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Senior Indigenous leadership positions across the Australian higher education sector has increased over the past decade. Despite this advancement, there is limited understanding in terms of how to best integrate Indigenous leadership into existing governance structures of Australian universities. In 2018 the Walan Mayiny: Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education project commenced, aimed at establishing a model of best practice for the inclusivity of Indigenous leadership in higher education governance structures. This article presents key findings from the project, namely, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian universities based on the perceptions of a group of Indigenous academics.

Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with Indigenous academic staff, the perceived value, characteristics and challenges of senior Indigenous leadership were examined. The varying opinions held by Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position were also highlighted. In doing so, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian higher education system is presented. The model of best practice presented in this article is underpinned by Indigenous Institutional Theory (Coates et al., 2022), a theoretical framework developed from the Walan Mayiny study.

The research findings highlight the diverse opinions of Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position. The six essential components are built upon the core characteristics, values and behaviours that senior Indigenous leaders need to have according to Indigenous academics, in order to advance Indigenous success within the academy.

Given Australian universities are being called upon to ensure that senior Indigenous leaders are in the best position possible to forge institutional change, senior Indigenous leaders within the academy may find the contextual Indigenous leadership model beneficial. The model allows one to uphold cultural integrity and fulfil the responsibilities and obligations of their higher education institution, while being able to serve their Indigenous colleagues and communities, leading to the advancement of Indigenous higher education outcomes. Importantly, the model can be adapted to suit all First Nations Peoples globally, who also find themselves working within the shackles of Western institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of leadership development programmes, underpinned by Transformational Learning Theory (TLT).

A corpus-informed analysis was conducted using survey data from 690 participants. Data were collected from participants’ responses to the question “please tell us about the impact of your overall experience”, which culminated in a combined corpus of 75,053 words.

Findings identified patterns of language clustered around the following frequently used word types, namely, confidence; influence; self-awareness; insight; and impact.

This in-depth qualitative evaluation of participants’ feedback has provided insight into how TLT can be applied to develop future health-care leaders. The extent to which learning has had a transformational impact at the individual level, in relation to their perceived ability to influence, holds promise for the wider impact of this group in relation to policy, practice and the promotion of clinical excellence in the future. However, the latter can only be ascertained by undertaking further realist evaluation and longitudinal study to understand the mechanisms by which transformational learning occurs and is successfully translated to influence in practice.

Previous research has expounded traditional leadership theories to guide the practice of health-care leadership development. The paper goes some way to demonstrate the impact of using the principles of TLT within health-care leadership development programmes. The approach taken by The Florence Nightingale Foundation has the potential to generate confident leaders who may be instrumental in creating positive changes across various clinical environments.

The aim of this study is to report and reflect on the development of a tailored executive education programme rooted in state-of-the-art research and focused on enhancing and embedding project leadership competences in a multi-national project-based organisation.

Through a detailed description of an example of a leadership development programme, the paper reflects on the learning journey. Drawing on research in management education, leadership and project management competence development, the authors present the rationale, design, delivery and participant and organisational experiences.

Reflections on the learning journey identify five key points: a) the fundamental role of a programme champion, b) the importance of balancing rigour and relevance in executive education programme design, c) the importance of attending to the milieu of the clientele in terms of culture, demands and where they are in terms of their learning journey, d) the significant role that reflection can play in personal development and e) the competences necessary for project leadership.

This paper reflects on a single programme for a single organisation and is therefore at risk of being idiosyncratic and not generalisable. This is indeed a limitation. However, the authors are all experienced in delivering executive education – and therefore can use those experiences to view the reflections. Many of the considerations noted here resonate with other programmes (both in support and through experience of omission having detrimental effects).

The paper provides new insights into developing enduring and effective leadership competences in complex project management, i.e. one that has a lasting impact on the organisation and is recognised to provide benefits. The reflections on how the authors charted a course and embarked on a journey are deemed of relevance to academics and industry.

The paper provides, for both industry practitioners and academics, new insights into effective leadership development in complex project management, one that has a lasting impact on the individual and the organisation and is recognised to provide benefits.

The focus of this chapter lies with women middle-level leaders. It reports on themes from women in leadership programmes designed and delivered by Barbara Watterston, through the lens of a programme especially developed for the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia (AISSA). This chapter begins by profiling a description of the programme. The main aim was providing women leaders with an opportunity to take stock of their careers, consider ongoing challenges impeding their work as school leaders, and identify options for the future. After the programme finished, volunteers were invited to write a narrative encapsulating their career journey. Three women leaders volunteered, and their insightful reflections regarding their career trajectories constitute a significant portion of this chapter. The final part of this chapter identifies three common themes that emerged from their stories, resonating with ideas which are frequently illuminated in similar programmes and research. These include the importance of ongoing professional learning to be a successful leader, gender-based barriers that caused the women to doubt their abilities and readiness for leadership, and the deep appreciation the women expressed from learning with and from like-minded other women leaders.

This chapter explores middle leadership identity through the real-world accounts of how two middle leaders construct and develop their leadership identity and how this impacts the way their middle leadership is practiced. Leadership identity, an internal narrative of oneself as a leader which is practised professionally in context, represents a concept that is best understood as being unique to an individual, enduring over time, and a consequence of human experiences. Middle leadership is often the first promotion for teachers from teacher to leader and, as such, how middle leaders perceive themselves as a leader and how this formative process of leadership identity underpins middle leaders’ practices can make a significant impact on a leader’s decision making, professional relationships, behaviours, and actions. This chapter is co-authored by two researchers and two middle leaders with the intention of understanding middle leader identity development and its influence on middle leadership practices. Using interviews, middle leaders’ stories of identity were co-composed and re-storied to construct each middle leader’s narrative. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the influences of identity for middle leaders and considerations for leadership development.

This chapter is written from the perspective of an experienced middle leader reflecting on what would have been a powerful approach to solving curriculum challenges at the launch of their middle leadership journey. The approach is learning and leading through collaborative inquiry; a process that provides the pathway and direction for a curriculum middle leader (CML) to engage in inquiry to solve a challenge of practice. A CML invests a great deal of time and effort in unpacking and understanding the ‘why’ of a curriculum challenge. This is achieved through unpacking and understanding the ‘how’ which led to the challenge, and thus, strong strategic skills are required. Additionally, effective CMLs do not undertake this work in isolation, rather, they build and facilitate a professional learning community (PLC) (Stoll et al., 2006) of curriculum enthusiasts to undertake this journey with them, which requires substantial relational trust.

The purpose of the current innovative practice paper is to introduce a technique to explore leader identity development and meaning-making that builds on the narrative pedagogical tradition. In this paper, we recommend a process for combining turning-point graphing and responsive (semi-structured) interviews to co-explore leadership identity development and meaning-making with college students.

The paper provides student feedback data on the effectiveness of the technique in improving understanding of leader identity and transforming meaning-making.

We hope practitioners can utilize this approach to build leadership identity development and meaning-making capacity in college students.

Teachers are an adaptive group of professionals and in this chapter, we explore the ways that teachers can develop themselves as leaders, even in the absence of strong support or leadership. We explore the manner that these skill sets and strengths can be cultivated, providing lived examples of how the authors have developed themselves. The ways that teachers can follow in the footsteps of the authors is outlined in clearly defined steps. By drawing on previous literature, we provide seven strong claims of developing middle leadership knowledge and skill sets beyond your school. Much of this development and community development work that develops and sharpens leadership skills can be explored through online fora and social media tools. These tools allow skill development, professional learning, and exposure to a broad range of education stakeholders and groups; for future pathways in school leadership roles and leading beyond school gate.

This chapter offers Australian and international insights into leadership development and discusses how aspirant and current middle leaders can use leader and teacher professional standards to foster their professional growth. Standards help inform performance and development planning, and shape feedback and provide a framework for professional learning design. This chapter provides an overview of how systems such as New Zealand, Australia, and Scotland, among others, describe leadership in terms of standards. When used alongside an annual performance and development process, middle leaders can tap into the power of standards to continually sharpen their leadership practice and create a thriving career leading from the middle. Practical guidance is provided for middle leaders to engage with national teacher and leadership standards.

This article focuses on the leadership development of young adults. The topic is of significant importance as leadership identity tends to form early in life, and its long-term implications contribute to leadership formation. The objective of this study was to gain insights into how leadership is constructed in young adults and how it is manifested in their preferred leadership identity.

This research was approached from a constructivist perspective, utilizing discourse analysis. The authors conducted a study involving 24 written essays by young individuals with a business background, in which they shared their early leadership experiences. Drawing upon a modified life story interview structure, the authors meticulously analyzed the content.

The authors identified eight discourses clustered into two groups according to the types of leadership orientation: toward oneself and toward others. The discourses in the toward oneself group consist of leadership as taking responsibility, leadership as courage, manifesting personal strengths and as a role/status. The toward others group includes discourses approaching leadership as balancing directivity, coordinating and organizing work, personalized approach and as performance management.

The major methodological limitations stem from the qualitative design per se. The findings based on qualitative data have limits in generalizing.

The authors' findings have practical implications for educators. The authors propose the utilization of critical self-reflection on early leadership experiences and self-narration as effective tools in nurturing and developing young leaders.

This paper underscores the importance of educating young leaders, as they can create a positive impact on their subordinates and society as a whole. By providing them with leadership skills, the authors initiate a chain reaction of influence that extends through different levels of leadership, leading to significant social change.

The authors' originality and contribution to the literature on leadership development lies in showcasing the diversity of perspectives on leadership among participants sharing a similar background and developmental stage. This holds valuable implications for educators working with this cohort.