Do Leadership Development Programs Work?

By Broadside Correspondent Michael Gryboski

For those of you who do not know, LeaderShape is coming soon. LeaderShape is an annual event for building leadership abilities. Functions like these take place for the sake of developing students’ leadership skills. These events often draw scores of students and apparently have such importance to our university administration that an entire office, the Leadership Education and Development Office, exists in Student Union Building I. LEAD is dedicated to undertaking these and other programs to foster leadership qualities among our students. Despite the intentions, LEAD’s efforts do little to advance leadership abilities in our student body.

This is due to many factors.

One factor is biology. Cognitive development occurs throughout a person’s life, being more pronounced at certain times. In middle and high school years, the parts of the brain linked to judgment and decision making develop rapidly through processes like the prefrontal cortex maturation. According to Dr. Laurence Steinberg of Temple University, during early adolescent development “individuals become more capable of abstract, multidimensional, planned and hypothetical thinking as they develop from late childhood into middle adolescence.”

Natural brain development is not affected by George Mason University’s leadership programs, especially when crucial steps are taken years before a student is enrolled.

Another factor is that sociocultural power of upbringing can never be understated. People spend their first years in environments different from college with parental figures, social norms and ideological convictions. A person’s background is uninfluenced by wherever they ended up getting their undergrad. Parents are very important parts of this environment and strongly influence their children.

One study by Frome and Eccles of 914 sixth grade children showed that “parents’ perceptions mediate the relation between children’s grades and children’s self-and task perceptions in both domains. Parents’ perceptions had a stronger influence on children's perceptions rather than the children's own grades.” Personality is strongly influenced by parents or chief caregivers.

Nature and nurture both are factors in how a child acts, thinks and behaves. Leadership development programs do not influence upbringing since LEAD-sponsored events like LeaderShape are only open to Mason students.

Also factor in the people who frequently attend leadership events. Having been to a major leadership development event in my junior year, I can attest to the makeup of attendees to these events. They are a ‘who’s who’ of student leaders: Student Government members, resident advisers, peer mediators and other student leaders.

These students are already leaders and therefore, are already in tune with lessons that could be learned. Students who come to campus, go to class and then leave, seldom attend leadership activities. Even if these programs were effective in teaching the student body the merits of good leadership, they are not being transferred to those who would actually need it.

Arguably, people who attend these programs are people who are good or capable leaders to begin with, possessing many or all the traits we find desirable in leadership. From participants, one can hear about how much they benefited from a leadership event and yet when asked to give a single tangible benefit, nothing is uttered.

I do believe that those who propagate leadership events do so because they genuinely believe these programs help. Yet given their personality and mentality, these people would have benefitted regardless of whether these events actually work. Leadership development events at Mason, be they sponsored by LEAD or other entities, contribute little to our campus community.

Biological development, sociocultural upbringing and typical student attendance show that programs at Mason merely serve as excess to our budget and resources. During times of prosperity, these programs are at the very worst, diversions from honest labor. However, in days like these, they are a bleeding wound in our budget and resources. If one wants to learn how to lead, experience is the best way. T

his can be offered through more useful venues, like Student Government or other student association executive boards that make a difference at Mason.