Leadership development programmes are of great values for leaders facing economic and social challenges today as they can support and enhance their mindset in a progressive and constructive manner. These programmes are a complex phenomenon incorporating a variety of interventions at the heart of the organisation’s developmental efforts. They can be regarded as learning and development intervention that applies a collaborative, reflective, goal-focused and transformational relationship to achieve professional outcomes that are valued by the leaders and the organisations they lead.

Leadership development programmes are aligned with emergent interest in active learning, by which leaders take responsibility for shaping their own learning processes. They incorporate innovative trends of leadership development, which include:

• More focus on vertical development: two different types of development are defined by science – horizontal and vertical. Horizontal development can be transmitted from an expert, but vertical development must be learned and developed by a leader

• Transfer of developmental ownership to the individual: leaders develop more effectively when they feel responsible for their own progress

• Focus on collective rather than individual leadership: a transition is observed from a paradigm in which all leadership resided in the leader, to a new one in which leadership is regarded as a collective process spread throughout networks of individuals

• Focus on innovation in leadership development methods: an era of rapid innovation is under way in which organisations experiment with new approaches that combine diverse ideas in innovative ways and share these with stakeholders

Leadership development programmes support leaders who are making the move towards desired results through mental engineering processes. These regulate the quality and form of thought, as well as developing positive emotional attractors, which play a growth-oriented role in preparing the leader emotionally, cognitively, and physiologically for enacting change.

Leadership development programmes also engage leaders in exercises such as envisioning a desired future, reconnecting with personal values, discovering strengths and expressing gratitude for supportive relationships.

Positive thoughts generate positive emotions, which reduce chronic stress, provide support for behavioural, cognitive, and biological coping-mechanisms when facing challenging tasks and situations.

Leadership development programmes focus on leaders and leadership development enhancing both their human and social capital as leadership development attends to the interpersonal dynamics of leadership. It is an effective method which improves both intrapersonal and interpersonal leadership competencies, which are significant in creating transformational changes in the dynamic organisations.

Leadership development programmes should be seen a great adventure of building now, with what we have at our disposal, to get ultimate and sustainable results, which serve us and humanity.