If asked about how we have learnt, we tend to think first of what we have been taught. Yet less than 20 per cent of our important learning comes from teaching. Our research shows that 80 per cent of what people think of as their "really significant learning" comes from tackling life's challenging situations, or experiential learning.

The implications for leaders and directors are clear: first recognise the key challenges in your world, take action, and then reflect upon and learn from your experience—and be seen to do so.

Researchers have not managed to show that formal leadership and management development programmes have much impact on organisational performance. Why? One possibility is that, because these training programmes teach leadership, finance, strategy and so on, they may have the unintentional effect of de-skilling people in terms of their own learning.

The message is in the medium. Self-development is personal development, with people taking primary responsibility for their own learning and for choosing the means to achieve this. It is about increasing people's capacity and willingness to take control of, and be responsible for, events.
An effective manager has 11 qualities (see below) and these fall into three groups.

1. Foundational knowledge represents the basic situational and professional knowledge that any leader or manager needs in making decisions and taking action.

2. Specific leadership and management skills and abilities directly affect behaviour and performance, such as decision-making, influencing and social skills, but also awareness, emotional resilience and, very important, a bias to action.

3. Third level or "meta" qualities enable people to develop and deploy all the other managerial skills and leadership capacities. These qualities of creativity, mental agility, self-knowledge and balanced learning habits are particularly important in building and sustaining effectiveness over a whole career.

We remember the good leaders and managers that we have been lucky enough to know. More painfully, we all too easily recall the rest. But while good quality leaders and managers are found in all organisations, not all organisations can be described as well led or well managed.

"To be a good citizen it is necessary to live in a good country".  This old Greek saying still applies today. In learning organisations, everyone is encouraged to be a self-developer, to become more self-managing and work with others through shared values and purposes, rather than being regulated by "bosses" and job descriptions.

The qualities of successful leaders

Basic knowledge
1. Command of basic facts
2. Relevant professional knowledge

Skills/attributes
3. Continuing sensitivity to events
4. Analytical and decision-making skills
5. Social skills
6. Emotional resilience
7. Inclination to actively respond to events

Meta qualities
8. Creativity
9. Mental agility
10. Balanced learning habits and skills
11. Self-knowledge

Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne & Tom Boydell are authors of A Manager's Guide to Self-Development, published by McGraw-Hill