Organization

The Center for Leadership Development (CLD) is the Federal government's lead organizational element for developing Federal executive and managerial employees. The executive branch of the Federal government strongly emphasizes the training and development of its executives and managers, as well as others in the workforce.The CLD plays an important role for Federal agencies by developing and administering training programs to executives and managers in new government-wide policy; providing technical assistance to support agency implementation; and providing-on an interagency basis-a high-quality, comprehensive, competency-based curriculum of training to support agency programs, especially in leadership development.CLD delivers comprehensive, competency-based, interagency programs of leadership training for managers and executives. Training delivery is carried out through two Management Development Centers (Denver, CO and Washington, DC) and Federal Executive Institute (Charlottesville, VA).Students are nominated for this training by their employing agencies. Based on a student's successful course completion, the training facility issues a certificate to the student, which is used by the employing agency to verify course completion.All permanent staff at the training facilities are selected through the civil service merit system. Candidates to fill positions are widely recruited from other Federal agencies and from outside the Federal government. The most productive outside recruitment resources are college and university faculties.The permanent staff must be expert employee development specialists, managers of seminar administrative systems, as well as highly proficient in their specialized field of expertise. Employee development specialist expertise includes skill as a training consultant, instructor, course director, and courses developer.In addition to staffing with permanent career employees, OPM uses a broad range of merit-based recruitment and appointment authorities to bring in highly qualified faculty including: senior managers on temporary assignment, university faculty, experienced consultants, and other specialists.