How HR can refine the recipe for cordon bleu leadership

“Leadership” is big business. Google brings up over 171 million results for the word. There’s principle-centred leadership, spiritual leadership, post-modern leadership. Some experts pair leadership with ethics, gender, trust, even Santa Claus. All are undoubtedly clever people, if only for finding endless ways to milk the same, teat-chaffed, cash cow.

And one can understand why. In Roffey Park’s Management Agenda 2007 survey, 70 per cent of its senior-level respondents identified leadership as the most pressing business issue they faced. The survey shows organisations that develop leaders are twice as likely to over-perform against financial expectations as those that don’t, so it’s little wonder that, according to the CIPD’s 2008 Learning and Development survey, 90 per cent of HR professionals believe their organisations need to focus on developing leadership skills to meet their business objectives in the next two years.
 

Language does not simply reflect what is going on in organisational life: it also influences what people think and what they do

Linda Holbeche, director of the Holbeche Partnership and visiting professor of HRM/OD at Cass Business School