Exploring Leadership: Translating What You Know About Leadership into Tangible Change

By Tanesha Duncan 

October 2010

When I made the decision to attend Darden, I was energized by the idea of spending two years investing in my own personal development. Sure, there was a career opportunity component to the decision, but ultimately I wanted my time in business school to significantly improve my potential as a future senior leader in the organization I joined upon graduation.

I am happy to report that my business school experience was a truly transformational leadership opportunity that will be invaluable to my future growth as a leader. I was successful in this goal because I entered b-school focused on developing my soft skills and learning from the successful strategies of influential leaders.

Leadership courses built an essential foundation by highlighting the key skills that every good leader should possess and introducing tools and strategies to assess and develop those skills. Specifically, I noticed repeated themes around active listening, authenticity, integrity, vision, self-assurance, and self-awareness. I soaked in the information and took on several leadership roles to gain more experience and to practice what I learned in the classroom.

I quickly realized that it is very difficult to translate what you know about leadership into consistent actions. I wanted more practice and needed feedback to successfully begin to improve. Upon expressing these feelings to classmates, I realized that there were others who desired the same growth opportunities. Based on our common interest, eight classmates and I made a commitment to ourselves and the group to dedicate a year to coaching each other on how to become better leaders. We designed and facilitated a seven month program focused on personal leadership development called Darden's Leadership Development Initiative ("LDI").

In designing the program we focused on four major areas: self-assessment, a development plan, feedback, and reflection. We also identified key essentials for success which included a small group setting, a safe space to be open and honest, and individual ownership. Every member was responsible for administering one component of the program and therefore coaching the group through the process. For example, one member of the team was responsible for researching and identifying a series of assessments that would provide each member with a well-rounded perspective of his or herself to build upon.

We focused on assessments that would allow us to look back and gain insights, project forward what we would like to achieve, and seek information from colleagues and peers on our outward perception. We all took equal responsibility for the overall program and felt a personal commitment to the success of the group. The program included faculty facilitated workshops on interpreting self assessment results and servant leadership.