Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the specific practices senior leaders need to engage in to best support their organization’s leadership development initiatives. All organizations invest billions of dollars around the world in leadership development, but there is surprisingly little attention given to the important role that senior leaders play in supporting these efforts. This paper draws upon focus group research with those responsible for designing and implementing leadership development initiatives to identify the strategic role senior leaders play in formal leadership development efforts.

Design/methodology/approach: To explore this issue, we conducted structured focus groups with over 250 executives, HR leaders and talent managers from over 30 different global organizations. Participants were responsible for leadership development in their respective organizations, averaged 44 years of age, 18 years of work experience, and were 54 per cent men and 46 per cent women. These focus groups were being used to solicit the input of those responsible for leadership development to identify the specific things senior leaders need to do to best support these leadership development efforts. The participants were asked to answer the following question, “Based on your experience, what specific things do senior leaders in your organization need to do to best support your efforts at developing high performance and strong leadership talent?”