Graduate Studies as Predictors of Leadership Development Mediated by Psychological Capital and Psychological Ownership.

• Author: Khan, Hamid

INTRODUCTION

The critical literature review of leadership, psychological capital and psychological ownership should be able to articulate the interplay of leadership with psychological capital and psychological ownership. In this research review of publications, leadership behavior is the dependent variable or the criterion, whereas psychological capital and psychological ownership are independent variables or predictor variables. The three components of the literature review will be done to understand their various interrelationships, correlations, covariations and causation.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Leadership Criteria

'The leadership challenge' anticipated through graduate studies and continuous development must embody the following precept for the purpose of effective leadership in the profession through application of learning, "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen." Alan Keith, CEO of Genentech using a leadership model: Model the way, Inspire a shared vision, Challenge the process, Enable others to act, and Encourage the heart

The authors say that leaders must supply the will to lead, in as much as they have learned the way to lead through their education.

"Leadership is relationship!" We can build a great depth in relationships if we just try. We must demonstrate the art of treating people as people. Doing so requires us to take an interest in colleagues, get close to them, ask questions, and listen attentively and show empathy. When leaders demonstrate an interest in colleagues, subordinates and even supervisors and their work, these relationship phenomena develop mutual commitment and reciprocity of trust and good feelings conducive to mutual confidence. To be an excellent leader, one has to be focused in attention and attentiveness, dedicate attention to discussing ideas and projects, having conversations about others' suggestions. Most of us have the inkling how it works, but do not have time to spend on these activities.

For this reason a leader must be a messenger, and must have a message, and must believe in that message. Kouzes & Posner (2007) argue with their Primary viewpoint: "If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message. And with two corollary viewpoints: You can't believe in the messenger, if you don't know what the messenger believes.You can't be the messenger until you are clear about what you believe." The professional education makes one's education effective.

Leadership Development: The Purpose of Graduate Professional Education

The purpose, Kouzes and Possner (2007) have argued, is so fundamental as to assist people in developing abilities to lead others in an extraordinary way. So they assert that the graduate education is for practice and the practitioners must develop ability to uplift spirits so that it is practical and inspirational. So they have intentionally brought inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and idealized influence in inspiring the professionally educated to practice 'model the way'. Graduate professional education is evidence-based education in that we have to believe in something against the backdrop of data to improve performance individually, singularly, and severally of the team. They argue that good leadership is an understandable and universal process backed up by scores of data so that each leader is uniquely individual, and the practice of leadership itself is shared by successful leadership in the same way as they are learned in the graduate school.

Kouzes and Posner (2007) project their enduring work in context for today's world, proving how leadership is a relationship that must be nurtured, and most importantly, that it can be learned. They emphasize upon us to "first lead yourself." They prescribe the fundamental precept of leadership development through graduate professional education is self-development, asserting that "the quest of leadership is first and in their quest to discover who you are. Through self-development comes the confidence needed to lead. Self-confidence is really awareness of and trade in your own powers. These powers become clear and strong only as you work to identify and develop them."

To develop with full potential for professionalism, one must begin with leading oneself through self-reflection undergoing a struggle with one's own conflicting values. One must first clarify the principles that govern one's life and the ends one seeks, and this endeavor must give a strong purpose to life through a graduate professional education in their own unique way. And the vision from graduate professional education must be clearer than an undergraduate education and that education is purposeful "leadership is to inspire vision. Leaders gaze across the horizon of time, imagining the attractive opportunities that are in store when they and their constituents arrive at a distant destination. They envision exciting and ennobling possibilities. Leaders have a desire to make something happen to change the way things are, to create something that no one else has ever created before. In some ways leaders live their lives backward. They see pictures in their minds eye of what the results will look like even before they have started the project, much as an architect draws a blueprint or an engineer builds a model. Their clear image of the future pulls them forward. Yet visions seen only by leaders are insufficient to create an organized movement or a significant change in a company. A person with no constituents is not a leader, and people will not follow until they except that vision as their own. Leaders cannot command commitment, only inspire it."

Research on psychological capital and psychological ownership on graduate professional students' leadership have not been researched much extensively. Psychological capital has four components hope, optimism, resiliency, self-efficacy (HORSE). These can be construed as similar to fostering "psychological hardiness" that Kouzes and Posner (2007) profess. Leadership has been extensively studied by use of Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) by Avolio and Bass (1999).

On Becoming an Effective Leader

"Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best."--Unknown Graduate professional education must impart leadership. According to Warren Bennis (2009) "Timeless leadership is always about character, and it is always about authenticity. Let me underscore the observation made by the pioneering psychologist, William James, about authenticity. I have often thought, he wrote, that the best way to define a man's character is to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensively active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says "This is the real me." Bill George urges us to discover and cultivate that authentic leadership of the moment, the part of us which is most alive and the part that is most us.

Bill George admired, among many other CEOs, John Chambers of Cisco. This admiration of Chambers led him to believe that serving customers becomes the organization's overarching goal that unleashes the power of employees to use their hearts and the passions to serve. I believe this is the overarching viewpoint of graduate education for developing professionalism of engineers and managers, which has been very clearly enunciated as...