Chapter 5. Leadership Thread Five: Developmental

Leader development is adult development. However, the intersection of leadership development and adult development is only an emerging field of scholarly inquiry. It focuses on understanding how these theories converge and affirming the importance of life-span developmental theories to leadership. Modern adult development theory and research has been evolving since its inception early in the twentieth century. Whilst the field of leadership development, relatively recent in comparison with general leadership scholarship, has become a distinct discipline and focus of research and theorizing in the past two decades. Developing leaders are embedded in the continuing adult development thus understanding adult development provides insights into leadership. Perhaps unsurprisingly, scholarly discourse and research on how leadership matures seldom refers to women and their concurrent development as adults and as leaders. This may be attributed either to an inclination toward minimizing gender differences in order not to justify and perpetuate inequalities, or due to challenges in designing research that neither neglects development unique to women nor disregards differences between men and women. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first part discusses adult development and leadership development in the context of gender with a goal to illuminate the highlights of this intersectional field through a review of existing scholarly literature. The review is followed by mature women’s leadership development discussed through the lens of self-authoring ways of knowing. The chapter concludes with a personal reflection on mature leadership providing a deeper understanding of the meaning of developmental experiences.