Three Keys to Development: Defining and Meeting Your Leadership Challenges

During the course of your career, you are likely to have many different kinds of developmental experiences. You may be assigned to or seek out a challenging position that tests your limits. You may establish a relationship with a mentor. You may feel called to provide leadership for some community activity. Or you may seek out further training and educational opportunities, such as formal leadership development programs. All of these different experiences share a common path―they are avenues toward personal and professional growth. These experiences may make you feel as if your learning and development were accelerated. What caused that acceleration? How do you keep the learning momentum going once the experience ends? This guidebook shows you how to enhance the value and impact of developmental experiences.

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Henry Browning put much emphasis on group dynamics in teams and team leadership during his tenure at CCL. He was an important contributor to the design of CCL ’s Leadership and High-Performance Teams program. He holds an MBA from the University of Colorado.

Ellen Van Velsor is group director of Core Research &Development at CCL. She coordinates the research and the development of programs, products, and services in the area of individual leadership development. She has written and coauthored several books, including Feedback to Managers, Volumes I &II, and Choosing 360: A Guide to Evaluating Multi-rater Feedback Instruments for Management Development; and she is coeditor of The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Florida.