Making up Leaders in Leadership Development

Today, public and private organizations have increasingly turned to management and leadership development, seeking to advance their respective organizations under the assumption that leadership development programmes (LDPs) enable participants to develop their leadership capacity. As such, this capacity, whether on the individual or collective level, is cultivated through a number of techniques often associated with corporate HR, including personality profiling, 360-degree surveys, coaching, mentoring and stretch assignments. These activities usually require the participant to engage in exploring questions pertaining to herself and her organization, such as ‘Who am I as a leader?’ ‘What is important in my organization right now?’ ‘What kind of leader is needed in my organization?’ ‘What do I need to become such a leader?’ At times, this involves working on participants’ experiences in the organization. Most studies of leadership development assume that many components of such programmes exist independently of and prior to the programme. Such components include the participant’s identity, the instructors, the curricular material and the process of delivering a programme. In this instance ‘assume’ means orient to these components as if they were somehow produced outside the world of interactions. Studies inspired by French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) question this assumption and try to unravel the historical processes by which the various components are themselves put together. An important way Foucault demonstrates these processes to work is through the very techniques for measuring, assessing and developing objects so endemic to, for instance, leadership development programmes. Other studies take a route into leadership development programmes on the premise of acknowledging the participant’s agency, even in the midst of regulation.