Developing Leadership Capacity Through Organizational Learning

The relationship of human development to leadership growth and organizational learning is becoming more significant as organizations recognize the value of skilled leadership. In order to foster collective intelligence and innovation in groups, leadership throughout an organization benefits from the understanding of processes involved in collectives or groups. The idea of creating a learning organization is gaining more attention as organizations strive to adapt and respond to a changing global environment in fast paced and demanding arenas. It is now becoming a needed skill to build a learning organization as a leadership competency. Those organizations that place learning as a priority will have an advantage over those that fail to learn and adapt. In order to understand how adult development is connected to organizational learning the work of Kegan (1982), Argyris (1992) and Senge (1990) will be examined. In addition the concept of dialogue, for learning, and creating culture will be explored in order to gain insight for developing leadership in organizational learning, Schein (2004); Isaacs (1996). Because of the growing complexity of the global environment, developing leadership in the organization is becoming more sophisticated in the ways in which learning is approached and orchestrated and therefore a greater understanding of leadership development is needed.