This paper examines youth leadership training and its relationship to communication skills, self-esteem, and problem-solving abilities. Drawing on transformational leadership theory — including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation — the paper traces leadership development from early childhood attachment styles through adolescence and into adulthood. It explores how communication styles, relational leadership dynamics, and youth-centered development programs contribute to effective leader formation. The paper also critiques existing research for its overemphasis on adult populations and advocates for longitudinal, lifespan-oriented approaches that engage young people as current community leaders rather than merely preparing them for future roles.
Transformational leadership remains a critical phenomenon described through behavioral components such as inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Idealized influence is the first element, reflected in how transformational leaders behave in a manner that allows them to appear as role models among their followers. Such individuals are respected, trusted, and admired (Olive, Gottfried, Guerin, Gottfried & Reichard, 2011). Followers relate with leaders with the aim of emulating them.
Children's attachment style is normally attributed to parental factors or parenting style. Attachment styles are well formed at early ages, even though they are predictive of outcomes for future leadership. Early life shows that bonds developed by infants with caregivers vary from insecure to secure attachment styles. The relationship identifies diverse infant attachment styles — either secure or insecure (avoidant and ambivalent) — while influencing subsequent relationship functioning. Research shows that individuals with a secure attachment style exhibit adaptable psychosocial functioning in adulthood (Shamir, 2011). This is because they are endowed with ego resources necessary for taking up leadership roles. Individuals facing insecure attachment styles lack those ego resources, do not seek leadership positions, and are consequently perceived as weak leaders. In addition, secure attachment styles allow individuals to engage in effective forms of leadership, as evidenced by the association between transformational leadership and secure childhood attachment styles from parents.
Inspirational motivation components are perceived by transformational leaders as motivating and inspiring ways of providing meaning and challenging the work of their followers while arousing team spirit. Transformational leaders display optimism and enthusiasm by stimulating their followers' efforts toward innovation and creativity through questioning assumptions, re-approaching old situations, and reframing problems. This approach reflects the intellectual stimulation component. The individualized consideration component is characterized by transformational leaders who pay special attention to individual followers' needs for achievement and growth through coaching and mentoring (Mortensen, Lichty, Foster-Fishman & Warsinske, 2014).
Followers experience development across successive levels of potential. Taken together, inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation comprise the overall transformational leadership construct. Further research should examine combinations of traits and interactions of contextual factors. For instance, the demonstration of a significant relationship between transformational leadership and family functioning is mediated by self-concept, with controls on socioeconomic status. Parents who provide a supportive and stimulating environment allow adolescents to develop a positive self-concept that supports subsequent transformational leadership qualities in adulthood. Future research interest includes examining the interaction of contextual factors with traits such as extraversion (Shamir, 2011). Other factors of future research interest involve prior leadership experiences — such as the scope of leadership roles in college or high school — as well as trigger events such as traveling abroad, parental divorce, and particular successes or failures in sports or academics.
Examining the interaction between traits and contextual factors promotes understanding of how various adolescent experiences affect adult leadership development. These are critical steps in establishing theoretical direction, though empirical longitudinal research remains necessary for examining such issues fully.
Future research can also consider the implications of generational and time differences in the study of leadership. Societal expectations warrant study to provide greater understanding of the reasons why minorities and women experience leadership development barriers. Understanding how social expectations affect leadership development — and how to overcome such expectations — allows individuals to equip leaders with the skills needed to deal with the challenges they face. Other groups also experience societal biases regarding leadership. Factors such as race, appearance, or socioeconomic status can hinder an individual's development and impede the evaluation of leadership viability in early years, potentially implicating detrimental effects on leadership development in adulthood. In summary, a multidisciplinary approach is best suited for understanding the lifespan of leader development and answering questions about the progression of youth leadership (Gottfried, Gottfried, Oliver & Riggio, 2011).
Developing leadership capacity and individual leaders is increasingly important in organizational governance. Leaders from both non-profit and for-profit sectors face the challenge of exhibiting effective leadership in different ways (Shamir, 2011). Leaders must be prepared to make sound decisions and set necessary direction within their organizations while avoiding ethical missteps. Preparing leaders allows groups to focus on various development opportunities, such as increasing self-awareness, identifying improvement methods, and building skills. Even as research suggests that people can improve their leadership skills, the impact sizes of various elements of developmental programs remain modest.
In recent decades, however, research has uncovered factors affecting leader development, including leadership identity effects and the importance of adult development for expertise roles (Murphy & Johnson, 2011). A further limitation to understanding youth leader development is the field's focus on developmental experiences occurring late in life. Many studies on leadership development evaluate executives and managers while neglecting young people and adolescent development.
Leaders are highly likely to have had significant developmental experiences before reaching mid-management, making early development experiences important. A critical level of development involves engaging in leadership roles during adolescence, which improves skills and increases the likelihood of moving into positions of positive influence in the future (Gottfried, Gottfried, Oliver & Riggio, 2011). Further research on leadership concepts among younger age groups supports longitudinal studies and the incorporation of lifespan perspectives on leadership development and identity. This approach provides a broad range of benefits. Examining leader development across the lifespan allows researchers to consider broader behavioral elements compared to the current research focus on early adulthood (Vries, Bakker-Pieper & Oostenveld, 2010).
Various developmental techniques effectively endorse both older and younger groups of developing leaders through increased understanding of ongoing skill improvement across developmental stages across the lifespan. Taking longitudinal perspectives in examining such factors broadens understanding of the relevant moderators and mediators of relationships between early attributes and adult leadership outcomes. Additionally, early leadership experiences directly build the foundation for subsequent leadership development.
The primary reason for this is the greater ability that exists for developing self-reinforcing leader development through experiences in young age. Despite the potential importance of leadership development in early years, a dearth of research exists on leader development activities relative to leadership effectiveness prior to actually assuming office. There are exceptions in which young individuals play leadership roles within workgroups. Such situations promote attention to real leader development by encouraging individuals to take on actual leadership roles and demonstrate skills (Reichard, Riggio & Guerin, 2011). Nevertheless, various studies isolate personality aspects in children — such as dominance, social competence, and extraversion — as they relate to leadership ratings from peers and teachers.
Although various instruments exist for measuring interpersonal communication style, a lack of integration and parsimony within the burgeoning scope of communication style research is evident. Attempts have been made to redress this state of affairs through the integration of diverse communication style scales based on interpersonal models comprising dimensions such as friendliness, dominance, and affiliation. Critics suggest that other dimensions of communication style also exist. For instance, factor analysis captures a wider array of existing instruments for communication styles, including indirect communication, inferring meaning, dramatic communication, interpersonal sensitivity, openness, use of feelings, positive silence perception, and preciseness (Mortensen, Lichty, Foster-Fishman & Warsenske, 2014). However, some scales based on more divergent factors — such as use of feelings, inferring meaning, and positive silence perception — do not relate to interpersonal communication styles, instead focusing on intrapersonal feelings and cognitions that refer to communication.
A consequential element involves integration with the assessment of less useful situations based on an observer's interests. There is a need to rate other people's interpersonal communication styles effectively. Arriving at such frameworks for communication styles uncovers the major dimensions and concerns of a leader's communication style. The evaluative basis rests on the idea that everything said in constructing communication techniques is encoded in language. Factor analysis of dictionary words pertaining to communication provides ideal descriptions of the number, size, and nature of the principal dimensions of communication style among leaders (Day, 2011).
Other critical aspects of communication styles include expressiveness, supportiveness, preciseness, argumentativeness, niceness, emotional tension (or assuredness), and verbal aggressiveness. Regression of communication style scales on lexical communication factors reveals a strong relationship between dramatic communication and openness on one hand, and lexical expressiveness on the other. Lexical preciseness is associated with lexical niceness and interpersonal sensitivity. Intrapersonal communication scales show less overlap with lexical scales. Expressed emotional tension, argumentativeness, and verbal aggressiveness are less well represented on the scales (Vries, Bakker-Pieper & Oostenveld, 2010).
"Global programs promoting youth civic engagement and empowerment"
"Youth as active leaders mentoring peers and driving community change"
"Temporal measurement challenges and leadership outcome theory gaps"
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