Most obvious among the dual-purpose approaches may be the typical university-style executive program of one, two or even three weeks duration. These aim at executives in or on their way to high level jobs and often focus on specific industries. A retail executive might go to Harvard or Babson, for instance, to a week-long program that helps them analyze their own strengths and weaknesses to some degree, but mainly exposes them to the latest strategic ideas for solving retail problems. Harvard, for one, maintains other such programs for various industries. Others focus more specifically on individual skills rather than industry issues. These programs can be expensive and time-consuming in terms of time away from the job and are therefore generally unsuitable, uneconomical and not designed for lower level managers or staff. Some companies try to duplicate these approaches in-house for mid-level management, but that can also be expensive as well.
By contrast, programs aimed primarily at lower to mid-levels, but applicable higher up as well, often focus on personal skills of individual leaders. These come in a far more varied range of lengths, subject matter, approaches, etc. They include programs we see advertised most often in one to five day versions. They may range from pure lecture/discussion format, sometimes focused on specific aspects of jobs such as supervising, disciplining, etc., ranging to exercise-oriented programs of varying intensity up to and including those that focus on case study exercises or more exotic “ropes courses” that entail actual mountain climbing, etc., like Outward Bound.
Many programs of all types contain elements of understanding yourself better through various tests or models of human personality (ideally as personality relates to work) such as the MBTI, Enneagram or DiSC variants or communication- or learning-style tests. They also frequently focus on elements of teamwork – perhaps with exercises designed to demonstrate that effectively managed teams work better than if there is no leader or too authoritarian a leader.
The only consistent thing about all these programs is that they lay claim to teaching “leadership.” The problem this diversity of content generates is a great lack of clarity for many people about what leadership and leadership development really entail and whether any “state of the art” leadership training exists or it’s just entirely too confusing to assess the whole area.
This leaves a large role for specialists in training and development and change managers to help assess and recommend appropriate programs for particular situations and objectives. It doesn’t appear there will be any consistency arriving in our business lifetimes as to what exactly leadership is or what constitutes “the best” leadership development program – at least not in isolation from the specific needs of your company and your staff or managers.