Leading or led? A critical exploration of youth leadership development

Abstract

Leadership development for youth is an increasingly large global business that has to date lacked sustained critical scrutiny. Our inquiry is based on application, interview and reflection data from participants in a university-based leadership programme, capturing them at the point they transition to early work lives. We argue that leadership has become such a prevalent career and work discourse that the leadership development that happens in youth offers a unique window into new organisational workers, the leadership development industry and a complex leadership theoretical terrain. A set of five ‘leading’ discourses – separate, suspended, small, self and semi – were identified that invite critical inquiry. While youth leadership scholars have previously noted the suspended and separate discourses, we empirically refine those and offer the other three (small, self and semi) as important to current contestations between leaders, leadership and leadership development. In doing so, we question whether current leadership development for youth creates substantive leadership capacity in individuals, organisations or society.

Understanding the Leaders of Tomorrow: The Need to Study Leadership in Adolescence

“…Although hidden to most people, teen leaders are all around and affect modern society in consequential ways (Carroll & Firth, 2021; Tackett et al, 2019). These teens will become the adults of tomorrow who successfully found startup companies, rise from entry-level roles into top management, guide society toward political change, oversee scientific breakthroughs, and inspire and transform struggling organizations.…”

“…Despite this scientific lapse, many interested parties (e.g., educators, parents, policymakers, employers) are highly invested in understanding leadership potential and leadership behavior early in life, during which multiple developmental pathways of leadership develop into diverse sets of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (e.g., Ployhart et al, 2014) relevant for leadership behavior in adulthood (Carroll & Firth, 2021; Day et al, 2014). Broadly speaking, understanding these leadership-development pathways would involve studying a range of leadership antecedents (e.g., leadership emergence), mediators (e.g., group effectiveness), and outcomes (e.g., leader satisfaction; Day et al, 2014; Zaccaro et al, 2018).…”

“…By bringing together expertise from different areas of psychological science, interdisciplinary teams can advance scientific understanding of early leadership. We further underscore the negative consequences of neglecting this area of research, including (a) missed opportunities for youths to recognize and nurture their own leadership potential (Lerner et al, 2015); (b) the wasted resources in schools, neighborhoods, and communities that are launching leadership-development programs that lack a comprehensive scientific foundation to justify large-scale investments of time and resources (Carroll & Firth, 2021; Karagianni & Montgomery, 2018); and (c) the consequences borne by society as a whole from ineffectual or incompetent high-stakes leadership (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). The need and demand for this type of work are clear; it will take interdisciplinary teams of scientists and practitioners sharing and working across their areas of experience and expertise to meet this call effectively.…”

Taking leadership fashions seriously as a vehicle for leadership learning

“…Broader themes of romance and romanticism characterize not only the ways that followers attach themselves to leaders and leadership, but also the leadership narratives that animate social movements, workplace resistance, and broad-scale change (Collinson et al, 2018; Guthey, 2016; Kempster and Carroll, 2016; Meindl, 1995; Meindl et al, 1985). From a variety of different perspectives scholars have explored leadership learning and development as a matter of deep personal reflection and self-reflexivity (Cunliffe, 2009; Kempster and Stewart, 2010; Petriglieri et al, 2011); as a psychodynamic identity workspace (Petriglieri, 2011; Petriglieri and Petriglieri, 2010; Sinclair, 2007, 2011); as a potentially unsettling process of identity undoing (Iszatt-White et al, 2017; Nicholson, 2011; Nicholson and Carroll, 2013); as a form of self-directed control akin to what Foucault called governmentality and pastoral care (Carroll and Firth, 2021; Ferry, 2018; Ferry and Guthey, 2020); as a liminal space or state of existential betweenness (Hawkins and Edwards, 2015); and as a intrinsically aesthetic experience that is at one and the same time affective, visceral, sensory, embodied, and relational (Carroll and Smolović Jones, 2018).…”

Millennial’s Leadership Development: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The research on leadership development was recently analyzed and carried out in the research area since the value of leadership positively impacts a person's quality (Banta et al, 2021;Carroll & Firth, 2021;Gulati et al, 2020) and organization (Archibald, 2013;Garland et al, 2021;Igbaekemen & Odivwri, 2015). On the other hand, there could be program failure (Yahaya et al, 2021).…”