Organisations are investing heavily in leadership development yet, according to research carried out with CEOs by Cranfield School of Management, finding a successor with an ‘all encompassing spark’ represents their biggest challenge. Why is this?

Hilary Jeanes, director and HR consultant of PurpleLine Consulting:

"In a world dominated by spin and insincerity, people are crying out for true leadership."
Tom Peters, 2005

Amazon.com has more than 200,000 books on leadership, and there are over 20,000 on the UK site. This implies that leadership as a concept is easy, yet it is clearly much more difficult in practice to develop people with passion, enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit. So what other characteristics does a good leader have? One of the biggest leadership challenges is dealing with ambiguity – something many people find difficult. Leadership is not optional, it is a 24/7 activity with no ‘off’ button.

You need to be:

• Able to define what it means to be successful in your context, to set the strategic agenda and refine it as you put it into operation
• Acutely self aware so that you can gather people around you who are good at the areas where you are weakest
• A good role model – confident, yet with some humility
• Able to think for yourself and also able to talk to and engage with people – by walkabout rather than email so that you are someone they trust and want to follow.

Are leaders born or made? Leadership development 
What is it that brings out leadership qualities in an individual? Do leaders emerge when a situation demands it? If so, there seems little point in training in leadership without providing opportunities for people to demonstrate their leadership qualities – real life rather than simulation or even preparation. Giving people the opportunity to lead projects or resolve challenges is so much more worthwhile and rewarding from both the individual and the organisation’s perspective than time away from work learning the theories of leadership.

So reappraise your approach to leadership development. Get to know your people and the results they deliver. And most importantly recognise that there will be little return on investment in leadership training without the opportunity to put it into practice.