As stated by the Swedish trade union for leaders (Ledarna, 2014) half a million people in Sweden hold leadership positions, 50 per cent of whom find the work mentally demanding and 40 per cent experience not having enough time to fulfil their leadership responsibilities towards their employees (Ledarna, 2014). If given a choice the Swedish leaders would like to spend less time on administration and more on development of their leadership skills (Ledarna, 2014). These numbers indicate an importance of offering leadership development programmes which are effective both in time and in improving leaders’ skills in relation to employees. Two of the most established and dispersed leadership development programmes in Sweden spring from the Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence University. These are called Understanding Group and Leader (UGL), and developmental leadership (DL), and broach broad leadership issues. Since UGL started in 1981, around 80,000 people have participated, and since DL started in 2002 around 23,000 have participated. In all, over 100,000 Swedish leaders and potential or aspirant leaders have participated in the courses (Swedish Defence University, 2017). The time invested equals 3.8 million work hours. It is reasonable to assume that the large investments in leadership development, Grint (2007) estimated the yearly sum worldwide between $15 and $50 billion, are based on the general belief that leadership has a decisive impact. Leadership development involves two indistinct constructs: leadership and development (Day and Sin, 2011). Leadership is often seen as a process in which deliberate influence is exerted over others with the intention to lead, structure and facilitate activities and relations in a group or an organisation (Yukl, 2012). Development is characterised by change over time (Day and Sin, 2011), this could be viewed as a developmental trajectory (Nagin and Odgers, 2010), portraying a continuous process (cf. Day et al., 2009), where development can occur if there is continuous learning (Day, 2011). Day et al. (2009) describe leadership development as a spiral of leader identity, where a person in a leadership situation experienced as positive, strengthens his/her leader identity, but if experienced as negative the opposite spiral can occur.