Why leadership-development programs fail

Every year enterprises spend important sums of money to develop their leaders. Yet, the return on investment is often uncertain. For example, only 7% of British business leaders consider their enterprise develops its leaders efficiently! In view of this, this article’s authors have studied hundreds of leadership development programs. They identify four common mistakes that weaken their effectiveness: not taking the context sufficiently into consideration; the lack of continuity between the training and real work; insufficient focus on mentalities; and the lack of measurement of the impact on real change.