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Category: Research

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.

Rethinking leadership education in college through global symposium

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

This spring semester, Kerry Priest, Ph.D., a professor at the Staley School of Leadership, participated as a virtual panelist in a symposium titled “Leadership for What and for Whom? Reimagining Leadership Education in College.” The event was hosted by the University of Tokyo’s Integrated Human Sciences Program for Cultural Diversity, in collaboration with the Women and Leadership Education Research Project (WALP). WALP is spearheaded by three Japanese leadership educators: Associate Professors Momo Waguri from Fukuoka Women’s University, Michiko Izumitani from Soka University, and Toru Kawai from Ritsumeikan University. Both Waguri and Izumitani previously attended the Leadership Education Academy in 2022, an initiative designed and coordinated by Priest.

The symposium aimed to challenge current paradigms in leadership education and foster discussions on critical topics such as women’s leadership development, the identity growth of leadership educators, and the creation of transformative educational programs. The event drew fifty participants, including professors, staff, students, and alumni from various universities across Japan, who joined both in person and online. Continue reading “Rethinking leadership education in college through global symposium” →

Leadership Communication students and faculty awarded mini-grant to facilitate Nigerian Leadership Development Program

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

Kansas State University Leadership Communication doctoral student, Oluyomibo Asunlegan and faculty member Kerry Priest, Ph.D., recently received an Association of Leadership Educators (ALE) Mini-Grant Award for their project: Leadership Capacity Building Workshop for Nigerian National Youth Service Corps Members. Mini-grants provide small awards to support new initiatives aligned with the organization’s values of supportive and inclusive community, collaboration, curiosity, and rigor.

The Nigerian government’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) program targets young Nigerian graduates who are deployed in one-year mandatory service promoting self-reliance in the Nigerian youth.

The ALE mini-grant funded a pilot leadership training workshop to help foster purpose-driven leadership in the corps, and build the capacity for collective, sustainable change in NYSC partner communities and organizations.

Continue reading “Leadership Communication students and faculty awarded mini-grant to facilitate Nigerian Leadership Development Program” →

Leadership Communication celebrates spring 2024 doctoral graduates

Posted on by Staley School of Leadership

The Leadership Communication doctoral program at Kansas State University proudly announces its spring 2024 graduates. Anisah Ari, Ph.D., N’Zoret Innocent Assoman, Ph.D., Sakshi Bhati, Ph.D., Cale Morrow, Ph.D., Chase Spears, Ph.D., and Keyhan Shams, Ph.D. have completed their doctorates in Leadership Communication, an interdisciplinary program between the Department of Communications and Agricultural Education, the Staley School of Leadership, and the A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication.

Continue reading “Leadership Communication celebrates spring 2024 doctoral graduates” →