ABSTRACT
As noted in the introductory chapter to this book, the leadership training and development industry is big business. It is also an expanding business fuelled by a phenomenal growth in the demand for and the supply of leadership training and development programmes. This growth is associated with the increasing popularity of ‘leadership’ as a source of interest for organizations. This in turn is associated with the strength of contemporary belief in the magnitude of the effect of leaders on organizational performance. Underlying this belief appears to be another one, frequently revealed in popular managerialist literature, that leadership can be taught through the simple transfer of knowledge of its essential ingredients. The number of ingredients to be used varies depending on taste. From current book titles it seems there may be just seven ‘habits’ which need to be acquired, or ‘nine leadership keys to success’, or as many as ‘21 irrefutable laws of leadership’. This formulaic approach to training and developing leaders, of teaching people leadership in the same way one might teach geometry, is widely distributed and deeply embedded, and nowhere more so than in commercial training and development practice.
