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Leaders must become life-long learners if they are to remain effective in an environment that is both global and changing at an exponential pace. As Day (1992) noted, personal growth is essential in the leadership development process. In a personal leadership development course, students are required to complete a personal growth project in order to add to their personal leadership development. In this assignment, students choose a project that will stretch their personal comfort zone and allow their strengths to be utilized in a new way. Reflection is a key element of the process in which they tie their experiences with the personal growth project to their values, strengths, and leadership behaviors.

This article describes how professionals leading volunteers can purposefully work toward developing the “leadership identity” of individual volunteers. These concepts and the application of them are presented in the context of Cooperative Extension volunteer groups. Specific methods of developing the leadership identity and capacity of individual volunteers and for developing shared leadership within volunteer groups are offered. This article contains many implications and applications for all types of volunteers, including those outside an Extension context.

Four members of SEAL Team 10 faced a moral dilemma during Operation Redwings in 2005. Their mission was compromised when three goat herders discovered their position. They had to decide if they should kill the herders and continue their mission or release them, thus terminating their mission unsuccessfully. Students in an applied ethics class were asked which moral theories applied to their eventual decision.

This idea brief explores the leadership lessons displayed by the characters of Louis L’Amour’s western novels. Western fiction can be a powerful tool to engage students and demonstrate many leadership theories and models. This brief examines how L’Amour’s characters can be used to illustrate Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leaders. The author will demonstrate how western literature, specifically L’Amour’s novels, can be a tool to help students see leadership in a new light.

This paper advances the notion that global leadership is a necessary component of undergraduate agricultural leadership. Within an existing leadership curriculum, the development of at least three new courses with innovative approaches to such a globalized curriculum is justified and outlined. These three classes include a course designed to increase awareness of global leadership issues, a cultural assimilation course designed to prepare students for an international experience, and a capstone seminar course. The program will require students to take the three classes being developed in addition to at least three other classes with an international or cultural emphasis as well as participate in an international experience during their undergraduate career. Upon completing the global agricultural leadership curriculum, students will be awarded an academic certificate.

Leadership educators teach Transformational Leadership Theory in their classrooms, but could transformational theory be used as a pedagogical model to deepen students’ understanding of leadership? This article presents Erin Gruwell, a first-year teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach and subject of the 2006 movie The Freedom Writers, as a case study where an educator practiced the components of transformational leadership in the classroom to transform students’ lives. Gruwell used idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration to transform a classroom of gang members into a community of scholars and authors. Following the case examples, leadership educators are provided examples of how to incorporate the four components of transformational leadership in their instructional methods. The purpose is to not only demonstrate the theory in action, but to deepen students’ learning of leadership theory.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to evaluate if the environment of the State 4-H Council fosters transfer of training to life after the 4-H program. Purposive sampling identified former members of a State 4-H Council. The research methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews. Major findings of the study noted that most areas of the council environment encourage the transfer of training, however, some facets of the council environment need improvement to promote training transfer. Recommendations include conducting a needs assessment of all incoming State 4-H Council members, developing an experiential training method, implementing training on working with different personality types, improving communication among the group, and continuing to reward council members for using the skills they gain while on the council.

This study examines Texas FFA officers’ perceptions regarding the traits and characteristics that good followers possess. A content analysis of officer responses to an open-ended question found that these young leaders have a limited level of understanding of what constitutes a good follower. Furthermore, female respondents placed a greater emphasis on supporting the leader and being respectful, whereas male respondents emphasized being a team player. Males also emphasized being involved in the chapter as a desirable trait more often than females. This suggests that females are more focused on ideas that are leader-supportive and males are more action driven. Males focused more on being a team and achievement. The study demonstrates a need to emphasize followership in leader development and education curricula. Youth organizations with similar leadership development programs can better equip their future leaders with the knowledge needed to be a follower-focused leader by teaching them how to identify good followership. As youth organizations become more follower-focused, failure to introduce followership instruction into the leadership classroom is a disservice to students.

According to a survey of professionals in agricultural education, The Journal of Leadership Education (JOLE) is a new and primary outlet of leadership education research and professional scholarship. The purpose of this study was to assess five years of JOLE’s primary and secondary research theme areas, frequent primary and secondary research themes by year, prolific authorship, and research methods and types using a mixed-methods design. A compilation of the research results is reported. Research themes appear cyclic and add little to improving an apparent lack of research continuity. Research must continue to determine cycle depth and the influence on research in leadership education as an integrated specialization area of agricultural education. This research may be used comparatively with the National Research Agenda to determine where future research should be focused.

Leadership development goal statements of 92 undergraduate students enrolled in a multi-year self-directed leadership development program were analyzed using content and thematic analyses to investigate patterns of similarities and differences across gender and race. This qualitative analysis utilized a theoretical framework that approached leadership typed traits, skills, or behaviors (Northouse, 2009). Significant differences emerged by gender; women were more interested in developing leadership-oriented traits while men displayed more interest in developing specific skills. No differences emerged across racial groups.