Avoiding Rubber Band Leadership Development 

It’s a familiar scenario – you attend a wonderful leadership seminar, maybe even a week long training program, and you leave excited and ready to make personal changes and to implement all sorts of new ideas. In a month you remember that it was terrific – but that’s about it.   That’s rubber-band leadership development, and we’ve all been there. And if you are responsible for the development of others you’ve surely struggled with how you might change that trajectory – how you might develop a process that results in lasting change.  How do we really create the leaders we know we need – authentic leaders of character who can create inspiring, accountable, creative cultures?

We’ve thought about this conundrum and a lot of other puzzling questions for years … 

• Can execution be taught?
• Can we help leaders become more strategic?
• And should they learn to “hold loosely” to plans?
• How do you combine horizontal and vertical development?
• How do we grow leaders who can lead authentically and at a higher level?
• Are innovation and design thinking fads or essential to the future?
• Is an “opposable mind” the key to a culture of creativity?
• How do you grow leaders and the business simultaneously?
• How does intentional change theory apply to leadership development?
• Does leadership reside in a person or in the collective?
• Is the age of the heroic leader over?
• How do you connect leadership development to strategy?
• How do we engage top leaders in development – and create value for the business at the same time? 
• What makes action learning really work?
• What about cognitive complexity, agility, resonance and all the other contemporary buzz words?

Come discuss controversial ideas and share what you and others are doing to address the development challenge. TLG will share recent research and what we think about avoiding rubber-band leadership development.