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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the practices that high-performance leaders believed were influential for accelerating their development as leaders.

The sample consisted of US based, mid-level leaders at Fortune 1000 companies who were identified by their organizations as being “high performers possessing the strong ability to deliver desired results for their enterprises.” The authors recently conducted focus groups with a subset of over 200 of these high-performing leaders and asked them to answer the following question: “Please identify what you would consider to be the five (5) most influential factors that accelerated your development as a leader.” Leaders were then randomly assigned to five-person focus groups to discuss their individual responses and come to consensus on what they considered to be the top leadership development “accelerators.” A content analysis of over 20 focus groups’ response sets allowed us to identify a list of top leadership development “accelerators”.

Seven leadership accelerators were identified: working for a great leader; experiencing an extremely challenging assignment or major organizational change; working in an organization that requires and supports skill development; possessing a strong mentor/accountability partner; ongoing personal reflection and self-assessment; experiencing a significant failure or career setback; and formal leadership development training/continuing education.

It is important that leaders, HR professionals, and talent managers know and understand these factors and to make it an ongoing priority to systematically address the key questions that emerged from these findings.

Leaders should thoughtfully answer the questions presented for themselves and encourage leaders in their organization to do the same.

This paper, using primary data from “high-performance” leaders, identifies and explains seven important leadership development accelerators.

Formal management education, ranging from seminars and workshops to comprehensive MBA programs, is readily available and is viewed as a primary tool for management development. Yet, critics often cite that the transfer of learning of knowledge and practices from the classroom to workplace can be very limited.

The current study qualitatively examined the challenges and lessons learned from Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study draws upon previous crisis leadership research to understand and classify the most important lessons learned from CEOs.

A total of 30 in-depth, structured CEO interviews were conducted with large, multi-divisional organizations across market sectors that included healthcare, automotive, steel, agriculture, logistics, distribution, banking, financial services, light manufacturing and industrial services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three separate judges performed a content analysis, and three main themes (eleven overall lessons) emerged related to high-level leadership lessons learned through the pandemic.

The leadership lessons that emerged overwhelmingly focused on the importance of emphasizing leadership fundamentals during crisis. CEO’s shared the importance of getting “back to basics” during the pandemic. The current study presents these leadership lessons, along with insights for leadership practices and development, as well as future research. Additionally, questions for reflection are posed to stimulate current and future leaders’ growth and development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted leadership and organizations in an unprecedented manner. Previous research has outlined the leadership traits and behaviors needed to successfully lead through organizational crises. However, little research has examined CEO level lessons learned, focusing on learning from such crises.

The former Soviet Union is presently going through a period of unprecedented economic and organizational change. In this “wild market”, many Russian organizations are struggling to compete and adapt. During the decade of the 1990s Russian managers have had to develop new skills and business practices to lead their organizations. Many managers have successfully made this transformation but managerial failure is also common place. This article explores the primary causes of why managers fail in this post‐Soviet era based on a survey of 174 Russian managers and offers specific lessons on management development for organizations operating in modern Russia and Eastern Europe.

Aims to provide an in‐depth discussion of how a Fortune 500 manufacturing organization refocussed its management development practices using a systems approach. A description of how the organization conducted a needs assessment, developed a system for management education and recreated its approach to management development are discussed. The implications for organizational practice are clearly stated that management development is a shared responsibility between a manager and his or her employer. This article will also discuss the evolution of this organization’s approach to developing managers for the twenty‐first century. It is also important to note that Aeroquip‐Vickers was recently honored as one of the 100 best managed companies in the US by Inc Magazine.

Notes the spread of organizational efforts at continuous improvement using a total quality management (TQM) strategy throughout the global marketplace, and that the factors and practices which lead to quality improvement are indeed well documented. Points out that, while most organizations which start TQM efforts are motivated to succeed, they are frequently exposed to the factors which may cause their TQM efforts to struggle or even fail. Details research in which 137 managers from practising TQM organizations were asked to assess their perceptions of TQM on a host of critical issues associated with long‐term continuous improvement, and were asked to identify specific reasons why quality problems still existed in their organizations. Finds that these managers believe that TQM efforts improve quality, yet they also described a host of problems which can plague organizations well advanced in the TQM process. Maintains that an understanding of these problems can provide needed help for companies involved in long‐term continuous improvement efforts.

This paper aims to explore why organizations often focus little attention and resources on management training and provides a useful checklist of ways to close the managerial skills gap through training.

Seasoned managers (278) in rapidly changing organizations were surveyed on their experiences with management training.

A content analysis revealed the most frequently cited causes of why organizations fail to properly train their managers.

Generalization of these findings to non‐rapidly changing organizations may be limited.

Results indicate that organizations fail to properly train managers for a host of reasons. Many of failures to train are caused by misconceptions about training needs, the ability of managers to handle their own training or the value of training to the organization compared with other efforts. Lack of accountability and poor implementation are other key reasons cited for training failures.

The findings provide a useful list of the causes for ineffective training and the discussion focuses on ways to close the managerial skills gap.

Presents the top ten reasons that senior managers identified for business leaders voluntarily leaving their current employers. Offers recommendations to prevent organizations from unnecessarily losing their managerial talent.

Presents the top ten reasons that senior managers identified for business leaders voluntarily leaving their current employers. Offers recommendations to prevent organizations from unnecessarily losing their managerial talent.

Reveals that: bad bosses drive out good leaders; toxic and dysfunctional work cultures drive up management turnover; unethical or illegal business dealings tell managers it is time to go; when managers are consistently disrespected and disempowered it leads to them having a sense of being disenfranchised; professional stagnation creates a powerful incentive to leave; when business leaders find themselves consistently working in an environment where they are asked to pursue overly aggressive goals and performance outcomes without the requisite tools, staff, information, budget, authority, planning or access, they experience high frustration and frequent failure; less-than-competitive compensation causes managers to look for new employment; being on a sinking ship will cause managers to exit when hope is lost; and when managers are not challenged or feel bored they look for greener pastures.

Challenges organizations to review the key lessons derived from the study and to use this knowledge to reduce the loss of critical managerial talent.

Highlights how organizations can gain competitive advantage by holding on to their key personnel.

Unlike most previous studies, which concentrate on lower-level employees, looks at the factors that cause managers to resign.

The purpose of this paper is to show that in many organizations training professionals and human resource leaders are under increasing pressure to use training to improve organizational performance, and yet, front‐line managers are often passive or even indifferent on the issue of properly training their workers. This paper will also discuss the key practices of high performance business leaders and how they use effective training practices to achieve superior results.

Over 2,000 managers, identified by their organizations as being “high performers”, were surveyed and the findings of this paper are based on a content analysis of both questionnaire and interview data.

The paper finds that results‐oriented leaders realized that training is critical to their success and must be handled with great care employing a systematic and disciplined process. This study revealed that results‐oriented leaders realized that properly training and educating their workers increased the likelihood of achieving high performance and that poorly trained workers can create a myriad of performance problems. The study showed that high performance leaders were doing the things necessary to develop their workers and to educate them about the bigger picture of their organization to enable them to make better decisions and be more engaged. The over‐arching finding concludes that high performance business leaders are actively engaged in the training and development process and that they do not abdicate that responsibility to others.

The findings of this paper make it clear that training and developing workers is a top priority for high performance managers who are serious about improving operational and organizational performance.