post 3

I find myself struggling with a lot of concepts lately. Here's some ideas I'm hoping to flesh out:
- "actual" leadership vs. academic research on leadership
- leadership development for leaders vs. leadership development

I'll start with the last one. So I have this problem at work. I am supposed to be developing "leadership development" programs for my department. The question: what the heck does leadership development mean? Many of my coworkers immediately think "trainings for RSO presidents and officers". I understand it as something different though. I have this belief that everyone can be a leader, and everyone should be a leader. So to me, leadership development is a process of helping students (because that is the context in which I work) develop a leadership identity. When I taught EAD 315, I always told my students "leadership is not a hat that you put on or take off when you're not "the leader". It's a tattoo... it's with you for the rest of your life". So now, I'm faced with the question of how to get my colleagues to understand that. I mean, I've been doing lots of research on leadership and leadership development, and I am the only person on staff that has actually been through a leadership development program. Plus, I'm kind of dealing with this generation gap. Not entirely sure how that fits into the equation.

Ok, so I also have this idea that there's something different between academic research and "leadership in action". I was having a conversation with my old band director, and he kind of made fun of me for thinking so "academically". Is there a difference between what we talk about it in the classroom and what actually happens? I mean, we're sitting around in a room talking for three hours, but we're all academics (at least for the time being). Granted, a lot of the research we read is on the "leadership in practice", as a lot of it looks at individuals and organizations, but how would it be different if some of these CEOs were sitting around the room with us?