Practicing Evidence-Based Education in Leadership Development

There are real challenges involved in achieving success in developing individuals into effective leaders. This seems to be particularly true for those of us interested in promoting leader development in university-based MBA programs. It would seem reasonable that attempts to transform students into leaders would rely on what the field of leadership education knows from research and practice about leader development. However, we point out the irony that-university faculty, those who are usually on the cutting edge of leadership scholarship and who are also in an excellent position to apply the findings from this research, seem not to be doing this. It appears that, as they say, the "cobbler's children have no shoes." After disentangling some of the possible reasons for this, we observe that as university educators, we might want to remedy this curious state of affairs by turning to empirically valid models of how to transform organizations so that we really are capable of transforming our students into leaders.