Understanding and Advancing Leadership Development in Business Students

Haskayne 2025: where big ideas come to life and bold leaders thrive.

Haskayne’s newly coined vision statement is as bold as the leaders it is committed to developing. The statement is supported by a strategy that will guide our path towards reaching this vision. The Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership (CCAL) is well-positioned to support this vision. The centre has recently compiled a leadership development research report as a benchmark as we head to 2025.

This report, aptly titled “Understanding and Advancing Leadership Development in Business Students,” summarizes research on leadership development and assessing CCAL’s programs in light of this evidence. Dr. Nick Turner, Haskayne professor and the Research Chair in Advanced Business Leadership, together with Kyra Grocutt, BA, prepared the report to better understand whether CCAL’s leadership development activities are research-based. The report sets out to respond to two fundamental questions: why do some people emerge as formal leaders (that is, come to occupy leadership roles)? What predicts their success in these roles?

“As a research centre within a research university, it makes sense for CCAL’s programs to be evidence-led,” explains Dr. Turner, who initiated and led the report. “We wanted to be able to answer two questions: why we are doing what we are doing? And, is what we are doing effective?”

Sifting through over fifty years of leadership development research, the report offers that leadership behaviours can be learned and taught which means CCAL’s leadership development programs can and do affect our students’ leadership emergence and success.

The report highlights the findings from a meta-analysis of leadership program design and execution. Well-designed program delivery has the potential to increase learning of hard and soft skills by 25 per cent and transfer by 28 per cent.

Perhaps the most powerful insights the report offers come from the authors’ focus on leadership rather leaders. This puts the emphasis immediately on behaviours and relationships rather than individual genetics, traits and position of leaders. Leadership is more than where someone lands on an organizational chart; it is something you do and it involves other people. It follows that leadership development is as on-going process in a social context.

CCAL director, Glenda Reynolds looks forward to the impact Dr. Turner’s paper will have on the future of CCAL. “The report gives us the opportunity to consider the significant impact research can have on our program development and delivery going forward. Designing and refining CCAL offerings to be both sustainable and impactful are always at the forefront of what we are thinking about - research is integral in that endeavor in best serving our leadership community and students.”