Building Leadership Service Academies to Institutionalize a Strategic Leadership Development Focus

In this article, we propose a strategic view of leadership development, by defining a Leadership Service Academy (LSA) construct. The LSA represents a strategic approach that enables an organization and its leaders to institutionalize its own theory of leadership, narrative, models, learning methodologies, practices, and evaluation methods for determining the impact of investing in developing leadership. The LSA construct represents a shift in strategic thinking that involves moving beyond focusing on individual leader development training programs used for satisfying current role-requirements or tactical succession planning, to adopting a systemic view of leadership development aligned with the organization's strategic objectives, mission, values, and culture. Most leadership development research has focused on examining the efficacy of training methodologies linked to individual leadership models and modalities and has produced promising results. However, the narrow focus on individual leadership development has excluded the full spectrum of leadership development interventions from being explored and analyzed. Our primary goal here is to explore a comprehensive strategy for building a sustainable, multi-level leadership development system firmly anchored in both science and practice.