2022-2023 Faculty Research Grant

Randy Siebold and Erich Baumgartner (Leadership).

Exploring Leader Growth: Approaching a learning model of transformative leadership development.

Leadership development has been an ongoing study for nearly 100 years. Leadership development approaches often focus on the type of leader or the competencies a leader needs to achieve. It seems that the instructional approaches have largely been a process that has mirrored the familiar, traditional academic approaches—lectures, readings, assignments, and tests—and the study of the individual learning process has been too often missing. Since its inception in 1994, the Andrews Leadership program has taken a different path. Participants were required to engage in a set of experiences that span both those that are traditionally academic as well as those that are non-traditional. The program focused not just on the competencies of leaders, but included a variety of curriculum approaches such as deep personal reflection, workplace integration, writing one’s personal history, and regular participation in peer-coaching groups. From both informal faculty observation and preliminary research seeking the perceptions of students regarding their learning experiences, many current students and graduates of the program credit their experiences in the program with fundamentally changing the way they understand and approach leadership. In addition, the Global Leadership Institute (GLI, est. 2018) was formed and tasked with building leadership development plans and programs to support and train Adventist executive leaders worldwide. The Institute’s primary program, LeadLab, has been modeled after the principles used in the Leadership program. This research seeks to create a model of leadership growth by integrating the leadership growth literature with a deeper understanding of the level to which each of the planned and unplanned experiences through the leadership growth journey has influenced the growth process of current students and graduates of both the AU Leadership program and the GLI LeadLab programs. The results of this study will contribute to the development of a unique leadership learning model that we expect to inform leadership development programs worldwide.