Learning Leadership: on including leadership training in higher education

Can an educational programme develop tomorrow’s leaders? Can the mindset and skill set found in successful leaders be taught and learnt in educational programmes? This paper presents a leadership program, a cross disciplinary master programme at
Lund University, Sweden. The students study technology and management, however, the programme’s unique value proposition lies in its focus on leadership.

The leadership part of the programme is based on three core buildingblocks
that are intimately intertwined and forms an holistic platform for the programme:
1. The understanding of fixed and growth mindset (Dweck, 2006)
2. The process of becoming and belonging (Wenger, 2000a)
3. The individual learning journal tool (Moon, 20006).

We (the teachers involved in the programme) are convinced that the development that the students go through during the programme is a consequence of its pedagogical approach that puts the student in the front seat. A student from the programme expresses it in the following way: ”The consequence of letting the students be in the front seat is that we start to care, we want to succeed and to see a development in
ourselves and our groups. A problem with many other programmes is that they are so easy to be distanced from. It is like the education takes place around us, not with us or inside of us”, and she continues ”You should feel that you have learnt, been through something, participated in your own formation. Distanciation is not part of a leadership programme, if we really want to learn leadership it has to be experienced and felt inside of ourselves”. (translated from Swedish) (Karlsson, 2008).

The purpose of this paper is to describe and assess how leadership can be taught and learnt in higher education. It contains a presentation of the three core building blocks as well as a description of how they are used in the master programme in order to enhance the leadership learning outcome for the students. The method is referred to as Lund Learning Leadership Method (3LM). 3LM has gradually been developed and refined since 1997. Comments, reflections and course evaluations from current
students and alumni are included in the paper, and used as an assessment method of the programme’s ability to encourage and foster tomorrow’s leaders.