Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Abstract
Senior leaders from the C-suite to directors are looking for the next generation of leaders ready to lead their organizations into the 21st century. They invest billions in the professional development of this next generation only to lament in board meetings about the dearth of talent. There is research that leadership competencies can be taught but what is learned is soon forgotten once the class or experience has ended (Day, 2001). Human resource professional put policies and procedures in place, yet the learning still seems to ebb. So, what is going on? Some have suggested that the missing element is a “supportive environment” in an organization (Day & Harrison, 2007). Very little research had been done on what senior leaders personally do to deal with this lack of supportive environment. To address this gap, we conducted a quantitative study of 211 senior leaders. Two major findings emerged from the study. First, our research demonstrates the importance of senior leader’s having a “providing professional development” mindset and its significant impact on financial performance, leadership effectiveness and work engagement. Second, the study confirmed the impact of shared vision on both leadership effectiveness and work engagement and that shared vision enhances the positive effect of “providing professional development” impact on both leadership effectiveness and work engagement. The implication for senior leaders is they should move with focused “intent” to create an atmosphere supportive of professional development and their ability to create a “shared vision” will significantly impact their ability to grow effective leaders.
Keywords
professional development, career development, Weatherhead School of Management, intentional change theory, learning orientation, professional development orientation, human resources, leadership competencies, resonant leadership, financial performance, work engagement and leadership effectiveness
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Warr, Dartanian, "Senior Leaders Create It: A Supportive Environment, The Missing Link to Effective Leadership Development" (2017). Student Scholarship. 372.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/372