5OS06 Leadership and Management Development builds on the basics of learning and development by focusing on leadership and management. It explains how strong leadership helps create the right culture and behaviours for a workplace that is unified, diverse, innovative, and high-performing. It also shows that using the right tools and approaches for development can improve overall organisational effectiveness.
Assessment Questions
Question 1
AC 1.1 Explain how recent, current and potential future trends in your industry’s business environment are combining to underpin the case for a review of current leadership and management development activities or programmes. Illustrate your answer with specific examples.
Several converging trends in the healthcare technology sector are creating an urgent case for reviewing MedTech Solutions’ current leadership and management development provision.
First, the accelerating integration of artificial intelligence into healthcare products and services is fundamentally transforming the technical landscape. AI-driven diagnostic tools, automated patient data analysis, and machine learning-enhanced treatment planning require leaders who can navigate the ethical, regulatory, and operational complexities of deploying AI in safety-critical environments. Current L&MD programmes, designed when the organisation’s product portfolio was predominantly hardware-based, do not develop the strategic digital literacy, ethical reasoning, or innovation management capabilities that the AI transition demands (CIPD, 2024a).
Second, the shift to hybrid working has permanently altered the management context. With approximately 60% of MedTech’s workforce now operating on hybrid patterns, managers require competencies in virtual team leadership, remote performance management, maintaining team cohesion across physical and digital spaces, and supporting employee wellbeing at a distance. The Chartered Management Institute (2024) reports that 82% of managers leading hybrid teams have received no formal training in remote management, a gap directly reflected in MedTech’s current provision.
Third, intensifying regulatory requirements, including the UK Medical Devices Regulations 2024 and evolving data protection obligations, require leaders who can embed compliance into operational culture rather than treating it as an administrative burden. The combination of AI deployment and regulatory intensification creates a need for leaders who can simultaneously drive innovation and maintain rigorous governance, a balance that current development programmes do not address. These trends collectively demonstrate that MedTech’s existing L&MD activities, which focus primarily on operational management skills and generic leadership workshops, are insufficient for the strategic challenges the organisation faces.
Question 2
AC 1.2 Explain the meanings of ‘leadership development’ and ‘management development’ making a clear distinction between these two functions.
Leadership development and management development, while related and often conflated, address fundamentally different capabilities and serve distinct organisational purposes.
Management development focuses on building the competencies required to plan, organise, direct, and control organisational resources efficiently and effectively within established frameworks. It encompasses skills such as operational planning, budgeting, performance management, delegation, problem-solving, process improvement, and compliance with policies and procedures. Management development is concerned with doing things right: ensuring that existing systems, processes, and standards are maintained and optimised. The emphasis is on competence within defined parameters, and development methods typically include structured training programmes, technical skills workshops, and procedural knowledge transfer (Armstrong and Taylor, 2023).
Leadership development, by contrast, focuses on building the capacity to envision the future, inspire and influence others, navigate ambiguity, drive change, and create the conditions in which others can perform at their best. It addresses capabilities such as strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, cultural shaping, stakeholder influence, adaptive decision-making in uncertain environments, and the moral courage to challenge established norms when they no longer serve the organisation’s purpose. Leadership development is concerned with doing the right things: setting direction, building commitment, and enabling transformation. Development methods tend to be more experiential, including coaching, mentoring, action learning, 360-degree feedback, and exposure to diverse strategic challenges (Northouse, 2022).
The distinction is important because organisations require both: effective management ensures operational stability, efficiency, and consistency, while effective leadership ensures strategic direction, adaptive capacity, and cultural health. Kotter (cited in Northouse, 2022) argues that most organisations are over-managed and under-led, with an excess of operational control and a deficit of strategic vision and change capability, a diagnosis that resonates with MedTech’s current L&MD profile.
Question 3
AC 1.3 Drawing on published models of contrasting leadership and management styles, explain the prevalent current approach in your organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar).
The prevalent leadership and management style at MedTech Solutions can be characterised as predominantly transactional, with emerging pockets of transformational practice in the innovation division.
Burns’ (cited in Northouse, 2022) foundational distinction between transactional and transformational leadership provides the primary analytical lens. Transactional leadership operates through contingent reward, where performance is exchanged for clearly defined incentives, and management by exception, where leaders intervene primarily when standards are not met. At MedTech, the dominant management approach is based on clearly defined KPIs, structured performance review cycles, and corrective action when targets are missed. This approach has served the organisation well during its growth phase, providing the operational discipline required for regulatory compliance and product quality in the healthcare sector.
However, transactional approaches are insufficient for the transformational challenges the organisation now faces. Bass’s (cited in Northouse, 2022) four components of transformational leadership, idealised influence (leading by example and earning trust), inspirational motivation (articulating a compelling vision), intellectual stimulation (encouraging creativity and challenging assumptions), and individualised consideration (developing each team member’s potential), are visible in the innovation division where the R&D director explicitly cultivates a culture of experimentation, psychological safety, and purpose-driven work. This transformational pocket is notably the highest-performing and lowest-turnover division, suggesting that a broader cultural shift from transactional to transformational leadership could yield significant organisational benefits.
Goleman’s (cited in Armstrong and Taylor, 2023) six leadership styles framework adds nuance: MedTech’s dominant style is a combination of pacesetting, where leaders set high standards and expect others to follow, and commanding, where direction is given with limited input. While effective for crisis management and compliance-critical situations, these styles consistently correlate with lower engagement and creativity. The organisation would benefit from developing coaching and visionary styles across its leadership population to complement the necessary operational discipline with greater inspiration and individual development focus.
Question 4
AC 1.4 Compare the knowledge, skills and behaviours of leaders and managers in your organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar) and identify the areas they most need to improve in. Justify your answer.
| Dimension | Current Strengths | Development Gaps | Priority Justification |
| Knowledge | Strong technical/product expertise; regulatory compliance understanding; operational process knowledge | Strategic digital literacy (AI/data); change management theory; inclusive leadership frameworks; evidence-based people management | AI integration and sector transformation require strategic knowledge beyond operational competence |
| Skills | Project management; performance monitoring; quality assurance; stakeholder reporting | Coaching conversations; remote/hybrid team facilitation; strategic communication and influence; conflict resolution; data-informed decision-making | Hybrid working and employee engagement data demand relational and facilitative skills currently underdeveloped |
| Behaviours | Accountability; task focus; compliance orientation; reliability | Inclusive behaviours; psychological safety creation; adaptability; curiosity and openness to challenge; empowering rather than directing | Engagement survey data and exit interviews identify management style as primary turnover driver; behavioural shift is the highest-impact development priority |
The most critical improvement area is the behavioural domain. MedTech’s 2024 engagement survey revealed that only 41% of employees feel their manager genuinely supports their development, and exit interview analysis identifies management style as the primary reason for voluntary departure among high-potential employees. This aligns with the CIPD’s (2024a) finding that the quality of the line manager relationship is the single strongest predictor of employee engagement, retention, and performance.
Question 5
AC 2.1 Drawing on your wider reading, identify two different ways in which the people management team in your organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar) could support established leadership and management practices and programmes.
Approach 1: Internal Coaching and Mentoring Infrastructure
The people management team can establish a structured internal coaching and mentoring programme that pairs emerging leaders with experienced senior leaders and external executive coaches. Internal mentoring leverages organisational knowledge and provides contextualised guidance, while external coaching brings independent perspective and challenges habitual thinking patterns. The CIPD (2024b) identifies coaching as one of the most effective leadership development interventions, generating sustained behavioural change that classroom-based programmes frequently fail to achieve. The people team’s role encompasses designing the programme framework, training internal mentors, managing the matching process, quality-assuring coaching provision, and evaluating impact through 360-degree feedback and performance data.
Approach 2: Data-Informed Talent and Succession Planning
The people management team can use workforce analytics to identify leadership pipeline gaps, assess the readiness of high-potential employees for progression, and design targeted development interventions that address specific capability deficiencies. By analysing demographic data, performance trends, engagement scores, and 360-degree feedback across the leadership population, the people team can move from generic L&MD provision to evidence-based, personalised development that addresses the specific needs identified in AC 1.4. This approach ensures that L&MD investment is directed towards the highest-impact priorities and that succession planning is systematically connected to development activity (Armstrong and Taylor, 2023).
Question 6
AC 2.2 Drawing on your wider reading evaluate two different approaches to leadership and management development that you would like to see adopted or further developed in your organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar). Justify your answer.
Approach 1: Action Learning Sets
Action learning, developed by Revans (cited in Lancaster, 2023), involves small groups of leaders working together on real organisational challenges through a structured process of questioning, reflection, action, and review. Each participant brings a genuine leadership challenge, and the group provides support through insightful questioning rather than advice-giving. This approach is particularly suited to MedTech because it directly connects development to business challenges, including AI integration, hybrid working, and regulatory compliance, rather than abstracting learning from context. Action learning develops the questioning, reflective, and collaborative skills that MedTech’s predominantly directive leadership culture currently lacks, while simultaneously generating practical solutions to strategic problems. Research consistently demonstrates that action learning produces deeper and more sustained behavioural change than conventional training because it combines cognitive learning with emotional engagement and real-world application (CIPD, 2024b).
Approach 2: 360-Degree Feedback Integrated with Executive Coaching
A structured 360-degree feedback process, where leaders receive anonymised behavioural feedback from their manager, peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders, combined with professional coaching to interpret and act on the feedback, addresses the self-awareness deficit that is often the primary barrier to leadership development. At MedTech, many managers are unaware of how their predominantly transactional style is perceived by their teams. The 360 data creates a compelling, evidence-based case for personal change that is significantly more powerful than generic training content. The coaching component ensures that feedback is processed constructively and translated into specific, measurable behavioural commitments. Northouse (2022) identifies self-awareness as a foundational leadership competency, and 360-degree feedback is the most effective mechanism for developing it.
Question 7
AC 2.3 Discuss your organisation’s (or an organisation with which you are familiar) current approaches to leadership and management development in terms of their effectiveness in consistently meeting core equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) objectives. Justify your answer.
MedTech’s current L&MD approaches are partially effective in meeting EDI objectives but demonstrate significant gaps that require addressing.
The positive aspects include an open-access development catalogue available to all employees, removing formal barriers to participation, and a graduate programme that has achieved gender parity in its most recent cohort. However, analysis of development programme participation data reveals persistent demographic imbalances: women, ethnic minority employees, and disabled employees are underrepresented in high-profile leadership development programmes relative to their representation in the workforce. This suggests that informal selection processes, including manager nomination, networking-based visibility, and self-selection patterns, are producing outcomes that disadvantage underrepresented groups despite the absence of formal barriers.
The content of current L&MD programmes does not adequately address inclusive leadership as a core competency. Unconscious bias training is delivered as a standalone module rather than embedded throughout the leadership curriculum, and there is no systematic assessment of whether leaders are demonstrating inclusive behaviours in their daily practice. The CIPD (2024a) advocates for inclusive leadership to be positioned as a foundational capability rather than a supplementary topic, arguing that leaders who cannot create inclusive environments cannot be considered effective leaders regardless of their other competencies.
To improve, MedTech should audit L&MD programme participation data disaggregated by protected characteristics, implement positive action measures to address representation gaps in development cohorts, embed inclusive leadership as a core competency assessed in all leadership development activities, and introduce reverse mentoring to develop cross-cultural empathy and awareness among senior leaders (Kandola, 2023).
Question 8
AC 3.1 Identify two stakeholders and explain their involvement in leadership and management development initiatives in your organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar)
Stakeholder 1: Senior Leadership Team (SLT)
The SLT is involved in L&MD as strategic sponsors, programme participants, and evaluation commissioners. As sponsors, they approve L&MD strategy and resource allocation, ensuring alignment with business priorities. As participants, SLT members engage in their own executive development including board-level coaching, external leadership programmes, and strategic away days. Their visible participation signals organisational commitment to continuous development at all levels. As evaluation commissioners, they review L&MD impact data and hold the people function accountable for demonstrating return on development investment. Their involvement is essential because L&MD programmes that lack senior sponsorship consistently fail to achieve sustained cultural change (Armstrong and Taylor, 2023).
Stakeholder 2: Line Managers Across the Organisation
Line managers are simultaneously the primary participants in, deliverers of, and beneficiaries of L&MD activity. As participants, they attend development programmes and receive coaching. As deliverers, they are responsible for supporting their team members’ development through coaching conversations, on-the-job learning facilitation, and performance development reviews. As beneficiaries, improved management capability directly reduces the people-related challenges that consume their operational time, including conflict, disengagement, absence, and turnover. Their involvement is critical because line managers mediate the relationship between organisational L&MD investment and individual employee experience: even the best-designed programmes fail if managers do not support application in the workplace (CIPD, 2024b).
Question 9
AC 3.2 Evaluate the extent and nature of the methods used by your own organisation (or an organisation with which you are familiar) to evaluate the impact of its leadership and management development activity. Drawing on your reading explain how this might be improved. Justify your answer.
MedTech currently evaluates L&MD activity primarily through Level 1 reaction data, collecting participant satisfaction feedback via post-programme surveys. While this provides useful information about delivery quality, facilitator effectiveness, and perceived relevance, it measures only whether participants enjoyed the experience, not whether it changed their behaviour or improved organisational outcomes. The CIPD (2024b) reports that the majority of organisations remain trapped at Level 1 evaluation, creating an evidence gap that undermines the strategic credibility of L&MD functions.
Limited Level 2 evaluation occurs through pre/post knowledge assessments on compliance-related programmes, but there is no systematic measurement at Level 3 (behavioural change in the workplace) or Level 4 (business results). This means MedTech cannot currently demonstrate whether its L&MD investment is producing the leadership and management capability improvements it is intended to deliver.
Drawing on Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2024), the evaluation approach should be strengthened through several specific improvements. First, defining expected behavioural outcomes at the design stage of every L&MD programme, enabling Level 3 measurement through manager observation, 360-degree feedback, and behavioural assessment at three and six months post-programme. Second, connecting L&MD to business metrics by establishing baseline measurements of team engagement, turnover, absence, and performance indicators before programmes commence and tracking changes attributable to leadership development over time. Third, implementing Phillips’ (2023) ROI methodology for high-investment programmes, calculating the financial return on L&MD expenditure to build the business case for sustained investment. Fourth, incorporating qualitative longitudinal evaluation through structured interviews with programme alumni and their teams, capturing the nuanced impact that quantitative metrics may miss.
Question 10
AC 3.3 Assess two specific business benefits that can accrue to organisations which invest in first-rate, up-to-date, evidence-led leadership and management development programmes.
Benefit 1: Improved Employee Retention and Reduced Turnover Costs
Organisations that invest in high-quality leadership and management development directly address the primary driver of voluntary turnover: the quality of the line manager relationship. The CIPD (2024a) consistently reports that employees leave managers rather than organisations, and that management capability is the single most influential factor in retention decisions. Evidence-led L&MD programmes that develop coaching skills, emotional intelligence, inclusive behaviours, and effective performance conversations transform the daily management experience for employees, creating compelling reasons to remain with the organisation. Given that the cost of replacing a mid-level employee is estimated at 100–200% of their annual salary when accounting for recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity, and institutional knowledge loss, the financial return on L&MD investment that reduces turnover by even a modest percentage is substantial and directly measurable (Taylor, 2022).
Benefit 2: Enhanced Organisational Agility and Change Capability
In volatile and rapidly evolving business environments, the capacity to adapt quickly and effectively to changing conditions is a critical competitive advantage. Evidence-led L&MD programmes that develop leaders’ strategic thinking, adaptive decision-making, innovation facilitation, and change leadership capabilities build the organisational agility required to navigate disruption, seize emerging opportunities, and execute strategic pivots. Organisations with strong leadership pipelines are better positioned to respond to market shifts because they have the leadership talent ready to lead new initiatives rather than scrambling to recruit external leaders who lack organisational context. The World Economic Forum (2023) identifies adaptive leadership as among the most critical capabilities for organisational survival in the current environment, and evidence-led L&MD is the primary mechanism through which this capability is systematically built and sustained.
References
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S. (2023) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 16th edn. London: Kogan Page.
Chartered Management Institute (2024) Management Transformed: Managing in a Marathon. London: CMI.
CIPD (2024a) Leadership and Management Development. Factsheet. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
CIPD (2024b) Coaching and Mentoring. Factsheet. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Kandola, B. (2023) Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference. 2nd edn. Oxford: Pearn Kandola Publishing.
Kirkpatrick, J.D. and Kirkpatrick, W.K. (2024) Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation. 2nd edn. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.
Lancaster, A. (2023) Driving Performance Through Learning. 2nd edn. London: Kogan Page.
Northouse, P.G. (2022) Leadership: Theory and Practice. 9th edn. London: Sage.
Phillips, J.J. (2023) Return on Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs. 3rd edn. London: Routledge.
Taylor, S. (2022) Resourcing and Talent Management. 8th edn. London: CIPD Kogan Page.
World Economic Forum (2023) Future of Jobs Report. Geneva: WEF.