Scenario

You are asked by your Senior Management Team (SMT) to draft a briefing paper for them about
leadership and management development in your own organisation (or an organisation with which
you are familiar). You will be evaluating what currently happens, making recommendations for
improvement and justifying these. Your briefing paper needs to be objective and evidence-based,
drawing on your own organisational knowledge and observations, as well as authoritative
published sources.
At an initial meeting with your SMT you were asked to structure your paper around the following
ten specific questions. Provide answers to each of these, aiming in each case to do so in around
390 words so that the total length of your assessment is 3900 words in length (+ /- 10% excluding
references). You should answer each of the questions as fully as possible and you should take care
to justify all the points you make.

Task

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.


Question 2 (AC 1.2)


Explain the meanings of ‘leadership development’ and ‘management development’ making a clear
distinction between these two functions.


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).


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.


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.

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.


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.


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)


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.


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.

Your evidence must consist of:

  • Written responses to each of the ten instructions above.
  • Approximately 3900 words in total, refer to CIPD word count policy