Creating a Taxonomy of Leadership Competency Development
Business people employees group discussing work plan with coach mentor at corporate office meeting, multicultural workers sales team talking at company workshop training, top view overhead from above
A great deal of literature in leadership studies focuses on “what” to teach in regard to leadership (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2013; Northouse, 2014), “how” to effectively teach leadership (Collinson & Tourish, 2015; Rosch & Anthony, 2012), the educators “who” teach leadership (Jenkins & Owens, 2016; Seemiller & Priest, 2015), and even “where” leadership can be taught, such as in virtual or face-to-face spaces (Cini, 1999; Koch & Dooley, 2005). While the “what,” “where,” “how,” and “who” are important aspects of leadership education, what appears to be absent from the literature is a focus on the “order” in which to teach various leadership concepts. Without a roadmap of sequencing, educators may use their own methods for ordering leadership content, such as following the table of contents in a textbook so that the course content unfolds as the pages turn. Doing so, however, rests on the notion that the ordering of the textbook content is based on empirical evidence that what is in chapter four, for example, should precede what is in chapter 5. With so many leadership textbooks available, one topic that is at the end of one book could be in the middle of another. Another method for sequencing may involve following the ordering of a particular theory or model. While that may offer some scholarly backing, many models also present broad categories that include a number of unordered subcategories. For example, a category of communication may be far too broad to teach without separating out the components of communication and placing them in an order that developmentally makes sense. This study aimed to design an empirically grounded, hierarchical taxonomy that offers a roadmap for intentionally sequencing leadership development curriculum and experiences based on increasing complexity.
