Leadership development programs – what doesn’t work? (Part 1)

Image from Jason Wertz | unsplash.com I’ve had a beef with leadership development programs ever since I knew what they were. I’m not sure what triggered this. It could be the fact that back in high school, when I was a senior, we had a ‘leadership day’ that was held at a venue that wasn’t our usual school campus. Exciting, right? The only thing I remember from that day is that the facilitator at one point told us to look at our peers to the left and to the right of us. He then said, “One out of every five of you will be dead by 30 years of age”. I think he thought it was a galvanising thing to say, to push home the carpe diem message. For me, it has fused leadership and mortality ever since. Fast forward a few decades. I have been in a fair number of leadership workshops, convened some of them myself, and been a participant in a year-long gender diversity in leadership program. I wouldn’t count any of these experiences as particularly illuminating or motivating for me. If anything,…