leadership training essay

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3 Benefits of Leadership Training for Professionals

• 07 Nov 2019

For professionals intent on moving up within their organization, or who find themselves suddenly in a position of authority over others , it’s not uncommon to wonder whether leadership training in the form of a course or workshop could be beneficial to their career.

The answer to that question is a resounding “yes.”

“Leadership is sometimes misunderstood as a mystical quality that some people embody and others don’t,“ says Harvard Business School Professor Joshua Margolis in the online course Leadership Principles .

While many people claim they are “natural born leaders,” leadership skills can be learned. With enough discipline, understanding, and practice, anyone can become an effective leader within their business or organization.

To help you decide whether leadership training makes sense for you, here are some of the benefits it can have on the trajectory of your career and your ability to succeed in your current or desired role.

3 Benefits of Leadership Training

1. assess your effectiveness as a leader.

To improve your leadership skills, you must first understand your current abilities. What are your strengths, and how you can lean into them to become a more effective leader? What are your weaknesses, and how can you work to fill those gaps and be more well-rounded? Developing this insight can help you prioritize the best strategies for improvement. It can also enable you to identify your personal leadership style , which you can reference and build upon throughout your career.

High-quality leadership programs, like the Leadership Principles course offered by HBS Online, build this self-assessment into the curriculum. In addition to facilitating self-evaluation, the course solicits feedback from colleagues and managers to gain a deeper understanding of participants' emotional intelligence —a critical characteristic of all leaders.

2. Learn (and Practice) Important Leadership Skills

To be effective, leaders must understand how to set direction, design teams, coach colleagues, deliver feedback, and build robust, trusting relationships with their direct reports. They know how to influence others , empower employees , handle stressful situations , and sense when to delegate tasks or tackle a project on their own.

“Leadership is all about bringing out the best in others to get the work done,” Margolis says in Leadership Principles .

Perfecting these skills requires hands-on experience. Completing leadership training allows you to not only learn and understand these skills, but put them into practice in a collaborative setting.

3. Get Real Feedback from Experienced Leaders

One of the greatest benefits associated with leadership training is the exposure you get to other leaders—both faculty and peers—from whom you can learn and grow. Discussions, debates, and the general free exchange of ideas with others can offer insights and feedback that are hard to come by when trying to develop these skills on your own.

Who Can Benefit from Leadership Training?

While you might think you already need to be in a position of leadership to benefit from leadership training, individuals in a range of roles or career stages might find value in such a course. Below are four examples of the kind of professionals who tend to realize the most significant benefits.

1. Early- and Mid-Career Professionals

Early- or mid-career professionals who are currently working as individual contributors or specialists within their department or organization stand to benefit from completing leadership training. This is especially true for anyone who has a desire to eventually move into a position of management or leadership, but is unsure of how to get there. By taking a leadership course and proactively developing your leadership skills, you're priming yourself to be ready when the opportunity arises to make a change.

Similarly, leadership training might also be helpful for individuals who don’t necessarily want to work in a leadership position, but occasionally take on managerial tasks and responsibilities, such as a project manager.

2. New Leaders

Many established organizations follow a strict hierarchy in determining who to hire or promote into a leadership position. Applicants, whether internal or external, must typically meet a certain level of education and experience even to be considered.

But in smaller or more nimble organizations, this hierarchy may not be formally established, which can enable an individual to move into a position of leadership even if they don't yet have experience in such a role. (This can be particularly true for many startup environments .)

If you find yourself suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into a position of leadership, pursuing training can be an effective means of getting oriented to your new role.

3. Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Many small business owners start as self-employed individuals. They don’t have any employees or team members to manage. They are only responsible for managing themselves.

But as soon as you take the seemingly small step of hiring your first employee, the entire dynamic of your business is liable to change, because you're no longer only responsible for yourself. That's why it’s often claimed that success as a solopreneur does not necessarily equate to success as an entrepreneur.

If your ultimate career goal is to be a successful entrepreneur, developing your leadership skills is an essential piece of the puzzle, and can help you gain the skills necessary for building and managing high-performing teams.

4. Businesses and Organizations

While some businesses and organizations with open leadership positions look outwards for job candidates, there are benefits to promoting from within. On the one hand, it’s often cheaper, because you no longer have the expense of recruiting, screening, interviewing, and otherwise evaluating applicants. On the other, promoting internally often allows for a shorter ramp-up period because the employee likely already knows how the business operates.

To realize the benefits of promoting from within, companies need to provide a pathway for their employees to develop the skills necessary for success. Investing in professional development initiatives, such as leadership training, is an effective way of doing so. It can also improve employee retention: Up to 94 percent of employees state they would stay with a company longer if it invested in helping them learn and grow professionally.

Taking the First Step

So long as you're approaching the course with an open mind and a willingness to learn, leadership training can be a highly effective means of learning new skills, improving what you already know, and laying the groundwork for a successful career. The biggest hurdle is taking the first step.

“The research is clear: Leaders are made, not born,” says Harvard Business School Professor Ethan Bernstein. “And they are increasingly self-made.”

Do you want to enhance your leadership skills? Download our free leadership e-book and explore our online course Leadership Principles to discover how you can become a more effective leader and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

About the Author

Essay Papers Writing Online

Learn the essential tips and techniques to write a compelling and impactful leadership essay that captures the attention of your readers.

When it comes to composing an outstanding leadership essay, there are several key insights that can greatly enhance your writing. By delving into the complexities of leadership, exploring its various dimensions, and weaving a compelling narrative, you can captivate your readers and leave a lasting impression.

Effective leadership goes beyond conventional definitions and involves a unique set of qualities and skills. A truly remarkable essay on leadership should not only provide a comprehensive overview of these qualities but also offer insightful perspectives that challenge traditional notions. By incorporating strong examples and relevant case studies, you can shed light on the intricate nuances of leadership and inspire your audience.

A truly exceptional leadership essay not only discusses the importance of leadership but also encourages self-reflection and personal growth. By exploring your own leadership journey and highlighting key lessons learned along the way, you can infuse your essay with authenticity and make it relatable for readers. Additionally, delving into the challenges and obstacles faced in your leadership role can demonstrate resilience and the ability to adapt, further enhancing the impact of your composition.

Identify your personal leadership experiences

One of the key aspects of crafting an impressive leadership essay is being able to identify and reflect upon your personal leadership experiences. These experiences can come in many different forms and may not always be obvious at first glance. It is important to delve deep into your past and consider all the times you have taken charge, made decisions, and influenced others.

Reflect upon your experiences in school, work, extracurricular activities, or any other area of your life where you have had the opportunity to take on a leadership role. Think about times when you have successfully led a team, solved a problem, motivated others, or made a positive impact. These are the moments that will serve as the foundation for your leadership essay.

• Consider any leadership positions or responsibilities you have held, whether formal or informal.
• Reflect upon any challenges you have faced as a leader and how you overcame them.
• Think about the values and qualities that you believe are important for a leader to possess and how you have demonstrated these traits in your own experiences.
• Consider any instances where you have been able to inspire or influence others to achieve a common goal.

By identifying and reflecting upon your personal leadership experiences, you will not only be able to provide examples and evidence in your essay, but you will also gain a deeper understanding of your own leadership capabilities. This self-reflection will help you to articulate your leadership style and philosophy, and ultimately make your essay more compelling and impressive.

Highlight your unique leadership qualities

When writing a leadership essay, it is crucial to showcase your distinctive leadership qualities and what sets you apart from others in a leadership role. Your essay should delve into the qualities that make you a standout leader and how you have demonstrated these skills in real-life situations.

One key aspect to consider is your ability to communicate effectively. As a leader, you must be able to clearly convey your thoughts and ideas to your team members. Your essay should highlight instances where you have effectively communicated your vision and goals, and how this has positively impacted your team’s performance.

In addition to communication, another important aspect of effective leadership is the ability to inspire and motivate others. Your essay should include examples of how you have inspired your team members to go above and beyond, and how you have motivated them to achieve shared goals. Whether it’s through leading by example or providing words of encouragement, showcasing your ability to inspire others will demonstrate your unique leadership qualities.

Furthermore, a strong leader is someone who can adapt to different situations and make sound decisions under pressure. Your essay should highlight instances where you have demonstrated adaptability and made difficult decisions that have positively impacted your team or organization. This showcases your ability to think critically and make rational choices, qualities that are essential for effective leadership.

A great leader is also someone who values collaboration and teamwork. Your essay should discuss how you have fostered a collaborative environment and encouraged your team members to work together towards a common goal. Highlighting instances where you have successfully collaborated with others and achieved results as a team will showcase your ability to bring people together and leverage their skills and strengths.

Lastly, don’t forget to include examples of how you have exhibited integrity and ethical behavior in your leadership role. A leader who acts with integrity and sets ethical standards for others is highly regarded. Your essay should highlight instances where you have made decisions based on moral principles and upheld ethical standards, demonstrating your strong character and unique leadership qualities.

• Showcase your effective communication skills
• Highlight your ability to inspire and motivate others
• Demonstrate your adaptability and decision-making abilities
• Emphasize your collaborative approach to leadership
• Illustrate your integrity and ethical behavior

By highlighting these unique leadership qualities, your essay will stand out and leave a lasting impression on the reader.

Use real-life examples to demonstrate your leadership skills

One effective way to showcase your leadership abilities in an essay is by incorporating real-life examples. Instead of simply describing your skills and qualities, providing tangible examples will make your essay more engaging and credible.

By using real-life experiences, such as situations you encountered in school, work, or extracurricular activities, you can demonstrate how you exhibited leadership qualities and successfully influenced others. These examples will give your essay a personal touch and allow the reader to better understand your leadership style and effectiveness.

For instance, you can discuss a time when you took charge of a group project and led your team to success. Describe the specific challenges you faced, how you motivated and coordinated your team members, and the outcome of your leadership efforts. This example will not only highlight your ability to take initiative but also demonstrate your skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving.

In addition to discussing your successes, don’t be afraid to mention times when you faced obstacles or even failure. Sharing these experiences and reflecting on how you tackled them can demonstrate your resilience, adaptability, and ability to learn from mistakes. It also shows that you are not afraid to take risks and rise to the occasion, qualities that are crucial for effective leadership.

When using real-life examples in your essay, be sure to provide enough detail to make it vivid and relatable. Use specific anecdotes, dialogue, and outcomes to paint a clear picture of your leadership skills in action. Additionally, make sure to tie each example back to the overall theme or thesis of your essay, highlighting the value and relevance of your leadership experiences.

In conclusion, incorporating real-life examples into your leadership essay can significantly enhance its impact. By providing tangible instances of your leadership skills in action, you can capture the reader’s attention, establish credibility, and showcase your unique qualities as a leader.

Focus on the impact of your leadership on others

When crafting an exceptional leadership essay, it is vital to focus on the influence and effect that your leadership has had on others. One of the distinguishing factors of a great leader is the ability to inspire and motivate those around them, fostering growth and success. Sharing how your leadership style and actions have positively impacted individuals and teams will not only showcase your effectiveness as a leader but also highlight your ability to create a supportive and collaborative environment.

Highlight instances where your leadership has empowered others to reach their full potential, overcome challenges, and achieve meaningful goals. Discuss how you have mentored and guided individuals, encouraging them to develop their abilities and become confident in their own capabilities. Additionally, emphasize the collaborative nature of your leadership, demonstrating how you have fostered teamwork, encouraged open communication, and facilitated the sharing of ideas and perspectives.

It is important to provide specific examples and anecdotes that illustrate the impact of your leadership on others. These personal stories will help bring your essay to life and allow the reader to understand the tangible ways in which you have made a difference. Consider discussing moments where you successfully resolved conflicts, motivated a team to exceed expectations, or supported someone through a difficult situation.

Furthermore, show how you have created a positive and inclusive culture that values diversity and respects the individuality of each team member. Talk about how you have celebrated the successes of others, recognized their contributions, and provided opportunities for professional and personal growth. By highlighting these aspects, you not only demonstrate your impact as a leader but also showcase your ability to create an environment that fosters the growth and development of others.

In conclusion, when writing your leadership essay, focusing on the impact of your leadership on others is crucial. By highlighting how you have empowered, supported, and inspired individuals and teams, you can showcase your ability to create a positive and collaborative environment that drives success. Use specific examples and anecdotes to illustrate these points and demonstrate the tangible ways in which your leadership has made a difference.

Reflect on your own growth and learning as a leader

As you delve into crafting an impressive leadership essay, it is crucial to take the time to reflect on your personal growth and learning as a leader. This introspective process allows you to explore your experiences and identify the ways in which you have developed and evolved as a leader.

Think about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them, the opportunities you seized and the successes you achieved. Consider the lessons you learned from your failures and the skills you acquired along the way. Reflect on the relationships you built and the impact you made on those around you.

It is important to be honest with yourself and recognize both your strengths and areas for improvement. Acknowledge the obstacles you faced and how you navigated through them. Highlight the moments of growth and the transformative experiences that shaped your leadership journey.

Identify the values that guide you as a leader and the principles that you consistently uphold. Reflect on the importance of self-reflection and continuous learning in your development as a leader. Consider the ways in which your leadership style has evolved and adapted to different contexts and challenges.

Sharing these reflections in your leadership essay allows you to demonstrate your self-awareness, growth mindset, and commitment to personal development as a leader. It showcases your ability to adapt, learn from experience, and inspire others. Emphasize the impact of your growth and learning on your leadership approach and how it has influenced your ability to lead effectively.

In conclusion, reflecting on your own growth and learning as a leader is an essential aspect of crafting an impressive leadership essay. By delving into your experiences, challenges, successes, and failures, you can showcase your self-awareness, adaptability, and commitment to continuous improvement in your leadership journey.

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Leadership Essay

27 August, 2020

12 minutes read

Author:  Richard Pircher

As a college student, you must write essays on a regular basis since the latter is one of the most common types of home assignments. All this means is that in order to get good grades and be successful with writing the papers, you need to have a sound understanding of the structure. Additionally, what you should never neglect is the variety of essay types. Indeed, your essay will significantly differ from one type to another: description essay will most likely have a structure that is slightly different from an argumentative one.

What you may have already encountered in your academic life is the work on a leadership essay. Although it sounds pretty complicated and vague, it is mostly possible to master an essay on leadership. Below is a guide for you to get an insight into this particular essay type.

What is a good leadership essay?

A good leadership essay is the one in which the essay writer has fully covered the topic of leadership and understood its core ideas. More specifically, to end up with a flawless leadership essay, you will need to indicate what makes a person a good leader. For achieving the latter, you will most likely need to conduct research and trace how a particular person reaches his or her goals. In other words, the task is to discover which actions the person undertakes, what their followers say about him or her, and how the person organizes the work. So, a leadership essay implies providing real-life success examples and further revealing them.

Above all, a good leadership essay is the one that follows a precise, clear, comprehensive structure. Structuring your essay about leadership in the most coherent way leads to a win-win situation: you have fewer troubles and barriers to writing a brilliant essay, and your teacher is able to comprehend the essay easily. This guide is what you will need to refer to to get an insight into how the flawless structure for a leadership essay looks like and how it will let you take a benefit.

How to write a Leadership essay?

To write a leadership essay that stands out, you first need to brainstorm all the ideas that you have and come up with a topic for your essay. If you are struggling with this step, you may think of some of the most influential people, read about them, and find out what makes them unique. Or, you can pick any topic which is mentioned at the end of this article. After you have chosen an issue, it is time to structure your essay appropriately.

As you already know, an essay constitutes three essential sections: introduction, main body, and conclusion. Below is the more detailed description of each of the parts.

Introduction

Of course, your leadership essay introduction will always vary depending on the topic of the essay. However, you can always begin by stating your vision of leadership regardless of the topic. Additionally, to motivate the reader and instantly catch his or her attention, you may use a quote of a famous leader, or simply a quote which you find relevant to the topic. Be aware that you should avoid outlining the essence and the role of the leadership in your introduction; leave it for the body paragraphs.

What you may also do in your leadership essay is ask a question, which will most likely intrigue the leader. Or it will at least give your reader an overview of what you will dwell on  in your essay.

Body Paragraphs

You will need to divide the main body into 3-5 paragraphs to make the structure more comprehensive. What you have to do at this point  is  give your reader a sound understanding of your ideas. Therefore, try to fit each idea in a single body paragraph so that you do not confuse your reader. Do not hesitate to indicate your examples to strengthen your arguments. For instance, you may explain a fact that makes a particular person you are writing about a real leader.

Also, always stick to your thesis statement and don’t forget that the body paragraphs should reveal the parts of your thesis statement.

As you may already know, you need to restate your opinion and briefly summarize all the points from the main body in conclusion. For instance, if you wrote your essay on qualities of an effective leader, state the most fundamental qualities and indicate why they matter the most. Besides, try not to copy what you have already written in the body – it is better to restate your opinion using different words. And, of course, beware adding any new and extra information; indicate only those points that you have already outlined in the text. Finally, keep in mind that it is always favorable to keep your concluding remarks short.

Leadership Essay Examples

Writing a leadership essay requires some research and time. In case you feel the necessity to go through an essay example, below is a leadership essay sample you can refer to.

Is leadership an inborn or an acquired feature?

Is everyone capable of becoming a leader, or is this ability innate? A lot of researchers have been struggling to answer this question. One assumption about leadership implies that the leader is the person who possesses particular characteristics. Another assumption claims that leaders are capable of acquiring specific features over their life span. As the evidence shows, leaders own many features that distinguish them among others and make more and more people become their followers. These might be cognitive abilities, psychological traits, professional qualities, and a lot more, and all of them will be either acquired or innate. Based on the importance of leadership qualities, such as commitment, stress resistance, and the ability to make quality decisions, it is reasonable to claim that leaders are made, not born. 

One can deem commitment as one of the top fundamental qualities of the leader. In essence, such a feature indicates that a person is passionate about the common goal, strives to be a team player, and makes every effort to reach a shared goal. As the history shows, none of the successful companies was uncoordinated by an influential, committed leader: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft – all of these companies are examples of dominant teams led by a dedicated leader. A committed leader also inspires his or her team to achieve common goals and put more effort into the shared activity. Besides, commitment is unlikely to be an innate feature; it instead comes with experience. This is so, since commitment implies dedicating oneself to the shared task, and one can reach it only via learning and continuous self-improvement.

Stress resistance is another incredibly important feature that every good leader should possess. This is because only a stress-resistant leader has sufficient capabilities to overcome any complexity and not let the anxiety and stress prevent him or her from making proper decisions. Besides, such a leader will most likely have a positive influence on the team, as long as leading by example will motivate the team members to attain the same emotional stability. What is so far familiar about stress resistance as an effective leader’s feature is that it can be either innate or attained. However, although some researchers admit that emotional stability is something one is born with, it is not entirely true; many people still put a great effort into self-improvement, changing the attitude to unfortunate situations, and so on. Therefore, being resistant to stress can be mostly attributed to a personality.

An ability to make high-quality decisions most likely determines the chances for an enterprise’s success. In particular, such quality is incredibly fundamental for a company of any size and professional orientation. Additionally, it is one of the top tasks of a good leader to make final decisions. What he or she should do implies brainstorming, discussing various opinions in the group, making forecasts, analyzing all the pros and cons. However, the leader is the one to make a final decision. Thereby, he is in charge of researching the market, discovering all the hidden truths, and analyzing the organization’s potential and capabilities to result in the most effective decision. As it flows logically from the latter, an ability to make sound quality decisions is purely a professional quality. This leads to the conclusion that one has to work hard to become a genuine leader and master the skill of making effective decisions. 

Overall, the leader may possess a multitude of different skills and master them perfectly. However, what has so far become transparent is that any leader, regardless of which team he leads, must possess three essential qualities. These qualities are commitment to the common goal, ability to handle and resist stress, and, finally, an ability to make effective decisions. All of the three qualities are most likely to be acquired over a lifetime. The statement below leads to the conclusion that even though some qualities can be innate, most are not the ones that leaders are born with. Hence, this answers an essential question: leadership feature is acquired, and not necessarily inborn.  

20 leadership essay topics

When coming up with your next leadership essay topic, it is imperative to brainstorm ideas and think of what leadership might be related to. If you are struggling with a topic of the importance of leadership essay or any relevant type of essay, you may quickly take a look at some of the possible topics we prepared for you:

• What are the main qualities of the leader?
• Successful Time Management as a feature of an effective leader
• The role that rhetoric plays in leadership
• The most exceptional leader in the history of the 20-th century
• The role of female leadership
• What are the challenges of the leader of the 21-st century?
• How college helps students develop leadership skills?
• Qualities of the leader that motivate people to follow them 
• Top things to avoid doing to become a team leader
• Examples of effective and ineffective leadership in the history
• Top techniques for developing leadership skills
• The interconnection of creativity and leadership 
• Is a university’s role fundamental in developing leadership skills?
• Dictatorship as an anti-example of leadership
• Liberal vs Authoritative leadership: which one works better?
• The influence of the leader’s role model on the followers’ mindset
• Main difficulties that the new leader may face in a new team
• Leadership of today vs leadership of the past: what has changed?
• Reasons why I want to become a member if the leadership program
• The role of cognitive abilities for the leader 

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Essays on Leadership for Students | 200 - 500 Word Essays

Are you writing an essay about leadership? Check out these examples!

Leadership is often defined as "the action of inspiring others to act in concert to achieve a particular goal." It signifies the harmony in actions that lead to a common objective. A genuine leader not only exudes confidence but also paves the way for their followers towards triumph. Over the years, various leadership styles have been identified and discussed by psychologists.

 Qualities such as intelligence, adaptability, extroversion, innate self-awareness, and social competence often emerge as the hallmarks of impactful leaders. There's a consensus that these traits mold an individual into an effective leader. Interestingly, some theories suggest that extraordinary situations can thrust an ordinary individual into the spotlight, bestowing upon them the mantle of leadership. It's also believed that leadership isn't a static trait but an evolving journey. It underscores the belief that with dedication and the right resources, anyone can hone their leadership abilities.

 True leadership goes beyond merely advocating for a cause. It involves taking responsibility, igniting motivation in others, and differentiating oneself from just being a 'boss'. A leader's essence lies in their ability to inspire and propel people towards grand visions, whereas a manager typically focuses on oversight and operational aspects.

What Is a Leadership Essay?

A leadership essay falls under the category of student application essays and serves to provide student admissions officers with insight into your past leadership experiences. Despite appearing to be very specific, this type of essay acknowledges that the nature and perception of leadership can vary significantly depending on the individual and the context.

 If you find yourself in need of further insights or a unique angle for your leadership essay, consider exploring an expert essay-writing tool designed to assist students in crafting compelling narratives by analyzing vast data and generating fresh ideas within minutes. In this article, we'll also delve into various leadership essay examples to offer a clearer understanding of the genre and inspire your writing journey.

4 Examples of Leadership Essays

Qualities of a good leader, introduction.

Confidence is the most important attribute first of all. One of the most important qualities in a leader is confidence in one's own abilities. A lack of self-assurance is fatal to a person's leadership potential. If you want others to follow you, you need to exude self-assurance. It's imperative for a leader to have faith in his own judgment and actions. How can people want to follow him if he doesn't even know what he's doing?

Every effective leader knows that they need to be an inspiration to their followers. A leader needs to set an example for his team. In addition, he ought to inspire them whenever feasible. A leader must also maintain optimism in trying times.

What qualities a good leader must have?

Leadership is the ability to influence and guide individuals or groups toward a common goal. A leader must possess several qualities to be effective, including:

Communication skills: A leader must be able to communicate their vision and goals clearly and effectively, both verbally and in writing. This requires excellent listening skills, empathy, and the ability to adapt to different communication styles.

Emotional intelligence: A leader must be able to understand and manage their own emotions, as well as those of their team members. This includes being able to understand and respond to the emotions of others, and handling conflicts in a constructive manner.

Visionary: A leader must have a clear and inspiring vision of the future, and be able to articulate this vision in a way that motivates others to work towards it.

Strategic thinking: A leader must be able to think critically and creatively to identify and solve problems, make decisions, and develop plans and strategies to achieve their goals.

Flexibility: A leader must be able to adapt to changing circumstances and be open to new ideas and perspectives. This requires the ability to embrace change, be innovative, and continuously learn and grow.

Integrity: A leader must have strong ethics and values, and be willing to make difficult decisions that are consistent with their beliefs. This requires honesty, transparency, and accountability.

Decisiveness: A leader must be able to make tough decisions quickly, without undue hesitation or procrastination. This requires courage and the ability to take calculated risks.

Empowerment: A leader must be able to delegate responsibilities, give team members the resources they need to succeed, and foster a sense of ownership and accountability among their team.

Conclusion 

These qualities are essential for effective leadership, and when combined with hard work, determination, and a commitment to excellence, can help leaders to achieve great things.

How one can be a Great Leader?

Leadership is the act of performing the duties of a leader. In the business world, for instance, it is essential to have someone in charge of a team to ensure everything runs well. Effective leadership is essential for any group that wants to maximize its prospects of success.

Leadership Comes from Experience

As we've shown, leadership can be innate in some cases but is more often learned through practice and exposure. Sometimes the best traits of a leader must be learned over a lengthy period of time, so that one can become a notable one, proving that leadership is not always about a person's innate qualities. Leaders should continuously be on the lookout for opportunities to grow their leadership skills.

Nobody can disagree that experience is a key component of leadership. Numerous examples exist to back up this claim, such as:

Instance 1:

Our school's head boy or girl has traditionally been an older student who has been around for a while and thus has a better grasp of the ins and outs of school politics.

Instance 2:

When there is a vacancy for a team leader, it is common practice for the employee who has consistently put in the most effort and attention to the office job to receive a higher number of votes than their coworkers. 

“The best teacher for a leader is evaluated experience.” - John C. Maxwell

How one can be a Great Leader/Skills to be a Great Leader?

Effective leadership is a skill that develops through time. Developing into a leader with all the qualities that are needed takes a lot of hard work and potential. Being a prominent leader calls for a wide variety of traits. Some of these characteristics are addressed in further detail below:

One should be a Good Communicator

To be an effective leader, one must be able to convey his thoughts clearly to his/her/its subordinates.

Should have Confidence

The individual should have faith in what he says and does.

Give Credit to other Team Members too

A leader not only needs to impose his viewpoints and opinions instead he must also hear to the suggestions of other members of the team and offer them credit if their concept is appropriate.

Good Bond with the Team

A leader's ability to command respect from his team members depends on his ability to develop and maintain positive relationships with them.

Leads with Responsibility

A leader needs to be completely committed to his position. It's important that he takes on responsibility so that he can effectively deal with the various challenges he will inevitably face.

Any group or organization needs a leader above all else. Leadership development takes time and effort. One needs to have lived through a lot to be an effective leader. It's not enough to simply have years of experience in the field; one must also have the traits that make one an effective leader. You can't be a great leader unless you possess certain traits.

What makes a Good Leader?

Trying one's hand as a leader appears easy when viewed through this lens. Is that so tough? Of course not; leading is difficult, and not everyone aspires to be a leader. The vast majority of us have settled into well-established careers where we report to superiors and make a living. Still, not everyone is content to go along with the crowd. They become leaders in whatever field they pursue. A leader is an example to followers and will prioritize the needs of those around them.

Some Unique Qualities of a Leader

Many individuals resort to their leaders to vent their frustrations, therefore it's important for them to be good listeners.

A leader ought to be completely forthright; they can't play favorites or give anyone preferential treatment. One of the most essential qualities of a strong leader is the ability to make decisions with integrity.

They need to be aware of the bigger picture and understand what makes an individual stand out or become a leader. It's their expertise in addition to other distinguishing traits. Their awareness of current events and the results of recent studies is essential. In many ways, this is helpful, and it's the leader's responsibility to stay current.

Since some might not understand them, they should utilize straightforward, easily comprehended language. Leaders need to be able to communicate effectively at all times. In reality, what sets them apart is their exceptional communication skills. Adolf Hitler was such a gifted orator that his followers believed every word he said.

No matter how you're feeling or what's going on in the world, if you listen to a leader, they may make you feel energized. Since leaders are in charge of inspiring confidence in their followers, they can't afford to be wary or unsure of themselves. People tend to blindly follow their leaders.

Whether you're a leader or a doctor, you should devote yourself completely to your chosen field. Everything we do is for the benefit of others; engineers, for example, spend much of their time designing and constructing buildings for other people. So, take pride in what you do, and if you possess the aforementioned traits, you are also a leader who doesn't have to rely on others to succeed. No matter what you do, aspiring to leadership positions will always benefit others.

What is Leadership in Management and what are the weaknesses and strengths of a Leader?

Simply said, leadership is acting as a supervisor or manager of a group. Different mental pictures pop up when we hear the word "leadership" used in conversation. One might think of a political leader, team leader, corporate leader, school leader, etc. Leaders facilitate order and efficiency in the workplace. Teamwork and success are fundamental to effective leadership. Leaders utilize their managerial abilities to establish courses and guide their teams to success.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Leadership

Able to express oneself more clearly

Growth of character.

Self-awareness.

Possession of teamwork skills.

Gain assurance in yourself.

Weaknesses:

Acting favorably toward one's teammates.

Having no faith in the leader.

Thinks they're better than everyone else, but act hypocritically.

Not living up to the promised standard.

Insufficient morals.

Leadership and Management

Management and leadership are inextricably linked to one another. Leadership and management are both vital to the efficient operation of an organization; but, they accomplish very different things in the process. Leadership is a necessary skill for anyone aspiring to be an effective manager. The terms management and leadership are synonymous with one another. In this manner, we are able to draw the conclusion that a manager who demonstrates the traits of a successful leader is, in fact, a manager who is effective.

Leadership in School

Leadership is essential in nearly every group, as we've seen above. That group includes one's educational institution. Every school needs an outstanding figure to serve as its head of school. Class monitor, assembly captain, cultural leader, etc. are all examples of leadership roles that can be taken on at school, but this raises the question of what makes a person a successful school leader.

Any student hoping to be chosen as a student body leader will need to demonstrate a wide range of competencies. He or she needs to be a consistent student who pays attention in class and does well in extracurricular activities. For the simple reason that no intelligent and hardworking kid would ever be considered for leadership. Student leaders are most often selected from among those who participate fully in all activities.

Leadership in Organization

Leadership in an organization, also known as organizational leadership, is the process of establishing long-term objectives that further the company's mission and help it reach its ultimate destination. This is a classic illustration of how Bill Gates often works with his team: they agree on a strategy, and Gates implements it. To the same extent, it is the responsibility of the leader in each given organization to determine what it is that the group is trying to accomplish.

Leadership in Politics

Leadership in politics, also known as political leadership, is the process of becoming actively involved in a political party in the role of a party leader. Knowledge of political processes, their outcomes, and the political agenda is central to the idea of political leadership.

An effective leader can be developed in anyone who has the determination and drives to do so. Both the strengths and the areas for improvement should be nurtured. Whether in the classroom, the workplace, or the political arena, leadership is always necessary. Therefore, one can exercise leadership anywhere they like inside their own organization.

What are the types of Leadership?

The ability to lead is a rare trait that not everyone possesses. The ability to do so is a gift, so count your blessings if you possess it. It's recommended that you hone it even more so that you can propel your career forward and serve as an example to people around you. However, it is crucial to grasp the various leadership styles before you go ahead and polish your skills.

Types of Leadership Styles

Democratic Leadership

In this style of management, subordinates are given a voice in decision-making. Although the subordinates' efforts are highlighted, the leader is ultimately held responsible for the group's actions. Many people find this type of leadership to be effective.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leaders motivate and inspire others to adopt new behaviors and ways of thinking in order to improve their own performance and that of their teams and organizations. A transformational leader is someone who encourages their team to strive for greater things and works to boost morale and output.

Team Leadership

A good leader fully incorporates his team into the task at hand. Members of the team are motivated to reach their goals and advance in their careers thanks to the leadership of the group.

Strategic Leadership

It requires a chief executive who doesn't restrict himself to brainstorming sessions with his superiors. He contributes on every level of the team. He is well-liked for his ability to unite the need for fresh ideas with the necessity of grounding them in reality.

Autocratic Leadership

The leader in a command and control structure is the center of attention. The chief executive has absolute power in this setting. He decides things on his own, without polling his staff. He relays this information to his staff and stresses the importance of swift action. The buck stops with him, and he alone must answer for his actions. Not much room for negotiation exists. It's no secret that this method of leading has its detractors.

Visionary Leadership

This kind of leader appreciates the abilities and requirements of his team members. He describes his ideal outcome and the teamwork that will be necessary to attain it.

Coaching Leadership

Leaders who coach their teams do so regularly in an effort to raise output. He inspires his employees to do better and works to keep them motivated. This approach to leadership has been much praised.

Facilitative Leadership

With occasional guidance, a facilitative leader ensures that the process runs smoothly for his team. As a precaution in case his team is ineffective. If the team is highly effective, the leader will take a hands-off approach.

Cross-Cultural Leadership

The leadership of this type is necessary when interacting with people from various cultural backgrounds. Because of the wide variety of cultures represented in the workforce across the United States, many managers and executives hold cross-cultural positions.

Laissez-Faire Leadership

The members of the team are given responsibility in this style of management. They are free to choose how they spend their time at work, with minimal oversight from the boss. It's not a good way to lead, according to experts.

Transactional Leadership

An interactive approach is integral to this kind of leadership. When team members successfully implement their leader's ideas and choices, they are rewarded with immediate, material benefits.

Charismatic Leadership

In order to bring out the best in his followers, this kind of leader makes the effort to change their attitudes, values, and actions.

This article should dispel the notion that leadership qualities can't be further subdivided. It should also assist you in pinpointing your own personal brand of leadership so you can perfect it over time.

Final Words

In conclusion, leadership is a complex and multifaceted concept that involves various qualities and skills. Effective leaders possess traits such as integrity, vision, empathy, decisiveness, and the ability to inspire and motivate others. They are able to navigate challenges, make difficult decisions, and lead their team toward success. Leadership also involves continuous learning and self-improvement, as leaders must adapt to changing circumstances and remain relevant. Effective leadership can have a positive impact on both individuals and organizations, fostering growth and creating a culture of success.

You can use Jenni.ai to quickly compose an essay on leadership, or any other topic, of your choosing. It's a fantastic choice that promises convenience and relief. Create an essay on any topic in a matter of minutes with the help of our AI-powered program. Membership is immediately available upon your free registration here.

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• How to Structure a Leadership Essay (Samples to Consider)

Leadership is a complex concept, but it’s essential for boosting your career. That’s why a leadership essay focuses on applying the theoretical models and concepts of successful management to real-life situations. 

If you don’t know where to start writing such a paper, please read on for professional tips!

What Is Leadership Essay?

A leadership essay is a paper that analyzes leadership concepts and their application to real-life situations that may involve everyday business management, crisis situations, and other scenarios. 

Every essay on leadership is about defining a concept. Then, it’s either comparing it to similar management tools or proving that it’s useful (or not).

While some students enjoy writing such papers, other learners hate them. The below samples will come in handy, no matter which group is yours.

What Does Leadership Mean to You? (Essay Sample)

It is one of the most popular topics for a leadership essay. If you need to write a paper like that, ask yourself:

• Who is a good leader?  
• What style do they use?  
• What are the situations when they might switch styles?

You may take a more personal approach to such an essay if your professor allows you to. In the example below, you will see the academic approach to this topic. It analyzes three leadership styles to discover which one corresponds to the meaning of leadership if one thinks of it as guidance and support.

Why I Want to Participate in a Leadership Program (Essay Sample)

It’s another example of a popular topic. Such papers often have a meaning beyond the classroom since they may decide whether you plan to participate in a specific program. It’s critical to make them as effective and compelling as possible.

A personalized approach is the best when it comes to essays like this. In the example below, you will see the paper that relies on individual beliefs and a personal life story to explain why it’s so important for the specific student to participate in the chosen program.

How to Write a Leadership Essay

Like every other essay, this paper has an introduction, several body paragraphs, and a conclusion summarizing your thoughts. (1) The most important part of the introduction is the final sentence,  aka  a thesis statement. That’s where you state your claim to prove or develop in your leadership essay.

Each body paragraph should correspond to the purpose of your essay. To ensure you don’t stray from the aim you’ve established in the thesis statement, write the topic sentences for all your paragraphs in the outline . In simple words, write the first sentence of every paragraph to define its development in advance and see if you cover everything you need.

And now, to the conclusion:

Its most essential element is thesis restatement or the first sentence of that paragraph. It’s not just paraphrasing your thesis; it’s also considering the new information you’ve discovered while writing the essay.

Structure :

• Introduction (End it with a thesis statement.)
• Body paragraphs (Each one starts with a topic sentence.)
• Conclusion (Start it with a thesis restatement.)

Understand the purpose of a leadership essay

When starting to write, think about why you’re creating this paper. Before you sit down and type the words, think about the ideas you want to convey and their meaning in your life:

Can this essay teach you to take responsibility? Or maybe will it help you understand how to be a leader in crisis situations? When you’ve answered the “why” question, begin outlining.

Build a strong thesis

Always start with your thesis statement. It will help incorporate your answer to that notorious “why” question into your essay. Once done, you can plan out the rest of the paper and start working on the body paragraphs as soon as you finish the introduction.

There’s another important tip —don’t rush into writing the conclusion before you finish everything else!

It might seem like a good idea to create a thesis statement and thesis restatement right off the bat. However, you’ll find yourself with more refreshing ideas after completing all the research and thinking necessary for the introduction and each body paragraph.

Decide on a structure; format accordingly

Even if your essay about leadership seems not so formal, and you can use personal pronouns, you still need a clear structure.

The best way to write any academic paper is to keep your introduction and conclusion as short as possible. (But no shorter than three sentences and four lines of text). 

Another important tip is to try making all your body paragraphs equal in length. That way, you’ll give the same attention to all the vital points of your essay.

Ready to Write Your Essay on Leadership Now?

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the most critical elements of a leadership essay. 

Remember the structure, grammar, and appropriate academic style to create a top-level paper. Please don’t forget to answer the “why” question and remember  why  you’re writing. Then you’ll impress everyone with your results!

References:

• https://lsa.umich.edu/onsf/news-events/all-news/directors-blog/writing-leadership-essays.html
• Essay samples
• Essay writing
• Writing tips

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A Full Guide On How To Create Good Leadership Essay

Attempting a leadership essay isn’t such a daunting task, provided you have a grasp of the necessary information needed for a leadership paper. To write this special essay, you’ll need to redefine what exactly an essay on leadership is, how to choose the perfect topic, what should be in the content, and how to organize and structure the paper. Let’s delve deeper!

What Is A Leadership Essay?

A leadership essay is a well-formatted, organized and specialized type of formal writing which elaborates on a generic leadership topic or a superior human figure exercising a great influence on people and transmitting desire and optimism to achieve goals.

What Makes A Good Leader Essay?

There are some peculiarities needed to infuse in your write-up if, for example, you’re trying to learn how to write a leadership essay about yourself.

Also, if you’re just trying to produce leadership essays for college, then you’d first and foremost, learn  how to structure an essay , among other skills needed for this type of essay. Here are some qualities which can be found in a good essay about leadership.

• Choose a creative topic
• Avoid the passive voice (the active voice sounds stronger)
• Search for and study leadership essay examples
• Follow the appropriate essay style
• Focus on the essay structure
• Review the essay

How To Choose A Topic And Make A Great Title?

To choose a topic for a paper on leadership, you need to do some research on the concept of a leader (whether in the corporate industry, political society or even in the criminal world). You have to know the current leadership tendencies in organizational groups or society. You can choose to make a leader the point of your reference by explaining the consequences of their leadership abilities or inabilities.

In the body of your essay, don’t forget to mention several types of leadership styles and point out which one the subject portrays. Finally, you should not rule out making comparisons of famous leaders in the modern world or in history. An example of a great prompt for a leadership essay that deploys the comparison technique would be the leadership styles of President Trump and The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte as both leadership styles have been subjected to political reviews in recent times since their emergence as president of their respective countries.

Outline For A Leadership Essay

When writing a college or professional essay such as -long and short essays on leadership, planning is the key to perfection. The general outline for any essay, including leadership papers, include an introduction, the body paragraphs (which must be properly linked with transition words and/or phrases) and a recapitulating or finding-based conclusions. Here’s what your outline should look like:

Introduction

Knowing how to start a leadership essay depends on your introduction writing ability. The introduction is the gateway to the essay. Aided by punchy opening words, which are the hook, the purpose of the introduction is to draw the reader’s attention. The introduction presents the thesis statement and leaves the body paragraphs to sustain the reader’s interest.

Body Paragraphs

Having informed the readers of the topic of the essay in the introductory paragraph(s), the body paragraphs follow immediately.

Here, you can elaborate on the concept of leadership and do a meaningful interpretation of the subject – the topic or the thesis statement. Don’t forget to talk about your leadership philosophies and leadership experience in whatever capacity you might have found yourself in. Remember, people are more interested in personal experiences. They are great in helping to sustain readers’ attention.

Remember to state a thesis or hypothesis in the opening paragraphs – which is the intro. In each of the body paragraphs of the essay, try to relate your points to the thesis and use each point to prove its validity.

The conclusion is the end part of any well-structured essay. Its purpose is a no-brainer. You don’t want to leave your reader hanging by ending the essay cold turkey. Any standard essay without a conclusion is just as useless as an essay with no purpose. However, be careful not to present new ideas not mentioned in the body.

As mentioned, the conclusion serves to summarize the developed points, restate the thesis and/or present the findings. It is your last opportunity to create an impression on the reader, and this is where they take the message away. If your conclusion is weak, then we might say the essay’s objectives are not achieved.

What To Include In A Leadership Essay?

Here are some tips on what your leadership essay should include.

Your Definition Of A Good Leader And Why He Or She Is Important

Since your essay revolves around leadership and the traits of a good leader, you’ll need to define what it takes to be one. You may also take this opportunity to trash some common myths on what a leader is (i.e., a manager being confused for a leader).

For reference purposes, the concepts of leadership and being a good leader are explained:

Leadership is the quality of a leader and is that person capable of exercising a great influence on people and transmitting desire and optimism to achieve goals. A leader is a guide; someone with ideas and goals that can spread to a large group of people who still believe he or she can lead them in the right direction.

There are many types of leaders and therefore, of leadership since people generally always look for a person or group that shows them a direction to follow. You can find religious, political, social, or philosophical leadership. Leadership can be exercised in a traditional way. In many countries, there is a monarchy. The king or queen is a leader with limited political power, at least in western democracies, but still have the respect and consideration of the people. Their words continue to be heard and taken into account, especially in problematic times. There are other types of leadership that are not given by birth, such as legitimate leadership exercised by, for example, political leaders freely chosen by their people, or charismatic leaders.

In a way, charismatic leaders are what many understand as leaders since they are people who, by their way of behavior and characteristics, get many people to follow and adhere to their ideas. Some charismatic leaders can become legitimate leaders if they choose the path of politics. A traditional leader can also be charismatic. There have always been kings loved by his people more than others. But it can also be a person who prefers independent movements outside of power.

Charisma is the personal magnetism a person has. It is something very difficult to define but makes one capable of convincing others without too much effort, making people follow and trust the leading figure. Charisma can be used positively or negatively. The leaders of the most destructive sects are very charismatic people that are capable of convincing their followers of the eeriest ideas, including donating all their belongings or committing collective suicide.

Examples Of Your Leadership Style

In the content of your essay, you may consider giving an interpretation to your (or your chosen leader’s) leadership traits. Below are some examples of leadership qualities that separate a good leader from a bad leader.

What qualities are necessary for leadership

• Communication
• Emotional intelligence
• Strategic thinking
• Commitment and passion
• Knowledge and experience
• Leading by example
• Active listening
• Ability to enhance talent
• Setting goals and expectations
• People investment
• Discernment
• Concentration
• Positive attitude
• Problem-solving
• Self-discipline

Leadership Essay Example

To know how to do essay fast, you’ll need some ready-made essay examples for the sake of guidance and inspiration. You may find below a leadership essay written by Oliver Smith useful in your leadership paper.

Writing a leadership essay should be easy. A good essay on leadership starts from the hook, and the thesis statement in the introduction. The points developed in the body paragraphs help affirm the hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion offers the reader a summary through the restatement of the essay’s main idea.

As required for every essay type, your essay on leadership has to follow a definite style and format. Examples are MLA, APA, Chicago and AP styles. Take your time in choosing a creative but new topic and also in writing the content. By following this guide, everything should be as perfect as possible.

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The Importance of Leadership Training Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Benefits of training.

In the current fast-paced environment, having leadership knowledge and skills can be instrumental for advancing one’s career as well as facilitating personal development based on self-reflection and the understanding of leadership tendencies.

Participating in the class of 2022 IARFuture Leadership Initiative could be a good start and a step toward gaining the necessary skillset for becoming an effective leader. For an individual working as a Human Resource specialist, a leadership course can help align the practice with the person-centered approach and help improve the outcomes through the implementation of concrete actions. Notably, the course is necessary for learning how to carry out employee coaching and recognition to maximize satisfaction and retention, which is a crucial skill for an HR professional.

The IARFuture Leadership Initiative program covers topics such as data management and decision-making, as well as budget development and strategic use. Learning more about these topics is essential for understanding organizational success metrics and using them for improving decision-making both on a long- and short-term basis. Working in HR, budgetary considerations are important, especially for non-profits that help underserved individuals. Besides, there is previous experience of being a fundraiser and a payroll specialist, which means that there are skills upon which one can improve.

Finally, being a Black woman presents a disadvantage in career development due to opportunity inequalities (Morgan Roberts & Mayo, 2019). Therefore, becoming a high-skilled specialist in the sphere of HR and attaining crucial leadership skills for career advancement is a much-needed step.

Morgan Roberts, L., & Mayo, A. (2019). Toward a racially just workplace. Harvard Business Review . Web.

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Anyone Can Learn to Be a Better Leader

• Monique Valcour

You just have to put in the work.

Occupying a leadership position is not the same thing as leading. To lead, you must be able to connect, motivate, and inspire a sense of ownership of shared objectives. Heightening your capacity to lead others requires being able to see how you think and act, and how your behavior affects others. Leading well requires a continuous journey of personal development. Yet people in leadership roles often eschew the long and challenging work of deepening self-insight in favor of chasing after management “tools”— preferably the “quick ’n’ easy” kind, such as personality type assessments that reduce employees to a few simplistic behavioral tendencies. Tools can be handy aids to good leadership. But none of them can take the place of fearless introspection, feedback seeking, and committed efforts to behavioral change for greater effectiveness and increased positive impact on others.

When you’re an individual contributor, your ability to use your technical expertise to deliver results is paramount. Once you’ve advanced into a leadership role, however, the toolkit that you relied on to deliver individual results rarely equips you to succeed through others. Beware of falling into the logical trap of “if I can do this work well, I should be able to lead a team of people who do this work.” This would be true if leading others were akin to operating a more powerful version of the same machinery you operated previously. But it’s not; machinery doesn’t perform better or worse based on what it thinks about you and how you make it feel, while humans do .

• MV Monique Valcour is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and management professor. She helps clients create and sustain fulfilling and high-performance jobs, careers, workplaces, and lives. moniquevalcour

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Home › Blog › The impact and importance of leadership training

The impact and importance of leadership training

Great leaders are secure in their role and in their ability to do their jobs. They communicate well with their teams and mentor their employees. They make sure they know what their teams need to do their jobs, and meet their own goals. They challenge their staff and hold them accountable, but they also take responsibility if the team fails at something.

Good leaders are advocates, mentors, and coaches. They’re also something else: rare. According to Gallup’s latest State of the Workplace report, just 21 percent of employees strongly feel they’re being managed “in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.”

Why are great leaders so scarce? It’s not because most managers are incapable of leadership. It’s simply that most managers aren’t getting the guidance they need before they’re placed in leadership roles.

When a manager isn’t trained

Back when I was a reporter for a small, local newspaper, the newsrooms I worked in were filled with reporters and editors. The reporters were young; hired right out of college to work for the paper, and they were paid the lowest salary. As they got older, and better at their jobs, they wanted bigger salaries and leadership positions, so when an editor left, the reporters would often apply for an editorial job.

The problem? Being an editor requires a different set of skills than being a reporter. You have to know how to assign stories, deal with the public, and more importantly manage a staff of often-unruly reporters. For one of those unruly reporters to make the jump to team leader was often difficult and came with a learning curve. Because there wasn’t any leadership training at that particular job (money was tight for newspapers back in the ‘00s) editors learned management on the job, and that could be rough on the new editor and the rest of the team.

That’s not a problem unique to journalism. Plenty of organizations expect new managers to jump into their roles and either sink or swim. Harvard Business Review’s State of Leadership Development report found that 43 percent of businesses — mostly small businesses without big development budgets — have inconsistent or underperforming leadership training programs.

Can you really train leadership?

There is an old debate about whether leadership can really be taught, a subject similar to another recent Litmos blog post about whether Emotional Intelligence (EI) can be taught . These are important questions about whether great leaders are people who have a certain set of qualities (such as high EI / EQ) that inherently make them good leaders.

Even if  true leaders are born, there are certain skills that all leaders need to know in order to be effective leaders right away, and those skills can be taught. Take coaching, for example.

Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report offered up the example of the manager who only talks to staff about performance once a year, during each employee’s annual review. That sort of check-in can be stressful for everyone, and it doesn’t always address an employee’s day-to-day work, focusing instead on big jobs completed during the year.

In order to better engage employees, Gallup reports that many organizations are trying to move toward more frequent, ongoing conversations about performance between staff and managers. A coaching model enables managers to check in with team members more frequently, learn more about the team members, provide meaningful feedback, and set goals with them rather than for them.

But there’s a problem with this model: not many managers know how to have these sorts of coaching conversations when they become managers. For those who might not naturally possess the ability to coach others, trying to have such a conversation without being trained, could prove even worse than a task-focused annual review.

“Without managers receiving guidance on how to communicate effectively, ongoing performance conversations have the potential to create cultures of micromanagement, further discouraging and frustrating employees,” wrote Gallup.

Fortunately, coaching is a skill that can be learned. So can communication and other leadership skills. The willingness to lead might be innate, but all leaders can benefit from some training.

Leadership training is a benefit

Leadership training may not seem be offered by every organization, but employees prize it. Millennials in particular consider leadership training a job perk.

Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s (PwC) report on Millennials At Work found millennials were more interested in learning and development than in other kinds of benefits, including cash bonuses. They are also interested in moving into leadership positions, and fast; 52 percent of respondents said they’d choose a job that would let them advance through the ranks quickly over one with a higher salary.

Companies of all sizes that want to attract and retain promising employees will have to put thought into their leadership development programs.

How might that look? That might look like a coaching model (according to PwC, millennials respond well to mentoring). That could be as simple as identifying talented employees and recommending them for in-house corporate development, like a formal or even informal mentoring program. It could also take the form of content, like a leadership course or series .

Whatever form leadership development takes, the organization should make sure it’s meeting the needs of its employees and its managers. After all, leadership development isn’t just a perk for the employee, it’s a perk for company as a whole.

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A.J. O'Connell is a freelance writer specializing in e-learning, training, and sales. She has written for brands including Apollo Education Group, Pipedrive, College for America, Acrobatiq, ProSales Systems, and SchoolKeep. A writer and journalist since 2000, she has published articles and essays in Campus Technology, The Establishment, The Mary Sue, The Next Web, The Billfold, and The Huffington Post.

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What is leadership?

All leaders, to a certain degree, do the same thing. Whether you’re talking about an executive, manager, sports coach, or schoolteacher, leadership is about guiding and impacting outcomes, enabling groups of people to work together to accomplish what they couldn’t do working individually. In this sense, leadership is something you do, not something you are. Some people in formal leadership positions are poor leaders, and many people exercising leadership have no formal authority. It is their actions, not their words, that inspire trust and energy.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on leadership

Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Carolyn Dewar is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, Scott Keller is a senior partner in the Southern California office, and Vik Malhotra and Ramesh Srinivasan are senior partners in the New York office.

What’s more, leadership is not something people are born with—it is a skill you can learn. At the core are mindsets, which are expressed through observable behaviors , which then lead to measurable outcomes. Is a leader communicating effectively or engaging others by being a good listener? Focusing on behaviors lets us be more objective when assessing leadership effectiveness. The key to unlocking shifts in behavior is focusing on mindsets, becoming more conscious about our thoughts and beliefs, and showing up with integrity as our full authentic selves.

There are many contexts and ways in which leadership is exercised. But, according to McKinsey analysis of academic literature as well as a survey of nearly 200,000 people in 81 organizations all over the world, there are four types of behavior that account for 89 percent of leadership effectiveness :

• being supportive
• operating with a strong results orientation
• seeking different perspectives
• solving problems effectively

Effective leaders know that what works in one situation will not necessarily work every time. Leadership strategies must reflect each organization’s context and stage of evolution. One important lens is organizational health, a holistic set of factors that enable organizations to grow and succeed over time. A situational approach  enables leaders to focus on the behaviors that are most relevant as an organization becomes healthier.

Senior leaders must develop a broad range of skills to guide organizations. Ten timeless topics are important for leading nearly any organization, from attracting and retaining talent  to making culture a competitive advantage. A 2017 McKinsey book, Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths (Bloomsbury, 2017), goes deep on each aspect.

How is leadership evolving?

In the past, leadership was called “management,” with an emphasis on providing technical expertise and direction. The context was the traditional industrial economy command-and-control organization, where leaders focused exclusively on maximizing value for shareholders. In these organizations, leaders had three roles: planners (who develop strategy, then translate that strategy into concrete steps), directors (who assign responsibilities), or controllers (who ensure people do what they’ve been assigned and plans are adhered to).

What are the limits of traditional management styles?

Traditional management was revolutionary in its day and enormously effective in building large-scale global enterprises that have materially improved lives over the past 200 years. However, with the advent of the 21st century, this approach is reaching its limits.

For one thing, this approach doesn’t guarantee happy or loyal managers or workers. Indeed, a large portion of American workers—56 percent— claim their boss is mildly or highly toxic , while 75 percent say dealing with their manager is the most stressful part of their workday.

For 21st-century organizations operating in today’s complex business environment, a fundamentally new and more effective approach to leadership is emerging. Leaders today are beginning to focus on building agile, human-centered, and digitally enabled organizations able to thrive in today’s unprecedented environment and meet the needs of a broader range of stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, and communities, in addition to investors).

What is the emerging new approach to leadership?

This new approach to leadership is sometimes described as “ servant leadership .” While there has been some criticism of the nomenclature, the idea itself is simple: rather than being a manager directing and controlling people, a more effective approach is for leaders to be in service of the people they lead. The focus is on how leaders can make the lives of their team members easier—physically, cognitively, and emotionally. Research suggests this mentality can enhance both team performance and satisfaction.

In this new approach, leaders practice empathy, compassion, vulnerability, gratitude, self-awareness, and self-care. They provide appreciation and support, creating psychological safety so their employees are able to collaborate, innovate, and raise issues as appropriate. This includes celebrating achieving the small steps on the way to reaching big goals and enhancing people’s well-being through better human connections. These conditions have been shown to allow for a team’s best performance.

More broadly, developing this new approach to leadership can be expressed as making five key shifts that include, build on, and extend beyond traditional approaches:

• beyond executive to visionary, shaping a clear purpose that resonates with and generates holistic impact for all stakeholders
• beyond planner to architect, reimagining industries and innovating business systems that are able to create new levels of value
• beyond director to catalyst, engaging people to collaborate in open, empowered networks
• beyond controller to coach, enabling the organization to constantly evolve through rapid learning, and enabling colleagues to build new mindsets, knowledge, and skills
• beyond boss to human, showing up as one’s whole, authentic self

Together, these shifts can help a leader expand their repertoire and create a new level of value for an organization’s stakeholders. The last shift is the most important, as it is based on developing a new level of consciousness and awareness of our inner state. Leaders who look inward  and take a journey of genuine self-discovery make profound shifts in themselves and their lives; this means they are better able to benefit their organization. That involves developing “profile awareness” (a combination of a person’s habits of thought, emotions, hopes, and behavior in different circumstances) and “state awareness” (the recognition of what’s driving a person to take action). Combining individual, inward-looking work with outward-facing actions can help create lasting change.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

Leaders must learn to make these five shifts at three levels : transforming and evolving personal mindsets and behaviors; transforming teams to work in new ways; and transforming the broader organization by building new levels of agility, human-centeredness, and value creation into the entire enterprise’s design and culture.

An example from the COVID-19 era offers a useful illustration of this new approach to leadership. In pursuit of a vaccine breakthrough, at the start of the pandemic Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel increased the frequency of executive meetings  from once a month to twice a week. The company implemented a decentralized model enabling teams to work independently and deliver on the bold goal of providing 100 million doses of vaccines in 12 months. “The pace was unprecedented,” Bancel said.

What is the impact of this new approach to leadership?

This new approach to leadership is far more effective. While the dynamics are complex, countless studies show empirical links among effective leadership, employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profitability.

How can leaders empower employees?

Empowering employees , surprisingly enough, might mean taking a more hands-on leadership approach. Organizations whose leaders successfully empower others through coaching are nearly four times more likely to make swift, good decisions and outperform other companies . But this type of coaching isn’t always natural for those with a more controlling or autocratic style.

Here are five tips to get started  if you’re a leader looking to empower others:

• Provide clear rules, for example, by providing guardrails for what success looks like and communicating who makes which decisions. Clarity and boundary structures like role remits and responsibilities help to contain any anxiety associated with work and help teams stay focused on their primary tasks.
• Establish clear roles, say, by assigning one person the authority to make certain decisions.
• Avoid being a complicit manager—for instance, if you’ve delegated a decision to a team, don’t step in and solve the problem for them.
• Address culture and skills, for instance, by helping employees learn how to have difficult conversations.
• Begin soliciting personal feedback from others, at all levels of your organization, on how you are experienced as a leader.

How can leaders communicate effectively?

Good, clear communication is a leadership hallmark. Fundamental tools of effective communication  include:

• defining and pointing to long-term goals
• listening to and understanding stakeholders
• creating openings for dialogue
• communicating proactively

And in times of uncertainty, these things are important for crisis communicators :

• give people what they need, when they need it
• communicate clearly, simply, and frequently
• choose candor over charisma
• revitalize a spirit of resilience
• distill meaning from chaos
• support people, teams, and organizations to build the capability for self-sufficiency

Learn more about our People & Organizational Performance Practice .

Is leadership different in a hybrid workplace?

A leader’s role may look slightly different in remote or hybrid workplace settings . Rather than walking around a physical site, these leaders might instead model what hybrid looks like, or orchestrate work based on tasks, interactions, or purpose. Being communicative and radiating positivity  can go a long way. Leaders need to find other ways to be present and accessible, for example, via virtual drop-in sessions, regular company podcasts, or virtual townhalls. Leaders in these settings may also need to find new ways to get authentic feedback. These tactics can include pulse surveys or learning to ask thoughtful follow-up questions that reveal useful management insights.

Additional considerations, such as making sure that in-person work and togetherness has a purpose, are important. Keeping an eye on inclusivity in hybrid work  is also crucial. Listening to what employees want, with an eye to their lived experience, will be vital to leaders in these settings. And a focus on output, outcomes, results, and impact—rather than arbitrary norms about time spent in offices— may be a necessary adaptation in the hybrid era .

How should CEOs lead in this new world?

Just as for leadership more broadly, today’s environment requires CEOs to lead very differently. Recent research indicates that one-third to one-half of new CEOs fail within 18 months.

What helps top performers thrive today? To find out, McKinsey led a research effort to identify the CEOs who achieved breakaway success. We examined 20 years’ worth of data on 7,800 CEOs—from 3,500 public companies across 70 countries and 24 industries. The result is the McKinsey book CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest (Scribner, March 2022). Watch an interview with the authors for more on what separates the best CEOs from the rest .

Getting perspective on leadership from CEOs themselves is enlightening—and illustrates the nuanced ways in which the new approach to leadership described above can be implemented in practice. Here are a few quotes drawn from McKinsey’s interviews with these top-level leaders :

• “I think the fundamental role of a leader is to look for ways to shape the decades ahead, not just react to the present, and to help others accept the discomfort of disruptions to the status quo.” — Indra Nooyi , former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
• “The single most important thing I have to do as CEO is ensure that our brand continues to be relevant.” — Chris Kempczinski , CEO of McDonald’s
• “Leaders of other enterprises often define themselves as captains of the ship, but I think I’m more the ship’s architect or designer. That’s different from a captain’s role, in which the route is often fixed and the destination defined.” — Zhang Ruimin , CEO of Haier
• “I think my leadership style [can be called] ‘collaborative command.’ You bring different opinions into the room, you allow for a really great debate, but you understand that, at the end of the day, a decision has to be made quickly.” — Adena Friedman , CEO of Nasdaq
• “We need an urgent refoundation of business and capitalism around purpose and humanity. To find new ways for all of us to lead so that we can create a better future, a more sustainable future.” — Hubert Joly , former chairman and CEO of Best Buy

What is leadership development?

Leaders aren’t born; they learn to lead over time. Neuroplasticity refers to the power of the brain to form new pathways and connections through exposure to novel, unfamiliar experiences. This allows adults to adapt, grow, and learn new practices throughout our lifetimes.

When it comes to leadership within organizations, this is often referred to as leadership development. Programs, books, and courses on leadership development abound, but results vary.

Leadership development efforts fail for a variety of reasons. Some overlook context; in those cases, asking a simple question (something like “What, precisely, is this program for?”) can help. Others separate reflections on leadership from real work, or they shortchange the role of adjusting leaders’ mindsets, feelings, assumptions, and beliefs, or they fail to measure results.

So what’s needed for successful leadership development? Generally, developing leaders is about creating contexts where there is sufficient psychological safety in combination with enough novelty and unfamiliarity to cultivate new leadership practices in response to stimuli. Leadership programs that successfully cultivate leaders are also built around “placescapes”—these are novel experiences, like exploring wilderness trails, practicing performing arts, or writing poetry.

When crafting a leadership development program, there are six ingredients to incorporate  that lead to true organizational impact:

• Set up for success:
• Focus your leadership transformation on driving strategic objectives and initiatives.
• Commit the people and resources needed.
• Be clear about focus:
• Engage a critical mass of leaders to reach a tipping point for sustained impact.
• Zero in on the leadership shifts that drive the greatest value.
• Execute well:
• Architect experiential journeys to maximize shifts in mindsets, capabilities, and practices.
• Measure for holistic impact.

A well-designed and executed leadership development program can help organizations build leaders’ capabilities broadly, at scale. And these programs can be built around coaching, mentoring, and having people try to solve challenging problems—learning skills by applying them in real time to real work.

What are mentorship, sponsorship, and apprenticeship?

Mentorship, sponsorship, and apprenticeship can also be part of leadership development efforts. What are they? Mentorship refers to trusted counselors offering guidance and support on various professional issues, such as career progression. Sponsorship is used to describe senior leaders who create opportunities to help junior colleagues succeed. These roles are typically held by more senior colleagues, whereas apprenticeship could be more distributed. Apprenticeship  describes the way any colleague with domain expertise might teach others, model behaviors, or transfer skills. These approaches can be useful not only for developing leaders but also for helping your company upskill or reskill employees quickly and at scale.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s insights on People & Organizational Performance . Learn more about McKinsey’s Leadership & Management  work—and check out job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

• “ Author Talks: What separates the best CEOs from the rest? ,” December 15, 2021, Carolyn Dewar , Scott Keller , and Vik Malhotra
• “ From the great attrition to the great adaptation ,” November 3, 2021, Aaron De Smet  and Bill Schaninger
• “ The boss factor: Making the world a better place through workplace relationships ,” September 22, 2020, Tera Allas  and Bill Schaninger
• " Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st century organizations ," October 1, 2018, Aaron De Smet , Michael Lurie, and Andrew St. George
• " Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths ," 2017, Scott Keller  and Mary Meaney
• “ Leadership in context ,” January 1, 2016, Michael Bazigos, Chris Gagnon, and Bill Schaninger
• “ Decoding leadership: What really matters ,” January 1, 2015, Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan

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Why leadership skills training is beneficial for your career

Leadership skills training: the essential ingredient for career success.

Effective leaders are able to call upon a toolbox full of leadership skills and abilities that allow them to guide both their organization and their team members towards success.

A great way for managers to improve their capabilities, inspire their teams and achieve outstanding business results is through proper leadership skills training . Successful leaders are able to transform organizations, enhance value creation, create efficiencies and engage their employees to deliver better results. Through leadership skills training, managers can learn how to create a vision for their team and how to inspire others to achieve it. They can also learn how to delegate tasks, build trust, and handle conflict.

A good leader should motivate, inspire and help develop those who report to them, while also making sure that the goals of the team align with the larger goals of the organization.

Leadership skills training programs typically offers multiple benefits. Finding the right training program can help you build the skills necessary to advance your career. Leadership skills training typically encourages managers and leaders to:

• Find new, innovative ways of developing and managing people
• Challenge themselves and identify who they want to be as a leader
• Tackle the broader societal issues the face and how leaders contribute to that
• Develop the emotional intelligence to handle different situations

In this post we’ll detail  three key questions :

• What are the key benefits of  leadership skills training  and why should individuals, or organizations be interested?
• What are the different situations wherein leadership skills training becomes helpful?
• What aspects should you be looking for in leadership skills training programs?

Leadership skills training helps breed a culture of high-performance

CFO: “What if we invest in people and they leave?” … CEO: “What if we don’t and they stay”

Getting to the top in any organization is no mean feat, staying there is even harder. Leaders who are able to rise through their organization often do so through hard work, dedication and a solid set of skills. However, the journey does not end when you reach the top.

It is imperative as a leader that you are constantly challenging the status quo, and pushing yourself to acquire new skills, or improve existing ones. We live in a perpetually competitive business environment. Pursuing leadership skills training is an essential ingredient to staying relevant. Here are our key advantages of leadership training:

• You will be able to formulate and i mplement effective leadership strategies .
• You will develop the capabilities needed to  increase your team’s work productivity .
• You will explore ways to help you  decrease employee turnover  and increase engagement, creating a strong and united team.
• You will work to  identify and improve your  leadership style .
• You will  develop your communication skills , mastering the art of negotiation, influence and conflict management.
• You will  become more confident as a leader  and find new ways of influencing the teams you lead.
• You will  learn how to effectively connect to people , developing the ability to give constructive feedback, and critically seek the feedback of your team.

A leaders ability to motivate, inspire and guide a team to success takes more than just shouting orders from the sidelines. It requires a deep understanding of human behavior, as well as the ability to manage different personality types.

Explore our range of executive leadership programs »

4 key career stages where leadership skills training is important

Early to mid-career leadership skills training.

You are at the earlier stages of your career, in many cases this starts with excelling within a functional capacity, such as Marketing, Finance, IT or Communications. You want to take the next step, moving from functional management to business leadership, this is the ideal time to develop your leadership skills .

At this stage in your career you may have a vision for where you want to be and as you prepare for greater responsibility you need to develop your own leadership style and build self-awareness for the challenges you will face in the future.

Pursuing leadership skills training earlier on in your career is going to provide you with a strong foundation, helping you to develop core elements of how you lead. You are also going to have access to network and learn from others in different industries. Choosing a leadership training provider with a large network and access to different cultures and industries will be of huge benefit.

It is also vital as a leader to learn how to effectively manage your time, and resources. Inevitably as you grow in stature within your organization, so will your responsibilities. Understanding how to assign your time and resources will be critical to your success as a leader.

Mid-career leadership skills training

Your boss has priorities. Your direct reports have questions. Peers and colleagues ask you for help and toss extra projects your way. The result: You regularly get pulled in different directions.

Working hard and helping others has gotten you this far in your career, but now, new skills are required in order to keep advancing. This space is where many executives stagnate, and this can often be linked to a variety of factors – one key one is education.

You have been successful throughout your career, and as you have become more established in your position your organization looks to you to create higher value in a rapidly changing environment. It is important to remember that the skills that got you here may not necessarily be the skills that will keep you here. You have to embrace lifelong learning.

Read more about lifelong learning to drive competitiveness »

Business leadership training  can help mid-career managers to create higher value for their company in today’s fast-changing global environment. This career stage is also a good time to consider more in-depth programs such as an  Executive MBA .

C-Suite/Senior Executive level leadership skills training

Leading an organization at the highest level is a challenging undertaking. It takes an enormous level of dedication and drive to be successful. Seasoned leaders have spent years honing their skills, and have likely participated in leadership skills training programs.

As a senior executive or C-suite member, you need to maintain your ability to find and leverage new business opportunities, drive innovation, and lead with conviction. This is where training and time for reflection is key. Taking time out to work on yourself will pay dividends in the long-term.

One specific element of leadership skills training at this stage in your career is the opportunity to network. To connect with other senior executives. Here you will be able to share your challenges, and get inputs from others as well as exploring the challenges faced in other industries.

Board Member (or aspiring Board Member) level leadership skills training

You are a board member, or you want to become a board member. As a company director, it is expected that you already possess strong practical and expertise within your sector, in addition to knowing how boards work. Board members are not born with all of the skills they need , this is something that must be developed over time.

Board member training will give you a toolbox of skills, including a better understanding of compliance and performance and an understanding of proper board structures and legal obligations. As well as developing skills in areas such as Digital Transformation, or Sustainability, topics which are becoming increasingly important for board members.

Many boards have failed over the years because they were unable to overcome ‘group think’ – the tendency for individuals from similar backgrounds to think the same way, despite one of the critical functions of the board being to introduce a variety of perspectives into decision-making.

As a board member the decisions you make are critical for your organization, being confident to make those decisions comes from experience, training and expertise.

How to choose a leadership skills training course

Before looking at different leadership courses, think about the  specific  leadership skills  you wish to develop .

For example, do you wish to improve your ability to motivate your team? To resolve conflict? Are you looking for training on business leadership? Do you need to build leadership skills in order to do your current job more effectively, or in order to take on a higher position?

The answers to questions like these will help  define the exact type of leadership skills training you should look for . It’s important that you are able to identify the motivating factors beforehand and track your progress afterwards in order to assess the impact of your training. Not just how it affected you as a leader, but also how it affected your team, and your organization.

When choosing a training provider, always look for:

• A proven track record of success
• Offers both standard and customized training programs
• Sees training as a process, not an isolated event
• Measures effectiveness and impact

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Below are key leadership tips and strategies for driving successful digital and AI transformation in Asia.  As organizations in Asia continue to evolve business models and cultural mindsets in their digital transformation and innovation journey, understanding how to navigate this dynamic landscape is crucial for leaders.  1. Understanding regional diversity   The key to successful transformation […]

As businesses worldwide navigate the complexities of digital transformation and digital culture, the demand for leaders who can seamlessly integrate new technologies into the fabric of their organizations’ operations becomes increasingly critical. Not only do these leaders need to be administrators but also visionaries who understand the potential of digital and AI technologies to revolutionize […]

In the swiftly evolving AI landscape, the call for a digital leader is louder than ever. With the advent of generative AI and rapid technological advancements, the competencies required for leadership are being fundamentally reshaped. Traditional models of management and strategy are making way for new paradigms that prize agility, vision, tenacity, and ambidexterity. Keep […]

87% of digital transformation initiatives fail.   In our swiftly evolving digital landscape, successful digital and AI transformation is proving to be an elusive goal for many organizations. At the same time, a silent and ever-widening chasm is separating the front runners from the stragglers. This divide is not just about the speed at which different […]

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Doctoral Students as Academic Leaders

By  Ralph A. Gigliotti and Maria J. Qadri

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We are pursuing our doctoral degrees during a time of significant change and disruption in higher education. Public scrutiny of colleges and universities is growing, due to issues related to increasing tuition costs, access to higher education, and student and faculty diversity. We are also seeing a perceived disconnect between the education and skills that colleges provide and the needs of an evolving work force. Public perceptions of administrative bloat and the growing debate over higher education as a public or private good also continue to challenge colleges and universities.

Institutions of higher education must continue to innovate to meet the diverse -- and often conflicting -- needs of many stakeholders. They must also continue to pursue new strategies to advance and succeed in an increasingly competitive environment. Given that such demands are not likely to disappear any time soon, doctoral programs must equip students with the skills and tools for best responding to them at a departmental and institutional level.

As undergraduate students, we both had the fortune of serving as student representatives on senior-level search committees for our respective institutions. This experience, coupled with our many co-curricular leadership activities, allowed us to see the inner workings of our institutions. We hunted for opportunities to become more involved in our departments, schools and institutions, realizing that the institutional agenda is set by the people who are present and those who choose to engage in the process. These experiences sparked our individual interests in higher education leadership and led us to participate in the Rutgers University Predoctoral Leadership Development Institute .

Doctoral students involved in the institute are simultaneously scholars in training and leaders in training. Although the goal of doctoral education is to engage students at an advanced level in specific areas of study, doctoral programs should seize the opportunity to prepare doctoral students as leaders, recognizing that many graduates will pursue leadership positions in higher education as well as other sectors. The traditional goals of the doctoral degree and the new opportunities for leadership education are not mutually exclusive. Based on our experience in leadership development programs, we have found that the repertoire of skills that one gains as a leader, along with the growth in self-confidence, can enhance and enrich one’s abilities as a scholar, researcher and teacher.

To fill the growing need for formal leadership training, instructors in the two-year PLDI program use a variety of instructional methods to teach a diverse cohort of doctoral candidates about the distinct challenges facing higher education and the formal and informal leadership competencies needed to excel in this sector. Given the already busy schedule of doctoral students across disciplines, sessions are held on Friday mornings during the academic year. Senior leaders from Rutgers and other institutions serve as guest speakers throughout the program, and key readings from higher education news outlets and higher education leadership texts provide a foundation for the weekly class seminars.

Building upon the seminars from the first year, institute fellows are paired with a campus mentor for the third semester of the program. Fellows shadow their mentors -- deans, directors, vice presidents and chancellors -- and analyze the leadership competencies they employ in their specific roles.

In the final semester, fellows participate in a capstone presentation to leadership-minded faculty, staff and peers on a complex and multifaceted topic of interest for leaders in higher education. Past topics have included online learning, academic freedom and faculty diversity. Beyond researching and presenting on the selected topic, fellows are expected to use the opportunity to analyze their own leadership competencies as a member of the group. In summary, the first year of the program provides a conceptual foundation for leadership in higher education, and the second year provides hands-on opportunities for leadership learning and practice.

After completing the institute, we saw an opportunity for further programming in this area, leading us to design a series of facilitated conversations with doctoral students around some of the leadership issues and major insights that emerged from our experience in the program. Those Success in Academic Leadership seminars are student-led sessions for graduate students and postdocs with an interest in academic leadership. The sessions are offered with support from the Graduate School New Brunswick, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership, and the Graduate Student Association. Past topics have included “Essential Insights for a Future Career in Higher Education” and “Mindful Communication for Leadership.”

Students who participate in these one-time workshops are invited to apply for the more extensive PLDI program. Through those conversations, we found a real need, desire and interest for engaging in leadership-oriented conversations with other graduate students in a safe and inclusive environment. Targeted leadership training with direct insights into the academy affords us the best opportunities to be future innovators, change makers and luminaries in higher education.

The many challenges facing higher education require effective leadership -- leadership that is the result of careful preparation, intentional learning and applied practice. We write this piece with the hope that doctoral program administrators may consider ways to encourage leadership development in their respective programs.

Additionally, we would encourage doctoral students at all levels to pursue opportunities for enhancing their leadership development at their own institution. We recommend pursuing one or several of the following:

• volunteer for leadership responsibilities on a research team;
• participate in formal and informal leadership programs sponsored by professional associations;
• design a student-oriented leadership program for your department or school;
• secure a mentor to facilitate your leadership growth; and
• demonstrate leadership through the planning of a conference, seminar or symposium.

If you take the initiative and advocate for yourself, a leadership opportunity may be one of the most important outcomes of your graduate experience. What’s more, the future of our institutions and the academy depends upon it.

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• Published July 30, 2024
• 12 Minute Read

The Top 20 Leadership Challenges

Leadership Issues Are Shared

Anyone guiding a group toward a shared result will encounter challenges along the way — but what’s most challenging about leading organizations today? What are the top challenges of leadership, and have they shifted since the pandemic?

Our research team has been exploring such questions for decades now to stay abreast of the challenges and issues most commonly faced by leaders at every level. (See our  2021 technical report  and  2013 white paper for more information.)

Our Research Into the Challenges of Leadership

Based on the collective challenges reported in over 7,000 organizations around the world, and using anonymized data on individuals collected through our global 360 assessments , our research team has examined what over 48,000 leaders have identified as their most critical leadership challenges over the past several years.

Using an AI-powered language processing model to review and analyze their responses, we identified the most consistent challenges of leadership across many industries and sectors around the world. We further analyzed the data to determine how these challenges evolved in the wake of the pandemic.

Here we present what our research has found are today’s biggest challenges of leadership — the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at each of level of the organization — ranked by their relevance post-pandemic. And because development is more effective when it uses data to support the challenges of leaders at different levels, this list of leadership issues can be the focus for training & development efforts in all organizations, everywhere in the world.

The Most Common Challenges of Leadership at Every Level

The top leadership challenges of frontline managers.

Regardless of where they live or work, those managing others in supervisory roles reported that their most common leadership challenge is frustrations with people and time — and this issue has only increased in frequency since the pandemic. Here are the top 5 most common challenges for frontline leaders, based on our research:

• Frustrations with people and time
• First time managing people
• Deficient operational processes
• Team performance
• Personal improvement

1. Frustrations With People and Time

Many frontline managers reported that their top leadership issue is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes challenges with offering guidance to direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, dealing with difficult employees , and adjusting communication and feedback styles to collaborate more effectively with different people. And again, this appears to have become an even bigger concern for leaders at this level since the pandemic.

2. First Time Managing People

Another common leadership challenge among new managers is learning to juggle day-to-day challenges — such as managing others who were formerly peers, or employees who are older than they are — and just generally gaining respect as a new, first-time people leader.

3. Deficient Operational Processes

Needing stronger operational processes to address organizational problems was another frequently cited leadership challenge for this group.

4. Team Performance

First-level leaders also reported challenges with developing teams, giving effective feedback , providing direction, holding coaching conversations , and dealing with resistance from direct reports.

5. Personal Improvement

Learning to be better at active listening to understand the perspectives of others, improving flexibility, and being less reactive in pursuit of an “ideal self” are other commonly reported challenges for leaders on the front lines, our research found.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges of Mid-Level Managers

Managers who are leading from the middle — with senior leaders above them and direct reports below — face many similar challenges of leadership as well. Our research found that the most common issues for mid-level managers were:

• Personal limitations
• Challenging business context
• Ineffective interpersonal style
• Cross-functional influence
• Competing people and project priorities

1. Personal Limitations

A top challenge for leaders at this level is their own personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy, as they often must overcome their own doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead — as well as the doubts of their peers or supervisors. Dealing with the challenge of personal limitations requires overcoming impostor syndrome , humility to seek the input of others, courage to do the right thing, and projecting confidence while communicating effectively.

Since the pandemic, mid-level managers have reported this as an issue even more frequently. With new cultures brought on by remote and hybrid workplaces, overcoming common limitations in order to make an impact as a leader has become even more challenging.

2. Business Challenges

In a tumultuous work environment, managers (particularly mid-level leaders) may struggle to deliver results. Leading within a challenging business context requires the careful deployment of limited resources, improved processes, and keeping employees engaged and motivated .

3. Ineffectiveness

When a mid-level leader has an ineffective interpersonal style, they struggle with relationships. This can play out on a spectrum, from dominating interactions to lacking the self-confidence to be assertive. On the other hand, effective interpersonal styles and embodying the characteristics of a good leader allow for open and honest conversations.

4. Influence

Successful leadership requires the ability to influence others beyond one’s group — often without formal authority. For those leading from the middle, the challenge of influencing others across functions includes building credibility, developing cross-organizational networks, and building and bridging partnerships.

5. Competing Priorities

Mid-level leaders report that they often find it difficult to balance competing people and project priorities, especially when they’re sandwiched between project-based deadlines and their employees’ engagement. It’s an important paradox that leaders must manage both relationships and tasks effectively . When resources are limited, motivating team members who vary in personality, abilities, and experience can feel at odds with effective project management.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Senior Leaders

Overall, our research found that the challenges of leadership for those at a senior level include:

• Credibility gaps
• Limited market / sales growth
• Process improvement across groups
• Limited self-awareness
• Transitioning into a new role

We noticed that the pandemic shifted the top leadership challenges for this group somewhat. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was cited as the most frequent leadership issue among senior leaders who head up functions, business units, departments, divisions, and regions, but the frequency of this challenge dropped significantly more recently. The challenge of overcoming credibility gaps, on the other hand, has become more pressing after the pandemic.

1. Credibility Gaps

This includes the challenge of building credibility as an organizational leader. Examples include gaining the trust of stakeholders and enhancing visibility within an organization. Senior leaders may also need to strengthen their leadership image or presence to be most effective.

2. Limited Market / Sales Growth

Making strategic shifts to maximize market growth and sales is another top challenge of senior leaders. This may include expanding the organization beyond core products, extending market reach, shifting to a market / customer orientation, and better aligning of sales.

3. Process Improvement Across Groups

Another key challenge for senior leaders is influencing the organization to improve and accept new processes, which requires being a strategic leader , effective boundary spanning leadership, and developing a broader perspective by taking a systemic view.

4. Limited Self-Awareness

Understanding how others perceive them and recognizing their impact on others — along with improving their confidence, approachability, and communication style (particularly when delivering difficult messages) — can be especially challenging for leaders at the senior level.

5. Transitioning Into a New Role

Adapting to changes in responsibilities and managing new people or former peers is a final key leadership issue at this level. This challenge may be brought on by a promotion, a new role, a functional shift, or a geographic move, or simply through preparing for the C-suite .

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Executives

Finally, senior executives leading the enterprise told us that their top 5 leadership challenges are:

• Dynamic business environment
• Strategic responsibilities
• Interpersonal rigidity
• Organizational readiness
• Lack of cooperation

1. Dynamic Business Environment

For C-level leaders, the challenge of working in a dynamic business environment topped their list of leadership issues. This challenge can be brought about by new regulations, market and economic conditions, competition, or growth. To be effective, leaders must be able to develop and keep the talent needed to support change and revise their organization’s models and systems as required.

Notably, this challenge experienced the biggest rise in the wake of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, senior executives were already used to leading their organizations in adapting to ever-changing circumstances, but COVID and its fallout accelerated that need even more.

2. Strategic Responsibilities

Developing strategy for an organization is another top leadership challenge for senior executives. This includes aligning priorities and initiatives across groups and developing teams to support strategic efforts. It’s helpful when senior leaders are able to link business strategy to leadership strategy .

3. Interpersonal Rigidity

For many senior leaders, shifting the way they interact with others to be more effective and the ability to adapt their style for varying situations or stakeholders is an important challenge. Leaders in C-suite need to have different techniques for flexing their approach, including in how they communicate the vision , manage or influence others, or leverage power over others to get things done.

4. Organizational Readiness Amid Uncertainty

Preparing their organizations for a turbulent future is an ongoing issue for senior executives. This challenge of leadership is experienced most often when there are organizational mission shifts, significant resource constraints, technology changes, or when new ways of working are needed.

5. Lack of Cooperation

Lastly, influencing others toward collaboration is a key leadership challenge for senior executives. This is especially common when they’re new to a role, managing former peers or more experienced colleagues, or collaborating with others on the senior team.

How to Respond to These Top Leadership Challenges

Tips to help leaders address the most common leadership issues.

Now that you know the most common challenges of leadership, how do you begin addressing them? One way is by looking at the larger themes that emerged from our research. Across all levels of the organization, we found that the challenges of leadership generally fall into 3 high-level themes, related to:

• Challenges of personal growth,
• Challenges related to managing people and getting work done, and  
• Challenges in managing across the organization and within a larger system .

Here are some recommended ways to respond to these 3 common themes in our overall leadership challenges research.  Many of these suggestions are part of developing the core leadership skills needed in every role , at every stage of a career.

1. To respond to leadership challenges related to your personal growth, work to maximize personal value .

Personal shortcomings and the aspiration to become a better leader define our first theme. Challenges here include learning to be more assertive during interactions, developing confidence, and understanding how others perceive you.

Individuals overcome leadership issues and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions that only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as possible), allows leaders to maximize their value.

It’s important to recognize your own characteristics, behaviors, and habits in order to know what may be triggering challenges for you in your career. This way, you can work toward increasing your self-awareness and strengthening specific skills and growing as an individual leader.

Some internal challenges that many leaders face include a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity  during self-promotion , impatience, resistance in  responding to new ideas , or struggling to manage conflict in the workplace . All of these can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and maximizing your unique value are part of improving your personal leadership brand .

2. To respond to leadership challenges around managing people and getting work done, focus on delegating more to others .

Our second leadership challenge theme involves the demands of managing both people and tasks. Specific challenges include managing for the first time, building cooperation between people, and overseeing multiple projects that compete for importance and resources.

You’ll be more productive, give your colleagues a greater sense of ownership, and  build more trust on your team if you delegate , as well. But effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

• Understanding your preferences . Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want while the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.
• Knowing your people .To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to others with the necessary knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand people’s preferences and abilities, using delegation to help direct reports develop, and coach people while allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.
• Being clear about the purpose of the task . A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become part of purpose-driven leadership and an opportunity for personal growth.
• Assessing and rewarding . You should engage in collaboration and work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

3. To respond to leadership challenges related to managing across the organization, work to increase boundary spanning and build high-performing teams .

Working within the larger system of an organization is our third high-level leadership challenge. Examples include working in a dynamic business environment, needing stronger operational processes, and creating cross-functional influence.

As a leader, you must be able to create and lead teams effectively. To build high-performing teams, use our team effectiveness framework , which has 4 components:

• Core : Communicate a team’s reason for being so that all team members understand their core purpose and value. ( A team charter can help with this.)
• Collective Mindset : Be sure everybody on the team knows what it takes to be a good team member. Teams adopt a collective mindset when they understand all members’ roles and responsibilities, as well as team norms for how team members work together.
• Cohesive Relationships : Ensure team members relate interpersonally by fostering a psychologically safe work environment where everybody feels a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and communicates effectively.
• Connection : Teams can have a broader organizational impact when collaborating across boundaries . In other words, when colleagues who have different backgrounds and experiences connect, innovation and collaboration are enhanced.

A Final Word for HR Leaders on Our Leadership Challenges Research

Focus development efforts to address the top challenges of leaders.

Developmental initiatives are more effective when they align with the real challenges that leaders are facing. For those who work in HR or Learning & Development, understanding these common leadership issues can be the catalyst for creating initiatives that truly address real-world needs, growing needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Build your team’s capacity for overcoming common leadership challenges. Our array of leadership development programs are carefully designed to address the leadership challenges faced by leaders at every level. 

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Based on Research by

Ramya’s expertise is in analyzing data by using advanced algorithms to extract valuable information, and she has extensive experience in the fields of data science and machine learning. At CCL, her work involves data collection, building AI-based models, and data visualization to drive key insights from internal and external data. Her thought leadership combines cutting-edge data science, data ethics, and machine learning techniques to analyze information equitably and effectively.

Steve led our experimentation with new analytic approaches and methodologies, including CCL Fusion , a predictive analytics tool that links people data with business data to inform leadership development investment. He also led research and product development in the areas of user-driven feedback tools, virtual coaching tools, and big data and analytics.

Jean develops, oversees, and helps implement programs, projects, and processes that support the vision and the short- and long-term plans of the global Leadership Research and Analytics group. She’s published more than 100 pieces on leadership, assessment, and feedback — in the form of peer-reviewed articles, popular-press articles, book chapters, and books — and has presented over 70 papers at professional conferences such as the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists.

With over 30 years of experience at CCL, Cindy has contributed to many aspects of CCL’s work: research, publication, product development, program evaluation, coaching, and management. She designs and manages R&D projects, coaches action learning teams, writes for multiple audiences, and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences.

With over 30 years of experience in the field of leadership development and over 80 publications, Marian is widely regarded as a thought leader in the field. Her particular areas of expertise include the career development of women, work-life integration, the intersection of voice and leadership recognition, and the role of well-being in leadership development. She has worked with a diverse array of colleagues and clients from around the globe conducting both original research and bringing into CCL the best of what the larger field of leadership scholarship has to offer.

Jennifer’s work with us focused on global leadership and generational differences around the world. An internationally recognized expert on generational differences, Jennifer has published on generational issues, executive selection, cultural adaptability, global management, and women in management. She’s the co-author of What Millennials Want from Work: How to Maximize Engagement in Today’s Workforce .

Katelyn helps manage many aspects of the standardized data collection and reporting processes for our leadership programs. She also works on custom client evaluation work and other projects led by Leadership Research & Analytics . Before joining us, she worked as a research scientist at Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO), where she partnered with clients to develop large-scale assessment solutions.

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At the Center for Creative Leadership, our drive to create a ripple effect of positive change underpins everything we do. For 50+ years, we've pioneered leadership development solutions for everyone from frontline workers to global CEOs. Consistently ranked among the world's top providers of executive education, our research-based programs and solutions inspire individuals in organizations across the world — including 2/3 of the Fortune 1000 — to ignite remarkable transformations.

AI for Executives Program

Transform Your Business with AI for a Strategic Advantage

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Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming vital to staying competitive and surviving in business. Its incredible pace of development demands that leaders stay informed about technological advances; nearly half of professionals globally are concerned about keeping up with its advancements.

AI for Executives is an artificial intelligence training designed to help forward-thinking leaders like you leverage AI's transformative power and acquire the strategic frameworks your organization needs to thrive in a radically changing environment.

In this AI program, you will learn from distinguished Berkeley Haas faculty and industry experts how to evaluate AI systems and their potential impacts, gain strategies for AI adoption, and drive innovation within your organization. Equipped with new skills, you will understand which AI strategies will lead to competitive gains in your industry.

Key Takeaways

Leverage ai for a competitive advantage.

Explore the significant opportunities and challenges posed by AI in your industry. Apply your learnings to transform your organization by incorporating AI into your business strategy to drive growth.

Critically Examine the Latest AI Innovations

Capitalize on your new AI mindset to assess and respond to artificial intelligence's evolutions. Grasp how the latest capabilities and developments affect your business operations and performance.

Understand the Ethical Implications of AI

Evaluate and account for the multifaceted issues associated with AI that might affect your organization, including social, political, and ethical considerations.

With this program, you will receive:

• World-renowned Berkeley Haas faculty-led artificial intelligence program with leading-edge curriculum
• Dynamic hands-on AI and strategy exercises 
• Exclusive networking reception with faculty and fellow participants  
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More about the AI for Executives program

Artificial intelligence is emerging as the leading modern technology transforming business. Leveraging AI’s power has enormous benefits, but it also has limitations. AI’s capability to outperform humans at specific tasks is enticing; however, it’s vital to understand its multifaceted nature to incorporate it ethically into your company.

Preparing organizations to lead with AI requires an informed business strategy and awareness of societal drivers—from recognizing transformational operational efficiencies to data privacy and bias considerations. Equipping yourself with essential AI tools, systems, and business frameworks—covered in this AI for Executives program—is critical to driving growth for you and your organization in the modern age.

Enjoy An Engaging Program Experience

Over three days, our world-renowned Berkeley-Haas faculty will lead you through this innovative artificial intelligence training using a blend of:

• illuminating case studies
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Emerge as an Adaptable Leader

Through this artificial intelligence course at our globally recognized business school, you’ll understand what breakthrough advances in AI technology mean for your organization, your industry, and yourself.

Equipped with the latest skills and know-how, you'll not only boost efficiency and growth through AI, you'll be positioned to capture every opportunity. Knowing what to look for ensures you will never miss out, staying ahead in AI's rapid evolution.

Who it's for

• Senior executives establishing an AI strategy for their organization
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• Professionals interested in staying current with advances in technology

Want to approach your employer about professional development classes and request employer support? Read the Employer Payment Assistance Guide .   

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• Three-day program at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business campus that provides interactive learning and networking
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Can I enroll in a program if I live outside of the U.S.?

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Toby E. Stuart

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Faculty Director of the Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology Program | Grimes M.E.T. Chancellor's Chair | Teaching Professor, Haas School of Business

Associate Adjunct Professor of Operations and Information Technology Management, Haas School of Business

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Cheryl and Christian Valentine Professor, Haas School of Business

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Partner, Mayer Brown

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Professor of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research and William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley | Chief Scientist, Ambi Robotics

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Aaron Rodgers demonstrates short fuse, leadership in camp

Dan Orlovsky and Damien Woody concur that the Aaron Rodgers-Robert Saleh feud has been grossly overblown. (2:39)

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- A look at what's happening around the New York Jets :

1. Very Brady sequel? Aaron Rodgers , dubbed "the Oppenheimer of football" by teammate Tyler Conklin , has demonstrated a short fuse in training camp.

More vocal than last year, his first season in New York, Rodgers hasn't been shy about airing out his feelings when there's a mistake on the practice field. A four-time MVP and Super Bowl champion, he certainly has the street cred to behave this way.

This is noteworthy in the Jets' universe because it has been a long time since they had this kind of leader at quarterback. Remember, they're coming off six years of Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson , both young and laid-back.

"I've heard stories of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady -- not to compare them -- but it's the same thing," coach Robert Saleh said of Rodgers' sometimes fiery mentality. "The expectation and the standard is high. As a quarterback, he's trying to operate at a certain level of efficiency, which means people around him need to be efficient at the same level. When he's not feeling that as a group's leader and voice, he voices his opinion."

Actually, it conjures up memories of Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells, who, in one of his first Jets practices in 1997, gathered his assistants on the field and chewed them out because he didn't like the tempo at practice. A large crowd of spectators, witnessing the scene, roared its approval.

Rodgers is a demanding perfectionist who, at 40, probably feels a sense of urgency. He said he's less combustible than he was as a young player, although he certainly seemed fired up during intense sideline conversations with wide receiver Garrett Wilson .

He also got in the face of center Joe Tippmann , which is interesting because they begin every practice with a "bro hug." After that, it's tough love. Tippmann got an earful the other day after a spate of errant shotgun snaps.

"He can take me jumping his ass a little bit and getting on him," said Rodgers, who believes Tippmann has thick skin and All-Pro potential. "Sometimes you need to do that."

Rodgers is trying to impose his will on a franchise that hasn't produced a winning season since 2015, much like Brady did with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020. Creative tension can be a good thing, but like most things in life, there needs to be a balance. If Rodgers pushes too hard, it could backfire.

For now, he has the respect of his teammates.

2. Not-so-Big Mac: Haason Reddick 's holdout has provided the Jets with an opportunity to flaunt their depth at defensive end. After all, how many teams have the luxury of taking a former first-round pick off the bench and plugging him into the lineup?

Not many, except that's not what's happening.

Instead of inserting Will McDonald IV , they're giving most of the base reps to backup Micheal Clemons . (McDonald has logged a few more overall reps than Clemons and leads all defensive ends in camp.) McDonald, who played only 192 defensive snaps as a rookie, remains a question mark one year after being drafted No. 15 overall.

The Jets knew he was a project at the time of the draft, saying he'd be a force once he added weight. McDonald himself said at the end of last season that his goal was to return at 250-255 pounds. That didn't happen. He weighs the same as last year, according to Saleh. He's listed at 6-foot-4, 236 pounds, probably too small to be an effective, every-down player.

Everyone around the Jets is quick to defend McDonald, saying he has gained strength, if not pounds. In football, the proof is in the playing time. If he truly has improved as a player, he should see an uptick in reps. If not, it will cast an unflattering light on their draft decision.

3. Slot machine? Like every team in training camp, the Jets are trying to install new wrinkles on offense. By the regular season, don't be surprised if you see Wilson in the slot more than past years.

In 2023, Wilson made 40 of his 95 receptions (42%) from the slot, an increase from 2022. That year, he made 29 of 83 (35%), per Next Gen Stats.

There's a blueprint: Davante Adams was a force in the slot when he was putting up big numbers with the Green Bay Packers , who ran a similar offensive system. In 2021, Rodgers' most recent MVP season, Adams scored seven of his 11 touchdowns from the slot. Wilson has studied those tapes.

4. Early trash talk: Wilson took note of a comment made by San Francisco 49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward , who, in a May interview on "Up and Adams," acted like he didn't know Wilson's name.

"I saw it. That's cool," Wilson said. "They're right, frankly. It's all good. I haven't done anything yet. I'm excited to have the opportunity to do it on them, get it rolling, right? That's just how it is. Any opponent we play, that's the mindset."

The Jets face the 49ers in Week 1.

5. Missing zebras: One of the strangest sights over the first two weeks of camp -- no officiating crews at practice. It was a staple in recent years, with the Jets employing local high school officials to monitor practice. It created a gamelike atmosphere, knowing flags would be thrown. Considering their penalty issues -- the Jets led the league with 150 penalties -- this figured to be the ideal camp to have officials on site. So why no officials?

"No particular reason," Saleh said. "We feel like we were already talking about penalties and reviewing it with the guys in the film room, talking about what they can and can't do."

An NFL crew touring training camps was scheduled to work Saturday's Green and White practice, but it couldn't get into town because of severe weather.

6. Greener pastures: With Tarik Cohen, 29, opting to retire, the ages of the Jets' running backs are 23 ( Breece Hall ), 20 ( Braelon Allen ), 22 (Davis), 21 (Abanikanda) and 26 ( Xazavian Valladay ). That's what you call a youth movement.

7. Joe to Joe: In the final episode of "Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants ," we learn that general manager Joe Douglas called the Giants on draft night, trying to trade from No. 10 to No. 6. His offer wasn't revealed on the show, but it was quickly rejected by Giants GM Joe Schoen. The sense is that wide receiver Rome Odunze , picked ninth by the Chicago Bears , was the player that Douglas coveted in that spot.

In 2022, Douglas made a draft-day trade with the Giants and it worked out nicely, as he moved up in the second round to pick Hall.

8. Important work for Rodgers: The Washington Commanders will be at the Jets' facility Thursday for a joint practice ahead of next Saturday's preseason game at MetLife Stadium. It's the first of three joint practices for the Jets, who also face the Carolina Panthers (Aug. 15) on the road and the New York Giants (Aug. 21) at home.

The team's hope is that Rodgers gets enough quality work in the controlled practices that it eliminates the temptation to play him in the preseason.

Saleh said he's leaning toward keeping Rodgers on the sideline for all three games, certainly the first two. "News to me," said Rodgers, who seemed surprised that Saleh went public with his plan before discussing it with him. At the same time, Rodgers said it's Saleh's decision and he's open to whatever he decides.

9. Audibles: Middle linebacker C.J. Mosley , the defensive signal-caller, said he has more latitude this season to change plays at the line of scrimmage. That responsibility has evolved over the years, with the coaching staff gaining full trust in his ability. Mosley said there's nothing better than seeing one of his audibles result in a big play. The first time was at Alabama, where one of his pre-snap checks allowed the Crimson Tide to sack Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel.

10. The last word: "When we get those little, tiny details hemmed up, we're going to be really tough to stop." -- Rodgers on his chemistry with Wilson

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Patriots QB Jacoby Brissett's energy, leadership shine through in mic'd up video

This training camp is a bit different for the New England Patriots than in past years with this being the first year that Bill Belichick isn't running the team as their head coach and general manager.

With Jerod Mayo stepping in as head coach, the team hired Alex Van Pelt as their offensive coordinator and signed Jacoby Brissett as their starting quarterback (at least at the beginning of the year). While this is Mayo's first year as head coach, both Van Pelt and Brissett are no strangers to their roles, and that should help the team with the transition in 2024 to a new scheme.

Brissett has also played for this organization before, showcasing his ability as a rookie in 2016 when Tom Brady was suspended and Jimmy Garoppolo was out with an injury. The former Wolfpack quarterback led New England to a 1-1 record in that season, completing 61.8% of his passes for 400 yards. 

A number of Brissett's teams have spoken about his leadership and energy, and those are two things that shined through in a recent mic'd up video of training camp that the Patriots' content team put up on their YouTube.

Brissett has clearly been the best quarterback of New England's four throughout camp this year, and those qualities make him the perfect guy for their situation.

Mike Masala previously served as the Managing Editor of USA TODAY's Dolphins Wire as well as a contributing writer at Patriots Wire. Follow on Twitter/X: @Mike_Masala