Leadership styles predict career readiness in early college high‐school students

Abstract

This study examined leadership style as a predictor of career readiness among a sample of (N = 281) students from two early college high schools from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Participants included 165 females and 116 males ranging from 14 to 19 years of age and 96.8% identified as Hispanic. Participants provided demographic information and reported their own leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5x) as well as their career readiness using the Employability Skills Inventory (ESI). Additionally, pre-existing district Texas Success Initiative (TSI) data was used to identify college readiness in Reading, Writing, and Math.The results indicated that college readiness, dual enrollment, year in school and gender predicted some of the dimensions of career readiness, but leadership style emerged as a significant predictor of all eight dimensions of career readiness. K E Y W O R D Scareer readiness, leadership style, transformational leadership Because of the rapidly changing technology and advances in communication that have transformed the world into a global community, today's workplace environment requires highly skilled and prepared workers. Many organizations consider the career readiness of their newly hired employees as key components to success. For employers accepting entry-level workers, many of whom may have just completed high school or college, the need to ensure that these future employees are equipped with specific competencies remains critical. These young people entering the workplace must not only show mastery of core academic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics, but must also be ready to work in teams, dominate various technologies, solve problems, think critically, and possess self-management skills.Numerous individuals, groups, and organizations have worked with industry leaders to identify employability skills that prove critical to employee success. In 1990, the United States Department of Labor organized a committee initiated by the former Secretary of Labor, Lynn Martin, to conduct a comprehensive study on how well schools were preparing young people for the workforce. This was the first time that businesses were given a platform to communicate to educators what students needed to know to be successful in the workplace (Alston, Cromartie, Wakefield, & 476

The interaction between leadership styles and their followers' human capital: a correspondence analysis approach applied to micro-sized businesses

“…Leadership styles can have a positive impact on the development and use of organizational learning and commitment (Ebrahim and Yahaya, 2016), job and meeting JMD 40,1 satisfaction (Abdelhafiz et al, 2016), organization subordinates' performance (Kwanya and Stilwell, 2018;Nazarian et al, 2017;Sethibe, 2017), followers' innovative behaviour (Ahmed et al, 2018;Gong et al, 2018;Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019), work engagement and commitment (Ribeiro et al, 2018), risk-taking, decision-making participation and empowerment (Huertas-Valdivia et al, 2019), career readiness (Villarreal et al, 2018), positive working environment (Mills et al, 2018), total quality management practices (Kumar and Sharma, 2018;Soliman, 2018) and building followers' trust (Yasir et al, 2016).…”

“…We searched the literature for the most used comprehensive and representative measurements for leadership styles. We found that the most prominent and used measurement tool is the Multifactor leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (G€ unzel-Jensen et al, 2018;Mills et al, 2018;Vignoli et al, 2018;Villarreal et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2018) with 45 questions using a 5-point Likert scale from 0 (not at all to 5 (always).…”

“…The most important control factors found in the literature that could have a potential confounding effect were the gender, age and education level of the leader (Abdelhafiz et al, 2016;Berkovich, 2018;Cheung et al, 2017;G€ unzel-Jensen et al, 2018;Huertas-Valdivia et al, 2019;Nazarian et al, 2017;Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019;Raziq et al, 2018;Ribeiro et al, 2018;Villarreal et al, 2018;Yasir et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2018). Thus, we have chosen to control for the gender, age and education level of the leader.…”

Implication of Global Outreach Program Organizing in Student Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Academic Performance: Kembara Ilmu Perdana Palembang 2019 Case Study

“…Various leadership programs and modules were developed in order for the students to improve their leadership skill [6]. However, several scholars have argued that leadership development should became a priority to build up the strong leadership characteristics, especially at young age [7][8][9].…”

Student Leadership and Development: A Panoramic View of Trends and Possibilities

“…The idea of student leadership in the 21 st century has risen (Adams & Velarde, 2018), the call for student leadership gaining in momentum, as various enhanced leadership models and trends are developed for students Tie, 2012). Scholars argue that students' leadership development should be a priority to assist students to form a strong leadership identity at an early stage (Adams, Kamarudin, & Tan, 2018;Amirianzadeh, 2012;Keselman et al, 2015;Simonsen et al, 2014;Villarreal et al, 2018).…”