Lakhasly

Leadership development has taken on far greater import in recent years (Day, 2000, McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004, Murphy and Riggio, 2003, Pearce et al., 2006).Alternatively, simply click on amazon.com and type in the term "leadership" in the book category. I did this on 7 July 2007. It returned 223,726 results. Clearly, there is an insatiable thirst for knowledge about leadership. In our normal, everyday lives we frequently hear arm-chair analyses of peoples' leadership styles--be they corporate leaders, religious leaders, political leaders or civic leaders--as being "blank" types of leaders, further evidencing our perennial preoccupation with leadership, and all that it entails.Interestingly, in juxtaposition to the deep grounding of the articles that comprise this special issue is the fresh tilling of new, rich and fertile soil for cultivating our next generations of leaders in multi and varied organizational contexts.In contrast, in this special issue, the authors argue that the focus of leadership development should be greatly expanded to include a much broader array of behaviors and competencies and should include followers in the process of leadership development (see Pearce, 2004, Pearce and Conger, 2003).Most current leadership development efforts focus on transactional and transformational leadership and focus quite narrowly on individuals who occupy formal leadership positions or are being groomed to occupy such positions eminently.Indeed, most professionals--be they in the for profit, governmental or social sector--would most likely concur that developing a keen sense of different types of leaders, how they behave, and what they expect, is essential for success, no matter what the organizational context.Knowledge work relies on the, necessarily, voluntary contributions of skilled professionals: After all, knowledge workers can withhold their intellectual capital and they can take it with them if and when they choose to leave.Forgetting our formal academic descriptions of leadership, lay descriptions of leadership, at least implicitly, refer to patterns of behavior that seem (perhaps intuitively) consistent or related.The authors of the seven articles that comprise this special issue tackle a wide breadth of topics that are critical to the future of leadership development.The scope of this popular interest in leadership--what it is, where it comes from, how we develop and implement it--is readily apparent when one walks into any bookstore.Some focus on capacities, capabilities and behaviors while others focus on physical and spiritual dimensions of leadership.What they all have in common, however, is a deep and profound grounding on the historical research foundations of leader and leadership development.Accordingly, we need to rethink the very concept of leadership, and by extension, leadership development, in the age of knowledge work--and that is the very purpose of this special issue on leadership development.Some focus on leaders occupying roles, while others focus on leadership as a process.Leadership has long captured the interest of practitioners and academics, as well as the more general public.Primarily, however, as Peter Drucker identified nearly half a Century ago (Drucker, 1968), we have entered the age of knowledge work.The reasons for this are manifold and multiplying.Some document current best practices, while others offer agendas for future research.Some focus on lower to mid-hierarchical levels, while others focus on executive levels and yet others identify cross-level issues.Some approaches are general and some are specific.

Leadership development has taken on far greater import in recent years (Day, 2000, McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004, Murphy and Riggio, 2003, Pearce et al., 2006). The reasons for this are manifold and multiplying. Primarily, however, as Peter Drucker identified nearly half a Century ago (Drucker, 1968), we have entered the age of knowledge work. Knowledge work relies on the, necessarily, voluntary contributions of skilled professionals: After all, knowledge workers can withhold their intellectual capital and they can take it with them if and when they choose to leave. Accordingly, we need to rethink the very concept of leadership, and by extension, leadership development, in the age of knowledge work—and that is the very purpose of this special issue on leadership development.

The authors of the seven articles that comprise this special issue tackle a wide breadth of topics that are critical to the future of leadership development. Some approaches are general and some are specific. Some focus on leaders occupying roles, while others focus on leadership as a process. Some document current best practices, while others offer agendas for future research. Some focus on lower to mid-hierarchical levels, while others focus on executive levels and yet others identify cross-level issues. Some focus on capacities, capabilities and behaviors while others focus on physical and spiritual dimensions of leadership. What they all have in common, however, is a deep and profound grounding on the historical research foundations of leader and leadership development. Interestingly, in juxtaposition to the deep grounding of the articles that comprise this special issue is the fresh tilling of new, rich and fertile soil for cultivating our next generations of leaders in multi and varied organizational contexts.

Most current leadership development efforts focus on transactional and transformational leadership and focus quite narrowly on individuals who occupy formal leadership positions or are being groomed to occupy such positions eminently. In contrast, in this special issue, the authors argue that the focus of leadership development should be greatly expanded to include a much broader array of behaviors and competencies and should include followers in the process of leadership development (see Pearce, 2004, Pearce and Conger, 2003).

Leadership has long captured the interest of practitioners and academics, as well as the more general public. The scope of this popular interest in leadership—what it is, where it comes from, how we develop and implement it—is readily apparent when one walks into any bookstore. Alternatively, simply click on amazon.com and type in the term “leadership” in the book category. I did this on 7 July 2007. It returned 223,726 results. Clearly, there is an insatiable thirst for knowledge about leadership. In our normal, everyday lives we frequently hear arm-chair analyses of peoples' leadership styles—be they corporate leaders, religious leaders, political leaders or civic leaders—as being “blank” types of leaders, further evidencing our perennial preoccupation with leadership, and all that it entails. Indeed, most professionals—be they in the for profit, governmental or social sector—would most likely concur that developing a keen sense of different types of leaders, how they behave, and what they expect, is essential for success, no matter what the organizational context.

Forgetting our formal academic descriptions of leadership, lay descriptions of leadership, at least implicitly, refer to patterns of behavior that seem (perhaps intuitively) consistent or related. For example, an employee's description of a “micro-managing” boss might be intuitively supported by examples of his/her manager's overly precise specification of goals, continual follow-up on progress, ongoing needling, picayune review of performance, and the like. Whether they are intuitive—based on personal experience—or formalized through rigorous research, these clusters or types of related behavior make it easier to size up leaders and make sense of patterns of leadership behavior. Two or more contrasting types of leadership, in turn, form a typology (see Doty & Glick, 1994) or model of leadership.

Leadership models offer the guiding frameworks that are critical for implementing coherent leadership development efforts. The models guiding leadership development define and, in some cases, limit the leadership development efforts (Cox, Pearce, & Sims, 2003). Accordingly, the purpose of this special issue is to widen the scope of leadership development beyond today's dominant transactional–transformational leadership model, to include identity, multi-level approaches, self-leadership, physical fitness, shared leadership, networking, creativity, emotions, spirituality and on-boarding processes.