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Shams awarded for dissertation by International Leadership Association

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

The Staley School of Leadership celebrates Keyhan Shams, Ph.D., research assistant professor and assistant director of Third Floor Research, for his recent award from the International Leadership Association (ILA).

The Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award is presented to one scholar annually  “whose doctoral dissertation research, while on any topic and from any discipline, demonstrates substantial insights and implications for the study of leadership.”

Shams’ dissertation, Bridging the Gap between Learning and Practicing Leadership: Developing New Instruments to Evaluate Leadership and Adaptation, explores how adaptive leadership ties into effective reasoning, focusing on self-awareness, role clarity, and managing conflict.

He presents new tools to measure these skills and examines the decision-making process, which he found to be emotionally and mentally challenging for leaders. His recommendations aim to help educators, researchers, and coaches support leaders in navigating these challenges, making leadership development more impactful and manageable.

“What makes me so happy about this award is that it recognizes a three-year, collaborative, and engaged effort with leadership researchers, educators, and practitioners,” said Shams. “I’m proud that the Staley School of Leadership and the Kansas Leadership Center jointly created a space where this collaboration could thrive.”

Read more about Shams’ work and ILA awards at ilaglobalconference.org/award-winners. Additionally, the latest report from Third Floor Research incorporates part of Shams’ dissertation and is available for free download from the Kansas Leadership Center website.

Keyhan Shams

Keyhan Shams, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor at the Staley School of Leadership and assistant director of Third Floor Research, a research partnership with the Kansas Leadership Center.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and design from the University of Tehran and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from Iran’s Shahid Beheshti University. Recently, he earned his Ph.D. in leadership communication from Kansas State University.

Third Floor Research Sheds Light on the Need for Leadership Development in the High-Tech Industry

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

What about the problems that can’t be solved with our technical expertise? What about the problems that do not follow “If A then B logic? Workplace challenges like team conflict, burnout, or lack of communication aren’t like a computer crash that can be handed off to an expert to fix.

This article is the fourth entry of a blog series showcasing Third Floor Research’s findings. In this entry, we present the results of a study which highlights the specific needs of high-tech companies in their work environments that can be addressed through the application of leadership skills.

The graphic cover for the Third Floor Research Report, Leadership Development for Global Organizations in the High-tech industry. Over 2019-2020, Third Floor Research conducted a study on a five-week leadership development program at the Kansas Leadership Center, involving approximately 230 employees from a high-tech company across five global sites. Phase 1 of the study, utilizing a survey-based qualitative approach, explored the challenges faced by organizations and their teams in the workplace, as well as the ways peers, employees, and superiors should address these challenges. Researchers Tim Steffensmeier and Tamas Kowalik from Kansas State University, along with Tim O’Brien from Harvard University, point our attention to these challenges in their published report Leadership Development for Global Organizations in the High-tech Industry. The findings revealed a significant need for companies and corporations to saturate their workplace with leadership concepts and skills.

The study identifies eight pressing challenges reported by high-tech industry participants in their companies: Continue reading “Third Floor Research Sheds Light on the Need for Leadership Development in the High-Tech Industry” →

Building Bridges for the Future of Leadership Education: Leadership scholars present at national conference 

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Several Kansas State University faculty and doctoral students presented at the 2024 Association of Leadership Educators conference (ALE), July 14-17, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As a professional organization, ALE seeks to strengthen the expertise of leadership educators and developers. The conference theme, “building bridges for the future of leadership education,” embodied the idea that leadership education is dynamic and ever-adapting to prepare leaders for the challenges of a diverse and changing world.

K-State scholars contributed the following presentations to the conference program:

Systems Leadership Education: Bridging Theory and Practice (panel)

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., and Jessica Ramirez, Staley School of Leadership, Leadership communication doctoral program; Jason Headrick, Ph.D., Texas Tech University;  Michael Gleason, Ph.D., Wartburg College; and Haley Traini, Ph.D., Oregon State University

Peer Coaching: A Practice to Enhance Leadership Education and Support Leadership Educators (workshop)

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership and Dan Jenkins, Ph.D., University of Southern Maine

Mentoring International Graduate Students (presentation)

Chibuzor Azubuike, Ph.D., Andrew Wefald, Ph.D., N’Zoret Innocent Assoman, Ph.D., and Trisha Gott, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership, Leadership communication doctoral program

Classroom Reflections: How Teaching Leadership Exemplifies Leadership-As-Practice (roundtable)

Michaela Sauders, Kansas State University Leadership Communication doctoral candidate and Instructor, Washburn University Leadership and Community Engagement Program

Building Bridges to Move Beyond Organizational Barriers to Collaborate and Create Opportunities in Graduate Leadership Education  (roundtable)

Michael Gleason, Ph.D., Wartburg College; Jennifer Moss Breen Kuzelka, Ph.D., Creighton University; and Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership

Leadership Capacity Building Workshop for Nigerian National Youth Service Corps Members (poster)  

Oluyomibo Asunlegan and Ifedayo Olubejide Leadership communication doctoral program; Kerry Priest, Ph.D., Staley School of Leadership

Posed group photo of K-Staters at ALE: : Michaela Saunders, Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, Oluyomibo Asunlegan, Kerry Priest, Andy Wefald, Innocent Assoman, Jessica Ramirez

Pictured left to right: Michaela Saunders, Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, Oluyomibo Asunlegan, Kerry Priest, Andy Wefald, Innocent Assoman, Jessica Ramirez

As part of K-State’s land-grant mission, the Staley School of Leadership advances leadership learning and development through research and practice that strengthens our communities, state, and world. Learn more about K-State’s leadership communication doctoral program here.

How Kansans beat the virus: Third Floor Research reveals the impact of civic leadership in addressing public health challenges

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

This article is the third entry of a blog series showcasing Third Floor Research’s findings on the impact of leadership development programs and civic engagement efforts. In this entry, we showcase findings from a Third Floor Research study on the Kansas Beats the Virus campaign.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges, prompting Kansas communities to innovate. In response, the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC), in partnership with state and local communities, launched the Kansas Beats the Virus (KBTV) in 2020 and 2021. These efforts mobilized citizens across the state to address public health issues. The projects highlight the significance of large-scale community engagement and underscore the transformative potential of collective action.

How Kansas united to drive change: What we learned from our Mass Civic Action Campaign

The global pandemic disrupted daily life and demanded new ways of working and interacting with others, especially in Kansas during the fall of 2020. A strong community spirit emerged, amidst lockdowns, school closures, and economic challenges. Recognizing the need for collective action, the state of Kansas partnered with the KLC to launch KBTV, a citizen-led initiative to slow the virus’s spread. The KLC organized 1,000 community meetings over five weeks, demonstrating how empowering local communities to create their own solutions can exercise leadership and lead to impactful action projects. Continue reading “How Kansans beat the virus: Third Floor Research reveals the impact of civic leadership in addressing public health challenges” →

Third Floor Research unveils the impact of leadership programs on individuals

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

“Is it worth attending leadership training?” This article is the second entry of a blog series showcasing Third Floor Research’s findings on the impact of leadership development programs and civic engagement efforts. In this entry, we explore recent insights into how these programs enhance individual competencies.

There was a time when the term “leader” was associated with genetic, innate, and inborn capabilities that not everyone possesses. This definition confines leadership to specific times and places where a leader emerges. Although this belief remains widely accepted, a new paradigm has replaced “leader” with “leadership,” defining it as an activity that can be learned and practiced by anyone, anytime, and anywhere. Third Floor Research, an applied research partnership between the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) and the Staley School of Leadership, has recently provided empirical evidence supporting this idea.

Recently, Third Floor Research, in collaboration with the LeAD Labs at Claremont Graduate University, conducted a study assessing the impact of KLC’s Your Leadership Edge (YLE). YLE is a monthly leadership development program aiming to shift people’s understanding of leadership from a “leader-centric” to a “leadership as activity” perspective in response to their tough organizational and community challenges. The assessment was conducted on YLE online, which included more than 2,000 participants and took place February 2021 to February 2022, during the pandemic. Continue reading “Third Floor Research unveils the impact of leadership programs on individuals” →

Building leadership practice to impact climate change networks in Ghana

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Kerry Priest, Ph.D., professor in the Staley School of Leadership, and Shaibu Fuseini, 2023 Mandela Washington Fellow Alumnus and co-founder of AgricConnect, were recently awarded a Reciprocal Exchange Grant to support network building among climate change leaders in Ghana.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders—the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI)—was created in 2014 to invest in the next generation of African leaders.

The Reciprocal Exchange component provides U.S. citizens and Fellowship Alumni with the opportunity to build upon strategic partnerships and professional connections developed during the Fellowship through collaborative projects. These exchange programs are a unique opportunity to implement a co-designed project for the purpose of forming lasting partnerships, expanding markets and networks, and increasing mutual understanding between the United States and Africa.

Left to right: Sipasi Olalekan Ayodele, Kerry Priest, Shaibu Fuseini

Priest and Fuseini’s project was entitled, Fostering Community Leadership: Cultivating Innovative Skills to Tackle Climate Challenges in Ghana’s Agricultural Sector. The Climate Change Workshops took place June 1-5, 2024, in Kumasi, Ghana. The facilitation team for this project also included Sipasi Olalekan Ayodele, 2019 Mandela Washington Fellow Alumnus and doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant in K-State’s Department of Horticulture and Nature Resources. Jon Ulmer, Ph.D., and Nellie Hill, Ph.D., in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication served as consultants on the program design. Continue reading “Building leadership practice to impact climate change networks in Ghana” →

Third Floor Research: Taking leadership learning to the next level 

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Take a moment to reflect on the context in which you carry out leadership, maybe it is in your organization or within your community. When trying to learn about leadership imagine the floors of a building. Starting with the first floor to make sense of context, this is where leadership action occurs. You can think of the second floor as a reflective site, here, people get up on the balcony to see what is happening on the first floor from a different perspective and make the case for a third-floor approach. Reflection and sense making occur on the third floor by evaluating and researching what takes place on the first and second floors.  

In this blog series, we invite you to join us on the third floor to gain a deeper understanding and critically assess what is and is not working in our leadership efforts. Authors will spotlight Third Floor Research, a joint research initiative between Kansas Leadership Center and Staley School of Leadership and explore several projects designed to advance the exercise of leadership and its development. The series will start by introducing Third Floor Research in this blog post with each blog that follows sharing a deeper dive into our findings that might be useful to individuals, leadership educators, organizations and communities.  

Author Carlie Snethen is a Leadership Communication Ph.D. student in the Staley School of Leadership and a Graduate Research Assistant with Third Floor Research. With the first blog in this series, she will introduce the work of Third Floor Research while describing the levels of impact that organizes their projects.  

What is Third Floor Research? 

Making change on large system issues can be a complex, challenging, and difficult journey to embark on. With programs across the country seeking to prepare and equip attendees to complete this work the need for impact assessment heightens along the way. As the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) continues to prepare leaders to tackle their most compelling challenges, our curiosity for determining what is effective and how it impacts participants has increasingly become a priority. Taking an evidence-based approach to their framework, KLC continues to push the boundaries of how we understand leadership through an innovative partnership. 

Since its creation in 2007, KLC has been working to empower organizations, corporations, individuals, and communities to make progress on their toughest challenges through the idea that anyone can lead, anytime, and anywhere. KLC facilitates leadership development programs and has collaborated with over 15,000 alumni from 44 states and 62 countries across six continents. These alumni are from five primary sectors including education, non-profit, government, faith, and business. With this large swath of participants KLC engages a diverse range of community members through five core principles. Continue reading “Third Floor Research: Taking leadership learning to the next level “ →

Leadership Communication faculty and graduate students contribute to new books on Leadership and Coaching

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Kansas State University’s Andrew Wefald, Ph.D., associate professor in the Staley School of Leadership, recently edited and published two books on leadership and coaching. Alongside graduate students from K-State’s interdisciplinary leadership communication doctoral program, the team contributed chapters to Critical Perspectives on the Intersections of Coaching and Leadership, and Navigating the Coaching and Leadership Landscape: Strategies and Insights for Success, published through IGI Global.

K-State’s Leadership Communication faculty and students are committed to co-creating knowledge with community and university partners that enrich scholarship, research, and the common good.

The books stem from Wefald’s years of teaching, research, and study in leadership and coaching. The contributing graduate students examined the intersections of coaching and leadership through their unique perspectives and experiences.

K-State contributors co-authored the following chapters:

Critical Perspectives on the Intersections of Coaching and LeadershipInterrogating Coaching Through the Lens of Critical Leadership Perspectives

  • Andrew J. Wefald, Ph.D., associate professor, Staley School of Leadership
  • Ariel Griffin, MS, program officer, Children International

Entrepreneurship Leadership Coaching: Indigenous Nigerian Approach

  • Chibuzor M. Azubuike, doctoral candidate in leadership communication at Kansas State University and graduate teaching assistant at the Staley School of Leadership
  • Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide, doctoral student in leadership communication at Kansas State University
  • Emmanuel Jeje, graduate research assistant in the Office of Engagement at Kansas State University

Book cover: Navigating the Coaching and Leadership Landscape: Strategies and Insights for SuccessDeveloping Emotional Intelligence Skills in Emerging Talent

  • Roberta Maldonado Franzen, Ph.D., affiliated faculty at Kansas State University and director of talent acquisition at Duke University

Gamification: Athletic Coaching vs. Executive Coaching

  • Janice E. Perkins, doctoral student in leadership communication at Kansas State University and professional executive coach with her own practice

The books are available for purchase here and here. To learn more about the leadership communication doctoral program, visit www.k-state.edu/lead-comm.