies, role plays, simula-tions and projects. Typically 50% or more of the time has been devoted to the instructional element.

(ii) Feedback-based learning using psycho-metric tests, diagnostic exercises and 360 degree feedback sessions with a focus on refl ective learning.

(iii) Action learning projects, sometimes com-bined with ‘three-way’ reviews (involving participant, line manager and tutor).

More recently, these approaches can be extended by working more closely with clients and by deploying technology in relevant ways. We believe the latter is of fundamental impor-tance. Ultimately, leadership development cannot be wholly outsourced. Providers can play an important role, not least by engaging participants as individuals and by using experi-ence from a range of settings and best practice development tools and techniques. But, in the end, leadership development is also about securing the future of the organization and thus top leaders must be engaged in the process, more than just marginally engaged at that.

We propose to further develop the utiliza-tion of these various techniques and to explore other possibilities with emphasis as follows:

(i) The more leadership development is undertaken in a genuinely integrated way the more effective it will be; thus delivery should include senior executives actively involved in tutorial work (i.e., going sub-stantially beyond checking the design,



positioning the programme at the outset and attending a dinner).

(ii) We must continuously seek fresh and innovative ways of communicating learn-ing (e.g., use of a professional poker player to help people think about risk and supported by a gaming solution, observed recently by the authors in an executive development programme).

(iii) Leadership development can be particu-larly effective where work on such pro-grammes is designed as part of wider programmes of change and development. In that sense then leadership develop-ment is part of a broader intervention strategy focused on the future of the orga-nization. Here, however, it is important not to lose sight of the reality that for the individual it is also a career choice.

Final thought

As the range of leadership development tech-niques becomes more complex, the process of programme design and delivery is becom-ing more demanding. Increasingly, we rely on ‘story-boarding techniques’ developed for fi lm and TV. This takes ever more planning time, and needs to be refl ected in how we build our bids and prices to clients, but also how we develop our faculty. Moreover, whilst business schools typically have some faculty with the necessary skills and experience (and interest), we must increasingly fi nd faculty for executive education able and willing to work across typical discipline boundaries. In addition, with

the range of delivery technology their career paths will need further thought, because the traditional career pathways of the university business school will not necessarily be rele-vant, or appropriate.

This represents a real challenge for those concerned with effective leadership develop-ment. We need designs which are integrated within the real world of organization. Our design and delivery needs to work with the grain of other activities going on in the busi-ness, including talent management, strategic changes being implemented, reward systems and processes and so on. Design and delivery must increasingly be the joint concern of the business school or other provider and the organization concerned, and the focus must be on outcomes. Thus, leadership develop-ment becomes a ‘boundary-spanning activity’.

Leadership development becomes a ‘boundary-

spanning activity’

Whilst there is a compelling need for more effective theory development in this fi eld, we also need much more serious attention to focus on the joint and collaborative develop-ment and delivery of solutions which ‘connect’ leader development to the development of the organization rather than continuing to leave it abandoned in an organizational silo wherein its contribution is lessened both for the indi-vidual and the organization.

Biographical notes

Howard Thomas is Dean of Warwick Business School and a Professor of Strategic Manage-ment. He has written over 30 books and 200 articles on competitive strategy, risk analysis, strategic change, international management and strategic decision-making. He is a past President of the US Strategic Management

In the end, leadership development is also about securing the future of the organization and thus top leaders must be engaged in the process, more than just marginally engaged

at that



Society and past Chair of the Board of the Graduate Management Admissions Council.Colin Carnall has been the Associate Dean for Executive Programmes, Warwick Business School, since 2003. Since joining Warwick Executive Programmes he has tripled revenues while expanding the scope and depth of part-nerships with corporations.

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Goffee R, Jones G. 2000. Why should anyone be led by you? Harvard Business Review 78(Sept/Oct): 63–70.

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Northouse PG. 2004. Leadership: Theory and Practice, 3rd edn. Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Rogan T. 2002. Transformation at BP, London Busi-ness School Case. European Case Clearing House, Cranfi eld.

Documents

Leadership development: integration in context