Leadership Development Programs: Some General Features’

Introduction: What is an LDP?

A Leadership Development Program (LDP) is normally a short training course, a kind of orientation for managers who have to deal with a lot many problems and people inside and outside a company. The LDP program actually reorients a group of management officials of a company in terms of its vision, mission and action. To inculcate certain company values among its employees, the LDP charges the company hands with certain response mechanism so that in a particular situation the responsible officer can handle a situation properly. In other words, the policy makers of the company pass on their policies and methodology to the managers and then middle and lower division working hands to make efficient leaders for a specific company or train them to internalize the spirit to lead from individual ends to a common goal.

Main Areas Addressed in the Program

• How to work for the company with all insiders – the senior and junior workers/officers as a whole group. The integration or in-group feeling practically comes to the welfare of the establishment.

• How to inculcate art of commitment and collaboration so that company’s mission and vision are reflected in anybody’s action and communication. It instills a culture of working like a big machine with many small and big parts engaged in running in unison.
• How to face and resolve a problem even when work from an individual capacity. In other words how to make the solution to a problem always issue specific, not individual official specific – as if all the flowers of a plant smelt alike.

Some Structural Aspects of the LDP

• Normally an LDP is a five day long program. An interaction takes place as if in a class room. Customarily, the company policy makers, and often experts from outside address the senior to mid-level managers, especially those who have to work horizontally and vertically in the company premises.

• An average class of some 24 persons is considered an ideally perfect number of participants. Since interaction is a major concern in such programs, classes has to be limited to a reasonable number. 1:12 (instructor : participant) ratio is the most ideal form of class pattern for personal interaction and exchange of views.
• For crash courses, under special requirements, a half-day session is often advised. Normally this session is very personal interaction by nature.

Rounding Off

It is often said that the LDP has nothing new about it. Some five-six decades ago, Walt Disney, proprietor, Walt Disney Company, first popularized the idea. Nowadays, areas such as business and business management are becoming very sophisticated and aggressively competitive every day. With a view to coping with the issue, companies and business establishment are regularly conducting leadership management programs. The program is not limited to business and multinational company sectors. Establishments other than business organizations and companies too may apply the methodology. In education, banking and other sectors similar programs are often known as refresher and/or orientation programs. The ultimate purpose of these programs is theoretically the same. It is necessary to keep the employees aware of the new happenings and efficient. An assessment to measure skills and behavior progress, completed three months after the program may give some idea as to the efficacy of such programs. However, many opine that the straight-jacket formulas of the LDP culture may not prove satisfactory. Since it stresses on making leaders with some principles imposed from outside; the inbuilt quality of sincere leaders may suffer. The already competent and resourceful persons are thus forced to reorganize themselves and thereby destroy the inherent qualities. And again, in the modern world global workforce, virtual offices and digital conferencing there is not much scope for the LDPs.