Critical Leadership Development Research Articles

Leader development: A pathway for social change?

Critical leadership development scholars argue that leadership development programmes (LDPs) should be the setting where participant’s aspirations and struggle to be a good leader can be voiced and reflected upon. Integral to this prompt is the call for LDPs to offer alternative approaches to the conventional, individualistic, leader-centric modules through innovative programme design and delivery. In this article, we investigate the outcomes of one LDP where innovation, notions of good leadership and the power of the collective to create fundamental change for the betterment of society are sought by the facilitators. Through semi-structured interviews with alumni, we consider whether they, in the aftermath of the LDP, have taken steps to effect positive change across communities and society and secondly, whether they perceive that the LDP prepared them to meet this expectation. We argue existing societal power and leadership dynamics remain invisible and unchallenged. There was little acknowledgement of the wider role social structural forces play, both formal and informal, in reinforcing the status quo. Importantly, this research is a stark reminder of how, to varying degrees and levels of consciousness, advantaged groups prop up systemic processes that embed their privilege and further exacerbate social inequalities.

Leadership to Lean

Lean leadership might be among the most desirable goals for the development of successful managers. The most prominent organization exhibiting this style is Toyota. This article provides a comprehensive examination of leadership styles and their relation to the two lean principles, respect for people, and continuous improvement. The results shed light on critical leadership development for lean initiatives. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are proposed. Managerial Relevance Statement-Lean management creates organizations which are financially sound and ethical. Major obstacles to create such lean management driven organizations seem to be soft factors of human behavior driven by leadership. This paper undertakes an effort to analyze the desirable leadership style(s) to enable managers and leaders to sustain or introduce lean management in their organization effectively.

INVESTING IN CRITICAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT WITH UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: A qualitative examination of a semester-long internship

The study explored the experiences of undergraduate students during a semester-long, leadership development internship course offered at a large research university in the southern United States. The researchers employed qualitative content analysis to examine sixty-five student internship portfolios and identify the leadership capabilities that students applied and/or developed as part of the internship. Students identified self-awareness, growth, project planning, team management, and adversity management as the main leadership capabilities used during their internship experience. Results also indicated that students expanded their concept of leadership and built leadership self-efficacy. The study provides preliminary support for including a leadership internship within the curriculum to support student leadership development.

Investing in Critical Leadership Development with High-School Students.

Leadership development efforts are enhanced by the early integration of critical perspectives. This chapter outlines a framework for integrating critical leadership development in high schools drawing on a real-world example from SOAR (Students Organizing Against Racism).

Teaching Power as an Inconvenient but Imperative Dimension of Critical Leadership Development.

A central focus of critical leadership development involves identifying and understanding how power flows through society. This requires a complex understanding of social systems. This chapter explores how leadership educators can more explicitly integrate learning related to power dynamics into leadership development initiatives.

Increasing Metacognitive Capacity by Disrupting Implicit Leader Prototypes.

Metacognitive capacity (i.e., thinking about how one thinks) is a fundamental component of critical leadership development. This chapter offers practical insights on how to leverage the exploration of implicit leader prototypes as a powerful vehicle for building metacognitive capacity.

Cultivating Critical Hope: The Too Often Forgotten Dimension of Critical Leadership Development.

Adopting critical approaches draws into question how we see the world and renders visible social stratification and inequity. Coming to understand these realities can contribute to pessimism, disillusionment, or retreat from engaging in the work of leadership for social change. This chapter offers tools to aid educators with purposefully cultivating critical hope.

A Paradigm Shift in Leadership Education: Integrating Critical Perspectives Into Leadership Development.

This chapter positions the integration of critical perspectives in leadership development as imperative. Content introduces the integrated model of critical leadership development and outlines four steps to deepen the practice of critical leadership development in leadership education.

What Type of Leaders Are We? Understanding and Enhancing Critical Human Resource Development Identity in the United States

The Problem These are the days of grand, interdisciplinary, and global challenges. For example, there is widespread acknowledgment within the scientific community that climate change is happening. The financial meltdown caused thousands of families to lose their homes, and environmental debacles like the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico generated economic, social, and public health concerns.These are problems—not necessarily human resource development (HRD) problems—but problems nonetheless that impact the people, communities and organizations we lead and serve.We are the leaders, change agents, consultants, and educators whom organizations, communities, and people turn to for their development and training needs. The Solution I believe HRD scholars should proactively develop a critical orientation to economic, social, cultural, and environmental issues currently plaguing the planet. With such a critical perspective, we can develop a CHRD leadership identity and challenge hidden assumptions and work with others to expose environmental, human, and economicexploitation.The accomplish this goal, I believe, we should examine the historical emergence of critical HRD identities and thenintentionally create critical leadership development opportunities for more HRD professionals to enact critical HRD more of the time. The Stakeholders Communities, individuals, organizations, the planet.

Public leadership development facilitation and the crossroads blues

The article seeks to make sense of the choices facing the public leadership development facilitator, in design and in-the-moment programme decisions. The challenge is posited as one of situating knowledge of facilitation practices in a critical relationship with the public sector leadership literature and the critical leadership development literature. The article positions public leadership development facilitation as sitting within three pressing dilemmas, or crossroads, concerning public leadership theory, critical leadership development scholarship and facilitation scholarship. A narrative ethnographic methodology is adopted to explore the constructions of a specific public sector leadership development facilitator as a means of analysing facilitator choices in action. An interpretation of how the facilitator frames and constructs public leadership in relation to the constructions of participants is offered. The article situates facilitator choices as highly political, sitting contextually between the idealism of the public sector literature and the social identifications of participants. The authors offer two dominant forms of facilitation choices (framing and adaptive) as a heuristic for facilitators, practitioners and scholars who wish to reflect further on the role of leadership development in the public realm.