Divine Direction

According to Bersin & Associates study entitled “High-Impact Leadership Development” (2008), an organizational focus on leadership development results in:
• Becoming 84 percent more effective at raising the quality of the leadership “pipeline;”
• A 73 percent increase in employee retention;
• A 67 percent increase in the ability of the organization’s members to work collaboratively; and,
• A 66 percent improvement in the organization’s results.

Likewise, the literature on leadership is enormous and expanding apace. A search of the Amazon.com website in the spring of 2003 using the single word ‘leadership’ netted an overwhelming 11,686 results. This testifies, if nothing else, to the cultural significance of this concept at least in the minds of authors, archivists and editors. Notably, however, a search of ‘leadership and development’ only secured 4.8 per cent of the total results. This suggests that the ways in which leadership qualities might be produced carry considerably less popular appeal than the wider leadership mystique.