| Throughout the past two decades, many organizations have offered their employees the opportunity to participate in a variety of leadership development programs. These programs have attempted to develop and transform employees to be able to deal with the constant change within their work environment, align employee thinking with the mission of the organization, and motivate individual and team performance to reach the goals of the company. Yet little is known about the impact of these leadership development programs, as they relate to the fostering of transformative learning among participants. This study examined what participants reported about their individualized learning experiences before, during, and after attending a nine-month leadership development program that may have changed their perspective on leadership roles within their organization, their understanding of effective leadership practices, their process of critical self-reflection, and individual behavioral changes they might choose to modify in their working environment.; Participants in the leadership development-training program who held positions in the fields of retail, commercial, industrial, education, healthcare, and small business owners were chosen as the subjects of this study. Since the participants in this program had diverse backgrounds in their leadership and educational experiences, it was possible to study the interpretation of their roles, challenges, and perceptions to offer a valuable perspective on how a leader's knowledge and learning are obtained and possibly transformed into new ways of learning and making meaning of new experiences. Thus, the possibility of transforming individuals to lead in different ways and form diverse working relationships with their colleagues existed because of their ability to reflect on their leadership approaches through the lens of their new learning.; To that end, the goal of this study had two main purposes: (1) to examine the transformation of individuals' meaning perspectives regarding leadership; and (2) to analyze the extent to which the participants attributed their change in perspective to participation in the leadership program. |
