Developing the theory and practice of leadership development: A relational view

Abstract

Organizations are demanding leadership development that is more sensitive to context and supportive of organizational transformation, and critics of current leadership development practices claim they are too narrowly construed to yield meaningful results. Relational views of leadership may be the disruptive idea that helps reconstruct leadership development in ways that meets these concerns. To better understand how these relational views can impact the practice of leadership development, we examined the use a specific relational framework in one leadership development organization. We found that leadership development professionals used the framework to convey a relational point of view on leadership to their participants, to facilitate collective identification and action on leadership issues, to develop leadership by focusing on leadership culture, and to enable the democratization of leadership development. We use these findings to advance a constructive-developmental perspective on the development of leadership development.