Leader and Leadership Development: Key insights, practices, and processes associated with developing leaders and leadership

CEOs and People & Culture leaders often grapple with how to develop effective leaders in their organisations. Through his extensive research, David Day challenges traditional approaches to leadership development and offers evidence-based insights that can revolutionise how organisations approach this critical function.

David Day is a prominent leadership scholar who serves as Professor of Psychological Science and Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. His 2024 book “Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes” offers an evidence-based examination of how both individuals and collectives develop their capacity for leadership, distinguishing itself from other works by focusing on the scientific principles and developmental processes rather than just leadership programs or techniques.

The Fundamental Difference: Leader vs Leadership Development

One of the most significant revelations in Day’s research is the crucial distinction between leader development and leadership development. This isn’t merely semantic wordplay—it represents a fundamental shift in how organisations should think about developing leadership capability.

Leader development centres on building human capital—the knowledge, skills, and abilities that reside within individuals. When organisations invest in leader development, they’re focusing on enhancing an individual’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles. This might involve developing specific competencies, improving decision-making abilities, or enhancing emotional intelligence.

Leadership development, by contrast, operates at a collective level. It focuses on building social capital—the relationships and connections between people that enable effective leadership to emerge. When organisations invest in leadership development, they’re developing their collective capacity to produce leadership. This includes building networks, fostering collaboration, and creating environments where leadership can emerge from multiple levels.

Five First Principles of Development

Day outlines five fundamental principles that should guide leadership development efforts. These aren’t just theoretical concepts—they’re practical guidelines that can reshape how organisations approach leadership development.

1. You Cannot Make Anyone Develop as a Leader

Development requires personal ownership and agency. HR professionals can create the conditions for development and provide resources, but ultimately, each individual must choose to engage in their own development journey. This means moving away from mandatory development programmes and towards creating compelling opportunities for growth that individuals actively choose to pursue.

2. Development Requires Dedicated Work Over a Long Period

Just as someone wouldn’t expect to become physically fit after a single gym session, organisations can’t expect leadership capability to develop through one-off workshops or training sessions. Real development requires consistent practice and application over months and years. This challenges organisations to move beyond the ‘event-based’ approach to leadership development and create sustained development pathways.

3. Leadership is Learned Through Experience

Day provocatively suggests that the everyday work environment is a leadership development gym. Rather than relying solely on formal training programmes, organisations need to help their people recognise and leverage the developmental opportunities in their daily work experiences. This might involve structuring work assignments to provide growth opportunities or helping people reflect on and learn from their everyday leadership challenges.

4. Meaningful Developmental Experiences Include Assessment, Challenge, and Support

Assessment helps build self-awareness by providing clear insights into current capabilities and development needs. Challenge pushes individuals outside their comfort zone, creating opportunities for growth. Support ensures that people can learn effectively from their experiences rather than being overwhelmed by them. Organisations need to ensure all three elements are present in their development initiatives.

5. There are Evidence-Based Practices that Support Development

While leadership development often feels like an art, there’s substantial science behind effective development practices. Organisations should be guided by research evidence rather than fads or traditional approaches. This means staying current with leadership development research and being willing to challenge existing practices when evidence suggests better approaches.

The Development System Approach

Day advocates for moving beyond episodic programmes to create comprehensive development systems. This represents a significant shift from traditional approaches to leadership development.

Assessment

Rather than treating assessment as a one-time event, effective development systems incorporate ongoing assessment through multiple methods:

– Personality assessments help individuals understand their natural tendencies and potential derailers

– Leadership skills and competency evaluations provide concrete feedback on specific capabilities

– Self-view assessments examine how individuals think about themselves as leaders, their level of self-awareness, and their confidence in their leadership abilities

Challenge

Challenge in a development system isn’t about throwing people into the deep end. Instead, it involves:

– Carefully calibrated stretch assignments that push people just beyond their current capabilities

– Regular opportunities to practice new behaviours in a supported environment

– Progressive increases in challenge as capabilities grow

Support

Support mechanisms in a development system should be ongoing and multilayered:

Regular feedback helps people understand the impact of their actions
Coaching relationships provide guidance and accountability
Mentoring opportunities offer wisdom from experienced leaders

Proximal and Distal Outcomes

Understanding both short-term and long-term development indicators helps organisations create more effective development systems and measure their impact appropriately. These indicators exist at both individual and collective levels.

Individual Proximal (Short-term) Outcomes

These provide early indicators that individual development is occurring:

Leader identity development shows up as people beginning to see themselves as leaders
Enhanced self-awareness helps people understand their impact on others
Leadership self-efficacy increases as people become more confident in their leadership capabilities
Basic leadership skills improve as people practice new behaviours

Individual Distal (Long-term) Outcomes

These represent deeper individual development that occurs over time:

Advanced meaning-making abilities help leaders navigate complex situations
Moral development enables better ethical decision-making
Enhanced cognitive complexity allows leaders to see multiple perspectives and solutions
Adaptive expertise helps leaders respond effectively to novel situations

Collective Proximal Outcomes

At the collective level, proximal indicators emerge as collective emergent states:

Psychological safety develops as a shared belief that interpersonal risk-taking within the group won’t result in harm
Shared mental models evolve about how leadership should be enacted when facing complex adaptive challenges
Collective leadership efficacy grows as the group develops confidence in its shared ability to execute leadership actions
Collective leadership identification strengthens as members begin to see leadership as a shared process rather than individual responsibility

Collective Distal Outcomes

The long-term collective outcomes represent sophisticated capabilities that emerge through intensive interpersonal interactions over time:

Macrocognition develops as a form of externalized cognition that emerges through intensive interpersonal interactions grounded in shared mental models
Dynamic capabilities evolve, enabling the collective to adapt its leadership approach based on different situations and challenges
Collective requisite complexity emerges, allowing the group to match its level of complexity to the specific adaptive challenge at hand
The ability to reconfigure network structures develops, enabling the collective to adopt centralized, decentralized, or distributed leadership patterns as needed

Developing Collective Leadership Capacity

Creating broader leadership capacity across the organisation requires attention to both collective states and network development.

Collective Emergent States

These are the shared conditions that enable collective leadership:
Psychological safety allows people to take interpersonal risks
Shared mental models help groups understand leadership challenges similarly
Collective leadership efficacy builds confidence in the group’s leadership capability
Collective identification helps people see themselves as part of a leadership community

Social Network Development

Understanding and developing leadership networks involves:

Mapping existing network structures to understand how leadership currently flows
Building connections that enhance leadership capacity across the organisation
Developing the organisation’s ability to reconfigure networks based on different challenges

Practical Implications for HR Leaders

Based on Day’s research, here are key recommendations for practice:

Design Development Systems, Not Just Programmes

Move beyond the traditional approach of sending people to leadership training. Instead, create comprehensive systems that support ongoing development through multiple channels and experiences. This includes building regular feedback mechanisms and creating opportunities for practice and reflection.

Focus on Both Individual and Collective Development

While developing individual leaders remains important, equal attention should be paid to building organisational leadership capacity. This means creating opportunities for collaboration, fostering relationships across the organisation, and developing collective leadership capabilities.

Leverage Experience Intentionally

Rather than leaving development to chance, deliberately design experiences that promote growth. This includes ensuring that experiences include appropriate levels of challenge and support, and creating regular opportunities for practice and feedback.

Take a Long-term View

Recognise that significant development takes time and plan accordingly. This means moving beyond short-term metrics to measure development progress over longer periods and building sustainable development systems that can support ongoing growth.

For HR and People & Culture leaders, Day’s research offers a blueprint for transforming leadership development in their organisations. By moving beyond traditional programme-based approaches to create comprehensive development systems, organisations can better support both individual and collective leadership growth.

The key is recognising that leadership development isn’t about quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, it requires a systematic, long-term approach that addresses both individual and collective development needs while remaining grounded in research evidence.

As organisations face increasingly complex challenges, this evidence-based approach to leadership development becomes ever more critical. By applying these principles, organisations can create more effective leadership development initiatives that produce lasting results.

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*This blog is part of a series exploring leadership development concepts. Watch for deeper dives into specific aspects of leader and leadership development in my upcoming LinkedIn articles.*