ABSTRACT
Organizations continue to invest substantial time and resources in leadership development. This chapter offers a critique of traditional leader development and competency thinking, and argues that leadership-as-practice development (LaPD) requires a significant departure from traditional approaches to leader development offered by providers such as business schools. It proposes several principles for LaPD that are consistent with the perspective that leadership is co-constructed through acts, activities, and interactions embedded within the situation in which it takes place. The chapter suggests that collaborative leadership learning groups and executive coaching can support LaPD. The three case examples of LaPD show how these practices inform pedagogy, learning design, and interactions with learners. Executive coaching is increasingly used in conjunction with open or customized executive development programs or as a stand-alone leadership development process. There are also a number of learning activities that are regularly used in traditional leader development programs that address organizational challenges that learners work on collectively.
