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Talent and leadership remain at the top of the list of concerns for business leaders. As the talent gap constrains business growth locally, regionally, nationally and globally (CEO Challenge Survey, 2015, Conference Board), there is an increasing gap between leadership position requirements and the leadership skills of the average incumbent (Eichenger et al., 2015). Indeed, graduate business school students face a leadership inflection point in their trajectory as future leaders and business colleges play a key role in closing the leadership gap during the development cycle of the MBA program (Korn Ferry, 2016). Academics call out for a set of pedagogical practices to teach leadership in a context that values awareness, reflection and development (Roeser and Peck, 2009; Weisfeld-Spolter et al., 2018). The need for leadership education remains acute with the increasing demands for accountability and results for higher education (Bureau and Lawhead, 2018). The business community seeks students prepared for leadership in contemporary complex workplaces. In response to these demands, this study presents an exploratory, innovative, research-based approach for stimulating self-awareness, reflection and intentional development. This can serve as a model for business colleges exploring how to successfully foster these necessary leadership capabilities in students. Thus, our overarching aim is to contribute to the literature by introducing and cultivating a reflective and contemplative approach to education integrating a set of pedagogical practices, namely, self-awareness, reflection and coaching for development as a leader.
Self-awareness has been cited as one of the most important competencies for leaders to develop (Toegel and Barsoux, 2012) particularly for many MBA graduate students (Miller and Xu, 2017). Self-awareness is conceptualized as the extent to which individuals are consciously aware of their internal states and their interactions with others (Trapnell and Campbell, 1999). Brown and Ryan (2003) further delineated two types of self-awareness: situational and dispositional. In other words, it is an individuals’ understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and impact on others and has been emphasized as a core leadership capacity, with some scholars and practitioners suggesting that self-awareness should be the primary emphasis in initially developing leadership (George and Sims, 2007; Korn Ferry, 2016). Building students’ self-awareness as a critical prerequisite to their successful development and progression as future leaders is a challenge (Muir, 2014). Designing an approach...