On-the-job experience is an obvious contributor to leadership effectiveness. Without experience, knowledge cannot readily be converted into skills. The best experiences for leadership development are those that realistically challenge the manager, including dealing with stressful problems. A recommended approach to developing as a leader is to step outside your comfort zone and gain novel experiences. Novel experiences that are complex are even more important for development.

Creating an environment for development requires that an organization seeks to provide meaningful development opportunities, not to push managers to the point where they are most likely to fail. Failure is a special type of challenging experience that contributes enormously to reaching one’s leadership potential. One reason is that people who have never failed have avoided taking big risks. An important part of capitalizing on challenging experiences is for the leader or manager to be given leeway in choosing how to resolve the problem.

Challenging experiences are the most likely to result in leadership development when the leader receives some coaching and guidance about the lessons to be derived from these experiences. The two major developmental factors in any work situation are work associates and the task itself. Work associates can help a person develop in myriad ways. An immediate superior can be a positive or negative model of effective leadership. Many aspects of leadership are situational. A sound approach to improving leadership effectiveness is therefore to gain managerial experience in different settings.

свернуть