Academic stream: Management education

Abstract The pros and cons of a competency/standards approach to leadership and management development have been under debate for some time. Whilst many people now question the validity of this approach, organisations in all sectors continue developing their own frameworks and the government encourages and promotes occupational standards. In the current paper the authors draw upon their experiences of working alongside consultants developing the new National Occupational Standards in Management and Leadership, and a review of competency frameworks employed by leading private and public sector organisations in Europe, to present some theoretical and practical reflections on this approach. Our experiences have led us to conclude that whilst the development of competencies and standards can be a valuable way of encouraging individuals and organisations to consider their approach to management and leadership development, it is in their application that difficulties can occur. When working with competencies and standards there is frequently a temptation to apply them deductively to assess, select and measure leaders rather than inductively to describe effective leadership practice and stimulate debate. With an increasing awareness of the emergent and relational nature of leadership we conclude that where these models are reported to be valuable, it is not where they are used to define a comprehensive set of attributes of "leaders", but rather where they offer a "lexicon" with which individuals, organisations, consultants and other agents can debate the nature of 'leadership' and the associated values and relationships within their organisations