To survive the cut-throat competition and emerge as a winner, companies must be led by effective leaders. Hence, management should focus on building leaders across the organization. This article primarily revolves around the necessity of a Leadership Development Program and puts forth the various approaches to develop leadership abilities and skills.

In simple terms, an organization is an arrangement where individuals with varying attitudes, different backgrounds, different preferences and from different cultures, work together to achieve a common goal. In the process, these individuals need to interact with their subordinates, peers, superiors, and others on a daily basis, whose support they need in order to accomplish the tasks. To gain their support, one must be able to understand the peers, motivate the subordinates and build trust among the superiors. And at times of crisis, every organization needs individuals who will stand by it and support it like a pillar by managing themselves and leading others rather than panicking.

House (2004) defines "leadership" as "the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members". When an organization has leaders at every division, it can survive through all tornados. Some leaders are born, whereas others are made. The potential employees need to be trained to imbibe those leadership qualities that would become the base for an organization's survival. Leadership development focuses on the development of leadership as a process. This includes working on building the interpersonal skills, improving team dynamics between the leader and his/her team at the dyad level, improving the organizational climate, etc. (Day, 2000).

Every organization is gifted with a large talent pool most of which is latent. But how far have the organizations been successful in tapping this hidden talent? How many managers have actually understood the need to groom the potential leaders within the organization? The highly competitive business world needs leaders. Only leaders can withstand the continuous threats and challenges that the environment is posing. And hence arises the need for organizations to specifically focus on those prospective leaders by honing their leadership skills. Of late, many organizations have been voluntarily taking up the task of developing leaders at all levels of the hierarchy by initiating different Leadership Development Programs (LDP). The ideal motive behind instigating an LDP should be to establish a `Leadership Culture' across the organization. To begin with, there have been several approaches to Leadership development, in practice, which would be discussed in the subsequent sections.

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