Leadership Development Assessment Center: A Review on Advantages and Disadvantages for Developing Leadership Behavioral Competencies

Abstract

This study aims to introduce Leadership Development Assessment Center (LDAC) as a systematic approach for training and developing leadership behavioral competencies of organizational leaders. The four crucial elements of LDAC including needs assessment, design, implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness are presented and discussed. A literature review was performed to identify, define, and classify the theoretical concepts and implementation processes of LDAC. Three databases of Science Direct, PubMed, and Google Scholar were used to collect data over the past two decades. LDAC flexibly explores the real needs of leaders in their current position, contributes to the content of training programs based on the needs, and provides tractable and visible measures to assess and develop the leadership behavioral competencies in leaders. Although LDAC is a costly and time-consuming model that requires more studies to justify its wide application, the advantages of LDAC can urge organizational developers to apply it. As an advantage, LDAC provides the main foundation to assess and develop leadership behavioral competencies through applying a more feasible and systematic procedure that fosters behaviorally competent leaders.