Leadership development: Insights from a careers perspective

Abstract

This article reports on an exploratory empirical investigation into the resonance between two developmental processes to see if any insights into leadership development could be gained from using a careers lens. Career and leadership development both share contemporary shifts in emphasis: leadership from hero to distributed models ,and career from objective to subjective explorations of progress and success. Twenty-two participants on a leadership development program used a career card sort which was then processed with a peer partner to support personal meaning making. A constructivist-orientated content analysis of the resultant peer dialogues revealed four themes: challenge, ownership, sponsorship and workĝ€"life balance, which showed different aspects of the nexus between leadership and career. This nexus is characterized by a resonance in thesense of echoing that suggests that a careers lens used by peer partners provides additional insight into leadership and leadership development. © 2009 SAGE Publications.