TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– This paper aims to explore how strategic HR professionals might create the conditions for leadership learning to play a key role in supporting organizational transformation.Design/methodology/approach– Drawing on research into learning in complex organizations, the paper applies six different lenses to consider what made a real leadership development program successful as an enabler of change.Findings– It highlights some of the apparently small things that made a huge difference to the impact of the leadership learning investment and includes practical advice for HR professionals on how to apply this thinking to their own leadership development programs.Practical implications– It introduces a simple model that can be used to consider some of the complex contextual dynamics of leadership learning and other forms of organizational learning.Originality/value– Strategic HR practitioners are encouraged to consider their own leadership learning initiatives in terms of a broader range of influences that have an impact in complex organizations. VL - 7 IS - 4 SN - 1475-4398 DO - 10.1108/14754390810880471 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390810880471 AU - Varney Sharon PY - 2008 Y1 - 2008/01/01 TI - Leadership learning: key to organizational transformation T2 - Strategic HR Review PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 5 EP - 10 Y2 - 2024/04/20 ER -