There’s a leader in you!: Examining leadership discourse and development in the university

• In Event: 9th Annual Emerging Scholars Research Consortium

Short Description

Drawing from queer and feminist-poststructural theories, this prospective project uses critical discourse analysis to examine the increasing presence of leadership development initiatives in higher education. Current leadership models propose that anyone can be a leader with the proper training. This project, however, explores how leadership practices excludes historically marginalized students.

Detailed Abstract

Developing students into leaders has become an expectation and responsibility of higher education (Kellerman, 2012). Most universities offer degrees in Leadership Studies, and because of the seemingly interdisciplinary nature of the subject, ‘leadership’ can be found in numerous departments and in a variety of programs from Educational Leadership, Organizational Leadership, and Management Studies, to Human Resources and Leadership Development, and Global Leadership. In addition to a formal academic incorporation, leadership also appears outside of the classroom in extracurricular opportunities, as universities provide leadership programs, house leadership centers, hold leadership conferences, and organize specialized libraries for leadership books, manuals, and toolkits (Brungardt, Greenleaf, Brungardt, & Arensdorf, 2006). Commenting on leadership’s ever-increasing prominence on university campuses, Barabra Kellerman (2012) declares that a “relentless attention to leadership . . . permeates higher education” (p. 155).

But why do we care to make students into leaders? And what kinds of leaders do leadership development programs at universities produce? Current leadership development models now overwhelmingly propose that anyone can be a leader with the proper training, skill acquisition, and work ethic, and therefore situate self-development as a prerequisite for cultivating leadership capabilities (e.g., King, Altman, & Lee, 2011; Komives & Wagner, 2012). Such visions of leadership should require then that researchers examine how leadership models may constitute the ‘leader’ as a position for students, including how it may grant or limit access for historically marginalized groups, such as women and/or people of color. Yet, with most leadership scholars focused on identifying leadership traits or behaviors, questions pertaining to the purposes and increasing incorporation of leadership development in the university, as well as the constitutive or ideological implications that leadership practices may have for students, are largely under-researched.

In response, the goals of this prospective research project are to examine the contextual and historical conditions that made it possible for leadership to become so prominent in the university, and to better understand what purpose(s) the overwhelming emphasis on developing students into leaders might serve. Treating leadership as a socially-, historically-, and culturally-constituted discourse, this qualitative study draws on the theoretical lens of queer theory (e.g., Ahmed, 2012; Ferguson, 2012; Foucault, 1977) and feminist-poststructuralism (Allan, 2010; Weedon, 1997) to highlight not only to how power relationships shape commonsensical conceptions of leadership, but also how the notion of ‘leader’ is constrained by other discourses such as race, gender, sex, sexuality, age, and ability. Thus, this study examines how leadership development in the university may be tethered to masculinist, white, and/or heteronormative understandings of leadership, despite the current suggestion that now everyone can be a leader.

This project is guided by the following questions: (a) How is leadership recognized and understood in the university?; (b) What are the purposes of leadership development in higher education?; (c) What are the dominant discourses that shape, reflect, and produce understandings and experiences of leadership discourse and leadership development in the university?; and (d) How has the contemporary context shaped the particular practices and purposes of leadership development in the university? To study leadership as a socially- and historically-constituted discourse requires not just that we ask different questions of leadership, but that we also employ different methodological approaches as well. To examine leadership in the university, I combined several critical discourse analytic strategies, including personal narrative, close and thematic readings of texts, and critical historiography as methods for mapping leadership. Understanding the university as an institution that can be read as both a text and a collection of texts, I examine the university (but also the people and materials within it), as an archive itself and as a discursive plane that circulates the discourses of leadership. As a methodological move then to theorize the “discursive, the material, and the ephemeral together” (Rodríguez, 2014, p. 25), this study jumps not only between multiple sites of leadership but also multiple kinds of materials for mapping discourse: from pamphlets and posters, to canonical texts and participant observation. Thus, this research seeks to create spaces for analyzing both the big picture as well as the day-to-day subtleties of leadership discourse by treating the university as an archive, rethinking the materials that count as data, and remaining mobile in my collection and interpretation of materials.

The conclusions drawn from this project will be of value to students, administrators, and student affairs professionals alike. Such an approach allows us to understand how leadership discourse has become so prominent in the university and what functions the overwhelming emphasis on developing students into leaders might perform. Moreover, acknowledging the socio-historical production of leadership theories and their political significance could provide insight into the maintenance of power amongst particular identities, as well as the ways in which individuals participate in their own subjection through leadership discourse. While the suggestion that anyone can be a leader is an ostensibly well-meaning theory of leadership, if not interrogated critically, the exclusionary practices that undergird it hold the potential to disconnect leadership from discernable forms of collectivity or collaboration. Furthermore, those restrained by or left out of prevailing discourse may lose the access, respect, or opportunities of leadership that enable social or economic success.  However, from this examination, clearly defined implications, recommendations for future research, as well as suggestions for how to better align leadership discourse and practices with social justice efforts will be offered.

Participant

• Nicole Capriel Ferry, Washington State University