Developing Leaders: How the Field of Leadership Development Scholarship Contributes to its Practice

Leadership development is big business, with millions of dollars invested each year despite concern about immaturity of the scholarly field of leadership development, and little available evidence of results (Day et al., 2014; Kaiser & Curphy, 2014). This review of the leadership and leadership development literature examines key indicators for the field, finding little systematic research linking leadership development with results, few strong theoretical underpinnings for leadership development and its practice, and growth of a popular press literature providing competition to scholarly dialogue and debate. The review identified two significant conclusions. One is the persistent and serious disconnects within and between the theoretical and practice discourses of leadership and leadership development, with little agreement about the most effective ways to develop leaders (Allen & Middlebrooks, 2013). The second is that although their work is on a scale in terms of time, effort and money that simply cannot be ignored, the voices and experience of leadership development consultants, practitioners and educators have been largely absent from the academic literature. Future research could address these claims through a focus on more deeply and successfully connecting theory and practice, and engaging with how practice may transform theory and how theory may enrich practice. Given the importance of leadership in almost every aspect of human endeavor, this research has considerable potential to contribute to the on-going development of leaders.