Can Leadership be Taught? Part One - Dr Richard Claydon.

Have you ever sat in a leadership development session and asked yourself, what am I doing here? How is this relevant to my job?

You are not alone.

Although it is a growing market, leadership development is not delivering the value it promises.

• 90% of senior executives don’t think leadership development programs have any business impact
• 4 in every 5 people who quit their role cite poor leadership and management as the reason
• 3 in 5 employees below the age of 40 say that there is no attention paid to developing leadership skills in a meaningful way

On the one hand, the enthusiasm for the concept of leadership has never been higher. 5.1 billion Google search hits for the word. On the other hand, there is so much apathy and cynicism about the concept that we have been asked to teach leadership without mentioning the word leadership!

How have we got to this state of affairs? In this DD, we will examine:

• The origins of leadership studies and its relationship with management science and leadership development
• The set of foundational ideas that comprise leadership studies
• The strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies of leadership development

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.