Based on research by Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)

These are ideas, strategies and tactics that CCL has developed and refined over many years working with large numbers of clients and many kinds  of organizations

Job assignments and the kinds of jobs people have done are crucial in the role of leadership development. CCL has  identified these five key challenges that open the door to powerful leadership lessons:

Challenge 1: Unfamiliar responsibilities.

When you practice new skills and expand your knowledge base, you learn how to operate effectively when you are early in a learning curve.


Challenge 2: Creating change.

When you lead change, you learn to operate in ambiguous situations, think strategically, make tough decisions and persevere in the face of adversity.

Challenge 3: Significant accountabilities.

By expanding your role in terms of scope, scale, time pressure and accountability, you learn what it takes to be decisive, to work and learn at a fast pace and to have significant impact.

Challenge 4: Managing across boundaries.

Assignments that require you to collaborate across functions and business units or to work with people over whom you have no authority will strengthen your ability to influence others.

Challenge 5: Dealing with diversity.

By working with people of another culture, gender or background, you will be better prepared to adapt to different expectations and persuade people of different backgrounds to work together.