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This chapter examines our leadership journey as Black female social justice leaders and culturally responsive leaders from the Caribbean Diaspora in Canada. Borrowing from Mullen, Fenwick, and Kealy (2014) and Campbell’s (2008) notion of leadership as a journey, we critically examine what it means to navigate educational leadership contexts. Through our lived experiences as racialized leaders, border crossing spaces and cultures, and with a deep sense and agency to resolve social inequities and injustice we critically gaze at our leadership contexts. This chapter examines ways we, as critical leaders, challenge inequities, issues of power and marginalization, and find transformative actions and purpose by critically reflecting on our leadership journey. This work will add to the educational leadership discourse by positing ways that leaders can develop agency and engage in leadership that is transformative – bringing theory into action.

This study aims to document the emotions experienced by women achieving high levels of organizational success and investigate what differences, if any, existed between C-Suite women in the West* and China** in this regard.

In total, 105 senior female leaders in Mainland China and the West participated in an in-depth electronic survey about their leadership journeys.

The emotional associations with the pathway to high-level positions were generally positive with gratitude, hope, excitement and pride standing out, but Western female leaders were significantly more likely to express fear and feeling overwhelmed than their counterparts, whereas significantly more Chinese female leaders reported feeling inadequate than the Western women. The Chinese sample reported directionally more positive emotions than Western ones. The Chinese women cited curiosity, joy and relief, but Western female leaders made no mention of these emotions in their leadership journeys.

Little has been published on the emotions that women experience on their way to very high-level positions. Many of these studies used other people’s perceptions of female leaders to understand their reactions to the biases and challenges facing them. This study elicited direct responses from female organizational leaders. Research comparing the journeys of Western and Chinese C-Suite women is limited. These results can be useful for educators and human resource professionals in supporting female career advancement in Mainland China and the West.

This article aims to propose a three‐stage framework for on‐going professional development of aspirant and incumbent heads that is designed to increase their own self‐efficacy. It is suggested that continuity and progression in self‐efficacy development can be addressed via processes pertaining to acculturation, assimilation and actualisation. The on‐going work of Fletcher augments this conceptual framework with a new approach to action research ensuring an evidence‐based foundation to the growth of self‐efficacy.

The article offers an analysis of existing research evidence in coaching, mentoring, talent management, leadership development and self‐efficacy to propose a framework useful in research and in the development of self‐efficacy that may help secure transition between the potential to lead and high performance in leadership incumbency in schools.

The article points to the importance of coaching and mentoring as potential scaffolds to create an appreciation of self‐efficacy's value at all stages of the headship journey. It is suggested that active development of individual's self‐efficacy through mentoring and coaching relationships may serve to ensure that the loss of human potential of those who could lead but never completed the journey is reduced.

The article identifies new questions pertaining to the practice of high quality coaching and mentoring in the journey to leadership in schools and raises further questions pertaining to the conceptualisation of learning relationships and the interactions and feelings involved in such learning relationships.

This article suggests a phased approach, an integrated vision of mentoring and coaching for headteacher development that can span their professional lifetime. This generative approach is what distinguishes the authors’ proposal from others. An emphasis is placed on self‐study integrated in an Appreciative Inquiry approach, however, the authors’ proposal goes further in that they have realised that aspirant headteachers should be taught how to undertake self study integrated with action research not only for their own benefit as they journey towards incumbency but also so that they can become coach and mentor for others; for their staff, pupils and other aspirant headteachers.

This research aimed to investigate influences on and opinions of leadership development in small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business owner-managers. Therefore, the objective of this study was to respond to the research question – How do SMEs’ founder-owner-managers develop their leadership over time?

This study applies a history narrative qualitative method to explore the leadership development journey of SMEs’ founder-owner-managers throughout their lifetime. Fifteen founder-owner-managers were interviewed.

Five main themes emerge reflecting a social contextual process starting from early childhood: (1) the dominant influence of parents on leadership qualities and behaviours; (2) the importance of sports activities in shaping leadership qualities and identities; (3) the dominant influence of role models especially bad role models on leadership perceptions and behaviours; (4) the importance of self-learning, experimentation and self-reflection in developing entrepreneurship capability and (5) the importance of community-based social networks in gaining support and practicing leadership capability.

The originality of this research lies within the methodology used whereby a history narrative qualitative method is employed to develop data for analysis purposes. Using this methodology, this study contributes to a broader understanding of SMEs’ founder-owner-managers’ leadership development journey by taking a more expansive view to explore the development process throughout their lifetime.

This chapter traces the life and leadership journey of the Honorable Marie Rex Sukers. Born in the Western Cape, South Africa, the unconventional trajectory of Marie’s life is evident right from her conception. Throughout her life, Marie grasped opportunities to rise above her personal circumstances which were exacerbated by the all-pervading and deep-seated discrimination in her country. Her courage and resilience culminated in Marie being appointed to the esteemed position of Member of the South African Parliament in 2019. Working in a hostile democratic environment unleashed continuous rounds of personal and institutional challenges, each begging for transformational power and fresh courage.

This chapter uses two theoretical models, Van Doorn’s Double Helix Leadership theory and Kinnear’s Leadership Power Tensions Model to describe how Marie’s life and career illustrates how all women, when they find themselves at the pinnacle of accomplishment, wade through cycles of disillusionment or disappointment to land just where they are meant to be. Rich learning insights emerge from Marie, a heroine on a profound journey upcycling leadership into personal courage and deeper, authentic power. Our chapter provides guidelines and the “know-how” to transform your leadership power for a better world, both personally and globally.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate heroism as an embodied system of leadership and well-being. Heroic leadership is presented as a baseline for sustainable futures and global health.

This paper presents an embodied reading of heroic leadership and its sustainable development across five stages. It outlines its core functions, its grounding in self-leadership through physical and mental trauma and its holistic benefits, resulting in the development of the Heroic Leadership Embodiment and Sustainable Development (HLESD) model. The efficacy of HLESD is demonstrated in an empirical case study of heroism promotion and education: the Hero Construction Company and the Heroic Imagination Project.

Heroic leadership is revealed as an emergent, dynamic and distributed form of sustainable development.

This paper demonstrates the critical connections between heroism, sustainability, embodied leadership and well-being and how they stand to benefit from each other, individuals and communities at large.

The implementation of HLESD in educational, counselling and broader contexts in consultation with a wide range of professionals stands to offer significant benefits to pedagogies, clinical practice, holistic therapies and twenty-first-century societies, at both the community and policy level.

The emerging field of heroism science and the use of heroic leadership as an interdisciplinary tool is a novel approach to well-being, which holds immense potential for the imagining and fostering of sustainable personal and collective futures.

It is becoming more generally accepted that there is a need to develop a new kind of leader to meet the needs of our 21st century VUCA world. The bookcases are full of volumes that describe “what” great leaders should do, but “how” to develop such leaders is usually limited to a macro or systemic solution rather than focusing on granular behavioural change of the individual. This paper describes the qualities and characteristics of Transpersonal Leaders, then focuses on developing these leaders through a new coaching process and finally explains how experienced coaches can be trained to coach these leaders.

Our research over the last 20 years of working with leaders individually and in teams has focused on this issue. We have been developing “21st century ready” leaders, referred to as Transpersonal Leaders, for over 10 years in teams, but only recently have we been developing such leaders through a new coaching process. We have also developed a methodology that codifies the development of Transpersonal Leaders which, in turn, allows us to replicate the programme by training other professionals, potentially in large numbers.

Graduates of the Transpersonal Coach Training Programme say that it has been a transformational personal experience, enabling them to take their leader clients to a new level. Leaders who have been coached say the programme has equipped them to learn a practical approach to becoming an authentic, ethical, caring and more effective leader.

This is a unique approach to coaching leaders but based on proven learning principles.

Leaders need to go beyond knowing the answers to seeking the answers. How can I become a more effective leader? What steps can I take to enhance my leadership skills? Every thoughtful executive or manager should ask such questions regularly. In this article, we’ll offer some practical approaches to answering those questions – and better understanding the leadership journey.

There is a great deal of literature on leadership education best-practices (e.g., curricular considerations, teaching strategies, assessment of learning). Yet, to be a leadership educator is more than having knowledge or expertise of content and pedagogy. Perceptions, experiences, and values of leadership educators comprise a professional identity that is reflective of not only what leadership educators do, but also who they are and how they view themselves within the profession. This qualitative study builds on Seemiller and Priest’s (2015) Leadership Educator Professional Identity Development (LEPID) conceptual model by analyzing stories from participants of a professional leadership educator development experience. Leadership educators’ identity development reflected a consistent and linear progression through the identity spaces outlined in the LEPID model, and further can be viewed through three distinct dimensional lenses (experiential, cognitive, and emotional experiences). Additionally, leadership educator identities were shaped by a particular set of ongoing influences and critical incidents; the most prevalent incident was related to feelings of inadequacy in leadership expertise and competence. Findings from this study can inform educational programs and professional associations in efforts to train and develop leadership educators.

The authors sought the answer to the question, “Why do so many developing leaders either fail to reach their full potential or cross the line into destructive or even unethical actions?”

To find out, they interviewed many successful leaders of major organizations and studied the case histories of failed top leaders. The study of unsuccessful leaders revealed a pattern: the failed leaders couldn't lead themselves. On their leadership journey these high potential managers adopted a set of personal behaviors that worked temporarily but were unsustainable in the long run.

The heroic model of leadership turns out to be merely an early stage – one with risks, temptations, misbehaviors – and one that needs to be outgrown. In contrast, successful leaders who move beyond the hero stage learn to focus on others, gain a sense of a larger purpose, foster multiple support networks, and develop mechanisms to keep perspective and stay grounded.

The authors interviewed 125 successful leaders of major organizations and studied the cases of top leaders who failed.

The five perils of the leadership journey, distinctive destructive behaviors that tend to occur in the hero stage of managers' early careers, are: being an imposter, rationalizing, glory seeking, playing the lone and being a shooting star. These behaviors can be overcome if they are addressed directly.

By identifying five distinctly destructive behaviors that need to be cured at an early stage of a potential leader's career the authors provide a valuable guide for executive development.