This is the third article in a series on clinical leadership and medical education. In the first two articles in this series we looked at the nature of leadership and examined professional outcomes, standards and competency frameworks from around the world that describe what it is we are trying to instil in medical students and doctors in postgraduate training. In this article we explore current trends in leadership development and describe broad approaches to clinical leadership development, highlighting those strategies that are likely to be more (or less) successful.