Leader Developmental Readiness E-Book

Rebecca J. Reichard

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B SL Single Issue Student Leadership
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 215

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

This volume takes an in-depth look at leader development readiness and practice, especially in early life stages where it is especially formative and has the potential magnitude of long-term impact. By understanding developmental readiness - what it is, how to assess it, and how to develop it - we can maximize program impact and it will help both individual leader self-development efforts as well as organized, formal programs in attaining the ultimate goal of increasing and accelerating leader development. The Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Leadership explores leadership concepts and pedagogical topics of interest to high school and college leadership educators. Issues are grounded in scholarship and feature practical applications and best practices in youth and adult leadership education.

Leseprobe

New Directions for Student Leadership

Susan R. Komives EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Kathy L. Guthrie ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Leader Developmental Readiness: Pursuit of Leadership Excellence

Rebecca J. Reichard

Sara E. Thompson

EDITORS

Number 149 • Spring 2016

Jossey-Bass

San Francisco

LEADER DEVELOPMENTAL READINESS: PURSUIT OF LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE Rebecca J. Reichard, Sara E. Thompson (eds.) New Directions for Student Leadership, No. 149, Spring 2016

Susan R. Komives, Editor-in-Chief Kathy L. Guthrie, Associate Editor

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NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT LEADERSHIP (ISSN 2373-3349, electronic ISSN 2373-3357) is part of the Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to New Directions for Student Leadership, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594.

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CONTENTS

Editors’ Notes

Introduction: The Golden Triangle for Examining Leadership Developmental Readiness

Our Investment in Leadership Development: How Does Readiness Matter?

Conclusion

References

1: In Pursuit: Mastering Leadership Through Leader Developmental Readiness

What Is Leader Developmental Readiness?

Conceptual Model of Leader Developmental Readiness: Tying It All Together

Leader Development Support: Implications for Practice

Outcomes of Leader Development

Conclusion

References

2: The Role of Passion and Purpose in Leader Developmental Readiness

Passion

The Development of Passion

Passion in Leader Developmental Readiness

Purpose

The Development of Purpose

Purpose in Leader Developmental Readiness

Bringing Passion and Purpose Together

References

3: Exploring Leader Identity and Development

Leader Identity as Self-Concept

Multilevel Views of Leadership Identity Development

Considerations for Leadership Education and Training

Conclusion

References

4: Motivation to Develop as a Leader

Motivation to Lead—An Essential Precursor to Leader Developmental Readiness

Defining Motivation to Develop as a Leader

Behavioral Outcomes of Motivation

Key Challenges in Cultivating Motivation for Leader Development

Strategies for Overcoming Motivational Challenges to Leader Development

Conclusion

References

5: Orienting Oneself for Leadership: The Role of Goal Orientation in Leader Developmental Readiness

Goal Orientation

Goal Orientation and Leader Developmental Readiness

Strategies for Enhancing Leader Developmental Readiness

Conclusion

References

6: Leadership and Leader Developmental Self-Efficacy: Their Role in Enhancing Leader Development Efforts

Background on Self-Efficacy

Increasing Leader Self-Efficacy

Leader Developmental Efficacy as Part of Developmental Readiness

Implications for Development

Implications of Efficacy Assessments for Leader Development Program Evaluations

Conclusion

References

7: Thinking About Thinking About Leadership: Metacognitive Ability and Leader Developmental Readiness

MCA and Leader Development

Developing MCA in Future Leaders

Tools for Developing MCA

Discussion and Limitations

References

8: Context Matters: Support for Leader Developmental Readiness

Learning Organization

Job/Role Design and Rewards

Supervisor/Peer Support

Structure and Content of Leader Development Programming

Conclusion

References

Advert

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 3

Table 3.1

Table 3.2

Chapter 6

Table 6.1

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 Conceptual Model of Leader Development Readiness

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1 Motivation to Develop Leadership Process Model

Guide

Cover

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Editors’ Notes

Several assumptions underlie our thinking and approach to leader development and leader developmental readiness that formed a basis for this volume. First, we believe that anyone can develop into a more effective leader—regardless of social class, cultural background, or gender, and whether one is a young adult or a seasoned employee or leading within or from outside of an organization. We also believe that the development of leadership unfolds over one's lifetime and can be accelerated through external supports (e.g., formal programming, mentoring). Finally, we believe that leaders must be committed to their own long-term leader development journey. This last assumption really targets the readiness dimension of leader development. Is the leader motivated to develop? Does the individual have the ability to learn? What support is available to the leader during the development process? These are often-ignored questions when selecting or preparing individuals for leader development programs, and the answers are likely to be strong predictors of the success (or lack thereof) of such programs.

Individuals enter leadership development programs with different levels of developmental readiness. This can be a result of different backgrounds, experience, identities, or motivations. The limited success of extant leader development programs may be explained by participants’ insufficient levels of developmental readiness, or one's ability and motivation to develop as a leader. By understanding developmental readiness—what it is, how to assess it, and how to develop it—we can maximize program impact and return on development investment. An increased understanding of developmental readiness and how to effectively use it will help both individual leader self-development efforts and organized, formal programs in attaining the ultimate goal of increasing and accelerating leader development.

Specifically, we feel that this volume has a lot to offer leader development practitioners. The authors of the various chapters are experts in their domains and provide an integrative and accessible summary of very complex topics. Each chapter includes suggestions and implications for leader development practitioners, often emphasizing different phases of one's career—pre-college, college years, and early career. We explicitly focus on these early life stages because we believe that they are especially formative in terms of development. This is not to say that seasoned executives cannot develop or that leader developmental readiness (LDR) does not apply to them; however, we feel that the resources (e.g., dollars spent and scholarship) for executive leader development are disproportionate to the amount invested in early-career leaders. This lack of development of our young people is inconsistent with the potential magnitude of their long-term impact. Setting individuals on a positive trajectory of leadership learning early in life maximizes the likelihood and capacity for growth across the life span. Our hope is that providing researchers and practitioners with a long-lens perspective on leader development will help ingrain the understanding that developmental readiness may wax and wane over time and impact one's level of engagement in formal or informal leader development programs.

Finally, we would like to thank those special individuals who have supported us in our thinking and development of this volume. In addition to our families, who are our foundation, we want to thank members of LeAD Labs at Claremont Graduate University and the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, especially Kyra McAndrews, Rowan Mulligan, and DeeDee Chao. We hope that you find this volume useful in your work as a leader or leader development practitioner, and we would love to hear what you think about the volume! Feel free to reach out to us with comments, questions, or other ideas in your quest to become a developmentally ready leader or to facilitate leader developmental readiness in others.

Rebecca J. ReichardSara E. ThompsonEditors

Rebecca J. Reichard

is an associate professor in the Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University, where she directs LeAD Labs, an evidence-based leader development consultancy specializing in higher education (

www.LeADLabs.org

). She earned a doctorate in management from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and has produced more than 30 publications and 40 conference presentations related to leader development. Becky is an active member of the Academy of Management, Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and International Leadership Association. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and Leadership Quarterly

.

Sara E. Thompson

is the director of Leadership Programs at Claremont McKenna College (CMC), where she oversees the leadership development opportunities for CMC students as well as serving as a leadership studies instructor. She brings 16 years of facilitation experience with high school and college students and with working professionals. She has a BS in organizational behavior and an ME in organizational development from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Sara is an active member of the International Leadership Association, having served as the chair of the leadership education member interest group. Sara is currently finishing her PhD in higher education in the College and University Leadership Program at Colorado State University

.

This introduction includes the history of the leadership field that resulted in the creation of the developmental readiness construct, which represents readiness of the leader as well as followers, peers, and the target leader's leader, and how context is to be developed through some form of leadership intervention.

Introduction: The Golden Triangle for Examining Leadership Developmental Readiness

Bruce J. Avolio

This New Directions in Student Leadership publication focuses on a critically important topic for determining how to accelerate the development of leadership with its central focus being on the construct of developmental readiness. The chapters contained in this issue cover a range of important topics that position both researchers and practitioners to examine how to best align the readiness of individuals learning how to lead, or to lead more effectively, with interventions that can be adjusted to accommodate varying levels of developmental readiness, particularly with younger candidates for development.

My focus in this introductory chapter is to level-set the reader in terms of discussing what I call the “golden triangle” of developmental readiness: the leader, context, and those being impacted by the leader's leadership. I begin this chapter looking back 30 years to frame my discussion of developmental readiness, focusing on a concept that has done for leadership research what it has been described as doing for leaders, followers, and organizations—transformative or transformational leadership. Bass (1985) built on the foundational work of Burns (1978), who distinguished transformative leadership from transactional leadership, by presenting evidence for a four-component model of what constituted transformational leadership. Like this higher-order construct itself, the charisma component of transformational leadership quickly received a great deal of attention in the academic and practice literature for its potential to change the way we viewed leadership. The shift in thinking about leadership that Bass and Burns provided was accelerated by a foundational conference hosted by Jay Conger and Rabi Kanungo at McGill University that focused on exploring the topic of charismatic leadership.

Toward the end of the McGill conference, following our deliberations on good and bad charismatic leaders, Warren Bennis summed up his observations of the previous day's discussions on charismatic leadership, asking conference attendees to consider the potential risks associated with teaching leaders what we have learned and will learn through research about helping leaders to be seen by their followers as more charismatic. Bennis expressed serious concerns about providing any advantage to those leaders who desired to be seen as more charismatic, but were not developmentally ready to handle the power it offered them to influence or manipulate their followers. Reflecting back on this moment, the question before us was: How developmentally ready were we to unleash this knowledge to the full range of good and bad leaders?

The fundamental question addressed in this volume is whether an individual is developmentally ready to lead, and, if so, how did this occur? However, it is equally important to ask whether these leaders are developmentally ready not just to lead, but also to lead in a way that benefits their team, department, organization, community, or larger society. This prompts the question: Do we really want to accelerate the development of abusive or unethical leaders? Based on the level of dissatisfaction that most surveys report regarding the quality of leadership in the United States and elsewhere around the globe, one could conclude that many leaders are simply not developmentally ready to lead, or at least not ready to lead for the good of their group. This might be why the average tenure for a CEO in business is typically less than three years, with similarly low tenure rates found in many other key leadership roles in society, including superintendents of school systems, and deans and presidents at universities. If the failure rate for flying in a plane today were the same as for being developmentally ready to assume a leadership role, I suspect we might all stick to safer and less risky forms of travel on the ground.

Van de Ven (2007) suggested that when examining a particular area of research, one must be aware of not only what is in the foreground, but also what is in the background or context. In this chapter and for subsequent chapters, I want to prime readers to consider the “golden triangle” of developmental readiness, meaning the readiness of the leader; the readiness of the follower, peer, or the leader's leader; and the readiness of context in which leadership is unfolding. Examining all three may offer a better idea of why so many leaders appear to be less developmentally ready to lead, while keeping in mind the importance of the developmental readiness of the target leader to best serve followers, peers, supervisors, and the organization.

Let me illustrate my point regarding the triangle of developmental readiness with an example. Assume the leader is developmentally ready to lead based on her motivation to lead and capabilities as defined in the literature and in this publication (Avolio & Hannah, 2008, 2009). This means the leader has the desire and agency to take the lead, as well as the knowledge, skills, and abilities that would apply to what might be required of her leadership in terms of the followers being led and the context in which leadership occurs. We can then imagine a situation where a leader is both motivated and capable of learning to lead, which represents the core components of developmental readiness, but her followers, peers, or leaders are not developmentally ready to grant leadership to the leader as defined by DeRue and Ashford (2010). All other things being equal, the most developmentally ready target leader in terms of motivation and ability will certainly be more effective in dealing with the lack of readiness in others and the context; but if followers, peers, or the target leader's leader absolutely will not grant leadership to her, then moving followers forward toward a common purpose or mission will nevertheless be extremely challenging to accomplish.

Similarly, a highly developmentally ready leader who is assigned to lead a unit that is characterized by the lowest levels of psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) will struggle to be granted leadership, as well as to claim such leadership to move the unit forward to higher levels of motivation and performance. Similarly, environments that are considered weak versus strong in the sense of uncertainty, lack of clear guidelines, and lack of direction (see Mischel, 1968, for a more in-depth discussion of contexts) are certainly going to interact with the developmental readiness of a leader, as well as what is required in terms of readiness based on how that context unfolds over time. This led Mischel (1968) to argue that we simply cannot study an individual's personality in a vacuum, and what is true for understanding differences in personality is also true for understanding differences in leader developmental readiness. The argument for focusing on the context and on followers, peers, or the target leader's leader, among other factors, remains critically important to how we move forward in terms of how we examine leader developmental readiness.

Returning to the conference in Montreal, during this conference there was a lot of discussion about the context and the emergence of charismatic leadership based on Weber's (1947) assumption that certain types of contexts will promote whereas others will limit the emergence of charismatic leadership. Weber (1947) argued that charismatic leaders emerged in contexts that were undergoing a crisis, or in Mischel's (1968) terms, “weak contexts.” The argument Weber presented and that was supported by other authors subsequently indicated that followers would be more receptive to a charismatic leader (see also Klein & House, 1995, for discussion of what elements are required to “ignite” charismatic leadership) when the context was weak and uncertain. Consequently, the same exact level of readiness for one leader versus another may be more or less sufficient, depending on the nature of the context in which leadership is exercised.

Avolio (2005) and Avolio and Hannah (2008) argued that future leadership research and practice should focus on accelerating the development of leadership, while considering that leaders will develop regardless of whether planned developmental interventions are utilized. However, relying upon a stochastic life events model to guide the development of leadership may not be as efficient or effective a strategy as taking what we know from prior research about what leaders can be taught and applying that knowledge to the development of evidenced-based training interventions. Moreover, the extent to which these planned interventions consider in their design the readiness of the context, followers, peers, and leaders, one would expect the development of leadership to be further accelerated. Supporting this claim, Avolio and Hannah (2008) stated:

[W]e argue that the majority of what promotes positive leader development is attributable to the type of context in which the individual leader is embedded, including what we consider the contextual characteristics and influences of the leader's followers. A more positively focused climate that is psychologically safe (Kahn, 1990) will, with all other things being equal, contribute to accelerating positive leader development. (p. 341)

Our Investment in Leadership Development: How Does Readiness Matter?

Bersin (2014) estimated that 35% of the expenditures that corporations make on training now focus on leadership development. Given this large investment, it is important to examine how aligned the readiness of each leader is to engage in a leader development intervention, but equally important how aligned both the leader and the intervention itself are to address the readiness of the context and followers for such leadership development. For example, if we assess the readiness of a leader for a particular leadership development intervention, then the validity of that intervention should also be sufficient enough to address the situational demands that the target leader will face as he or she moves into the context in which the individual is required to lead. Why is this important? Someone who is developmentally ready to engage the challenges put forth by a leadership development program may be ill-prepared to actually lead in the context for which the program was designed, if the program does not address the actual challenges that will be faced in a real leadership role.

All leadership development programs must have requisite validity and therefore be applicable to the challenges and tools participants will need to successfully lead in the context for which the training was designed. By way of analogy, one cannot train a pilot to fly a small private plane and then expect that same pilot to be able to fly a new jumbo jet that carries 500 passengers. Indeed, the training in this context, as with leadership development, must have a high degree of validity for it to be successful in readying the pilot for this more complex context. Thus, all training interventions must achieve a certain level of readiness to address the challenges leaders will face in whatever context they are asked to lead.

Those choosing to invest in leadership development must also realize up front that it is not sufficient for just the leader to be ready to enter into a rigorous leadership development intervention, particularly where the intervention itself will have to make accommodations to the readiness of the context in which those leaders participating in training will serve (i.e., followers, peers, leaders, stakeholders, resources, etc.). As noted by Maurer and Tarulli (1994), leaders initially entering leadership training must not only be ready to engage in the intervention, but must also be ready to engage in the myriad of emerging learning opportunities and challenges (if the program extends over a length of time) that will become part of their emerging leadership development process. This will occur as participants experiment with what they have learned in and beyond training. Thus, one of the keys to successful leadership development interventions is fostering sufficient levels of motivation throughout the trajectory of leader development to produce a more effective leader (Colquitt, LePine, & Noe, 2000), and perhaps the so-called positive efficacy spirals of development and performance referred to by Machida and Schaubroeck (2011).

To be more explicit, developmental readiness is a multilevel construct that should be viewed as being generalizable across levels: the leader, followers, peers, superior leader, and the remaining context. Certainly there are other characteristics associated with the context, such as our earlier reference to psychological safety, that remain important to examining how ready leaders are to engage in both their development and enhancing performance. Of course, all of these factors must be considered as we select individuals for development and as we design our developmental interventions. Support for both the leader and the intervention is critical to successfully producing the most developmentally ready leaders. In this regard, each of the chapters in this book has an important message to share regarding the elements of what constitutes developmental readiness, and yet each also would benefit from examining the components that contribute to a more comprehensive multilevel view of leader developmental readiness.

Returning to Bass (1985), when transformational leadership was first introduced to the leadership literature, beyond charisma, another key component of this higher order construct was labeled “individualized” consideration. In earlier leadership theory and research, there had been a lot of focus on what constituted consideration (Bass & Bass, 2008), for example, as part of the Ohio State research into balancing task and people in terms of one's leadership. Yet, the addition of the individualized consideration placed transformational leadership in a fundamentally different category of leadership—leadership that focused on the individual needs, motivation, and ability of those led. By learning a lot about the individuals one is leading, the leader not only can maximize his or her performance, but could also develop those followers into leaders as well, which constituted a key part of and criterion for the so-called transformation process.