Leader Development vs. Leadership Development

What’s the difference?

My colleague, David Day1, has made a clear distinction between leader development — which focuses on developing individual leaders’ skills and competencies — and leadership development, which tries to build the shared leadership capacity of the leader and the members of the work team. We focus nearly all of our energy on leader development, and this is where we fall short.

All too often, in both leadership development programs and in the study of leadership, we neglect the key role that followers play in the equation. I find myself doing this when teaching students about leadership — we over-focus on the importance of the leader and what the leader does. Rarely do we give serious attention to the role that followers play — are they merely being obedient followers, passively going along, or do they question the leader and hold the leader accountable?

In this book, we will focus on both leader development — helping you become an exemplary leader. We will also focus on leadership development — helping you to increase the leadership capacity in your team or department. How do we do the latter? By engaging followers and developing their capacity to work with leaders and together co-construct “leadership.”

For Development: A leader without engaged and committed followers will not produce leadership. Consider how you can leverage your followers’ leadership capacity to help you lead better.