If I Knew Then What I Know Now - New Thoughts on Leadership Development - Review of recent research undertaken at Ashridge Business School

Ashridge Business School was established by royal charter in 1959 to provide Executive Education to practising managers. Ashridge now offers a full range of consultancy and development services including customised programmes, open enrolment programmes, OD consultancy, post graduate qualifications and other learning services. The school works with a broad range of national, international, public and private sector businesses, primarily in the areas of leadership, strategy, change and general management. The Research - Issues and Challenges What do you wish you had known 10 years ago? This was the question that a group of faculty recently pondered in the quest to identify the key issues for "leaders-in-waiting". Ashridge has for many years run successful leadership programmes mainly targeted at experienced business leaders. However, in recent years many organisations have also asked us to help them to identify their future leaders. The question for us was - do new leaders require the same development processes as existing leaders or are there different needs and demands and therefore different possibilities. In typical academic fashion, we started a research project where a group of leadership faculty gathered together to share and develop ideas about the topic itself and the research process. Quickly we found that many of the same stock answers were emerging and nothing significantly new came up, except that many of the existing leaders questioned suggested that they wish they had known more about themselves. This prompted us to try a different approach. We asked existing leaders two key questions: 1. What have been the critical incidents that have shaped your leadership development? 2. What do you wish you had known 10 years ago? The answer to the first question was illuminating and identified many critical incidents which we have categorised under 7 major themes. Four of the themes relate to the job role and the work itself and are: • Being a manager - the range of experiences that people take on when they are in charge, for instance: promoted to manage peers and managing a relationship with a PA • Managing others - the every day people related challenges that the new manager faces, for instance: dealing with demotivated colleagues and disciplining someone • Being managed - the impact of the boss and other more senior colleagues, for instance: disagreeing with the boss and finding a good mentor • Fulfilling the management role - the functional responsibilities that a manager takes on as part of his or her role, for instance: preparing budgets and making someone redundant