Pursuing your leader development: Lessons from 101 executives

To lead effectively in a VUCA (i.e., volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment, leaders must quickly and continuously acquire new skills. However, formal development opportunities aren’t nearly enough to support the ongoing skill development leaders need to manage the level of complexity and change they are facing. Instead, leaders must take ownership of their own development. In this paper, we describe a straightforward, four-step process that leaders can implement to pursue their individualized development through leader development planning. Specifically, we walk leaders through the evidence-based steps of creating their unique leader development plan (LDP), including (1) identifying their leadership strengths and weaknesses, (2) setting effective leader development goals, (3) designing SMART strategies, and (4) reflecting, refining, and realigning their plan. Throughout the article, we detail positive examples as well as common pitfalls that we observed from our work supporting 101 mid- to senior-level leaders in designing their LDPs. Our purpose in doing so is to provide tools and examples to enable leaders at all levels to drive their development at their own pace.