How Leadership is Learned and Developed

What is leadership? Who is a leader? Do you consider yourself a leader?

Your answer to these fundamental questions might reveal something more about your ideas of leadership than you are consciously aware. Our perceptions of what constitutes a leader influence our own behaviours and ability to see ourselves as leaders.

The difference between seeing leadership as a personal characteristic, something innate within us, compared to that which can be learned through experience, can have significant implications on leadership development.

Sonja Zaar, Lecturer and Researcher on Leadership, Learning and Development, together with her colleagues, Wim Gijselaers and Piet van den Bossche, do research within the School of Business and Economics, on how leadership is learned and developed.

In this video, Sonja shares some of the outcomes of a recent study exploring ideas around leadership and how they influence leadership identity.

This video is part of our series ‘Talking Business and Economics’ in which experts share their insights and knowledge on different topics in the field of business and economics. Each month will see a new publication on this platform.

If you feel our expertise on leadership can help you and your organisation get ahead, please note that UMIO designed a new online programme called Futurising Your HR Leadership to equip HR advisors and people leaders with a ‘business partner’ perspective that helps them navigate big organisational challenges such as restructuring and creating a future-proof workforce.

Sonja Zaar has co-designed this programme with UMIO and is also one of the teaching experts in this learning trajectory.