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There's never been more pressure on executive leaders to perform at a higher level in a wider range of areas. While leadership today is more complex at all levels, the role of enterprise leadership presents unique challenges. It can be daunting to keep up, given the complexity and the rate of change in so many different parts of the business.  

Stop me if you’ve heard this one (you have, but it is worth repeating): A CEO and CFO are battling it out during the budget process.  The CFO says to CEO, who is asking for dollars for leader development, “What happens if we train them and they leave?” The CEO pauses and responds with, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?” I love this two line quip.  It is so true and so telling of the way we lose sight of what could happen to our businesses if we fail to invest in the development of our people.

Transformational – Empowering – Collaborative – Thought-Provoking – Practical – Enlightening

This list represents six of the words that individual participants shared when I asked each of them to use one word to describe the leadership development experience so far. We were three months into a six-month development process and I wanted to see where their heads and hearts were.

There is a familiar scenario playing out in organizations around the world each day and it looks like this:

"Fred has been working for his company for several years a

nd excels at his job; everyone likes him. When a manager position becomes available within his department, Fred is the likely candidate because he’s good at the job, and the assumption is that he will also be a great manager. If only it was that easy…"