Effects of Leadership Development Program on Decision Making, Self - management Behavior and Interpersonal Relationship

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1 Effects of Leadership Development Program on Decision Making, Self - management Behavior and Interpersonal Relationship Hyejin Kim 1 1 Dept. of Teaching Profession, Daejeon University, 62, Daehak-ro, Dong-gu, Daejeon, Korea, hjkim@dju.ac.kr Abstract. The purpose of the study is to examine the gender differences in the effects of leadership development program using self-reported measures. The program was developed to improve leadership skills for freshman students. This program consisted of a total of 13 sessions based on student activities during 2 hours per week. It provided self-understanding, selfmanagement, exploration of vision and career, communication, decision making, interpersonal relationship activities and so on. The program was carried out to six-hundred forty seven male participants (44.5%) and eight-hundred seven (55.5%) females. The pre-test and post-test for leadership such as decision making, self management, and interpersonal relationship were implemented. Collected data was analyzed by paired - samples T - test and a One-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) using SPSS 20. The results of this study showed male students got higher scores of self-management behavior and interpersonal relationship than female students after the leadership development program. The gender differences in leadership skills will be considered further in the conclusion portion. Keywords: Leadership Development Program, Decision Making, Self-management, Interpersonal Relationship, Leadership Skills 1 Introduction With the maturing of fast-paced society and women s growing entry into leadership roles, there is a growing call among both old and young generations that the current shift away from male - dominated culture would only continue to take hold. Male dominated environment is present in modern society and it is likely to affect students in modern day. The social role that assigned women to be the bearers of the society, in general, leads them to acquire skills that are interpersonally facilitative and friendly behaviors that can be termed communal [1]. Walker and Aritz (2015) reported that both genders tend to select males as the leader, even though both genders may exhibit these characteristics during group activities and there was likely a gender bias in leadership perception [2]. Leadership is one of the important skills younger youth, especially women students need to improve in order to succeed in their professional life. In recent decades, universities, higher education institution, and even enterprises focused on developing students and employees leadership skills as a means of preparing them for the labor market and more competitive society [3, 4]. Although educators have developed a broad range of pedagogical approaches designed to enhance students leadership skills, but there has been relatively few research regarding the gender differences in leadership and program development considering those gender differences in Korea. It needs to investigate the gender differences of leadership skills and determine how gender differences are in the effects of leadership development program. By developing leadership programs for female students in their preferred way may be possible to target specific leadership deficits and improve skills to create well-round leaders [5]. Thus, the objective of this research is to assess effects of the leadership development program and gender differences in the effects of leadership development program using self - reported measures about leadership skills. 86

2 2 Related Researches 2.1 Leadership and Gender There are two approaches to the study of leadership: psychological perspectives and discursive perspectives. The psychological leadership is prevalent in management studies where a psychological lens and traditional empiricist methods still dominate [2]. The concern of this approach is with the cognitive or social-cognitive origins of leadership and perceptions they generate with. The other perspective contrasts with the psychological approach. From this perspective, leadership is viewed in the context of what leaders do and is thus discursive in nature. So, leadership can be accepted as a process of influence and meaning management that advances a talk or goal, an attribution made by followers or observers [6]. Social constructionists assert that male is positioned to speak and behave in ways stereotypically coded as masculine while female is positioned to speak and behave in ways coded as feminine, although they can and do resist such stereotypical positioning [2]. Hofstede (1998) describes masculine and feminine national cultures as representing the sex role pattern that is dominant in a given society and further suggests the masculinity-femininity dimension of a nation s culture is reflected by organizations within that culture [7]. Korean society and organizations typically are characterized by a competitive, military, masculine culture values respect for authority, competition, and task orientation. 2.2 Leadership Development Program It was generally known that formal leadership training develops leadership competencies with the recognition that participants come into the program with diverse skills, learning styles, and experiences [7]. However, just as well-designed program can benefit participants, poor program and the failure to reflect needs of participants limits participants leadership skills and may be harmful. 3 Methodology 3.1 Participants The experiment for this article was conducted over the 13 sessions during an academic semester. The 1446 participants were all freshman students at a private university in Daejeon, Korea. Participants were 642 males (44.4%) and 804 females (55.6%). This university has been implementing university level leadership program for 5 years to this iteration. The employment rate of graduates from this university ranked second nationwide. Students come from a wide variety of social, educational and financial backgrounds. They took classes titled Vision Exploration as required curriculum and got P/NP grade. All participants were asked to complete the questionnaire regarding leadership skills during the first class in March as pre-test and the last class in June as post-test. 3.2 Leadership Development Program The Leadership Development Program (LDP) for freshman students focused on the themes of selfunderstanding, decision making, self-management, and interpersonal relationship, communication skills, and vision and career exploration. LDP consisted of a total of 13 sessions based on student activities during 2 hours per week. The curriculum, content, and delivery of LDP were standardized across training sessions, and the instructors who facilitated all sessions had been trained before start- 87

3 ing the program. The program has been offered in a similar format for the previous 5 years prior to this iteration. Thus I can be reasonably confident that the results I present are not driven by differences in the composition or the effectiveness of content delivery of the LDP between the individual instructors. 3.3 Instruments Students were asked to assess their current level of decision making, self-management behavior, and interpersonal relationship before and after participation in an academic semester LDP offered for freshman students. The Leadership Skill Questionnaire developed by Wan Yong, Eom (2007) measuring 6 dimensions of self-concept, decision making, interpersonal relationship, communication, self-management behavior, and organization management [8]. Each individual items included in the survey utilizes a 5-point Likert type scale, ranging from Not at all (the lowest possible score 1) to Absolutely (The highest possible score 5). The questionnaire had a reliability coefficient of 0.78, 0.73, 0.74, 0.81, 0.86, and 0.75 respectively in present study. 3.4 Data Analysis Descriptive statistics including frequency tables on the categorical responses as demographic information were presented. The homogeneity of slopes assumption was tested between male and female students group. A One-Way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to measure the main effect of leadership development program controlling for the covariate variable of gender, which might influence the dependent variable. ANCOVA is a statistical analysis to be used when the researcher cannot assign subjects randomly into groups. The analysis was computerized using SPSS 18 for Window s program. 4 Results 4.1 Descriptive Statistics The descriptive statistics of the data obtained from pre-test and post-test of leadership skills are presented in Table 1. A sample dataset of N = 1449 was included in the analysis. Gender was coded as 1=male and 2=female. As the table shows, the mean of male students in Decision making is 3.73 (SD =.48), while that of female students is 3.65 (SD =.50). The mean of male students in Selfmanagement behavior is 3.16 (SD =.68), while that of female students is 3.02 (SD =.62). The mean of male students in Interpersonal relationship is 3.85 (SD =.52), while that of female students is 3.78 (SD =.48). In general, the male group has slightly higher mean score than the female group. Therefore ANCOVA was used, instead of t-test, for the final data analysis. Table1. Descriptive statistics of pre-test and post-test scores variables group N Pre-test Post-test M SD M SD Decision making Male Female Total Self Male management Female behavior Total

4 Interpersonal Male relationship Female Total Inferential Statistics Table2. The result of Paired Samples T test for Male Students Pretest Posttest 95% CI for Outcome M SD M SD Mean Difference t df P Decision making , Self-management , Relationship , Table3. The result of Paired Samples T test for Female Students Pretest Posttest 95% CI for Outcome M SD M SD Mean Difference t df P Decision making , Self-management , Relationship , Although descriptively the data indicated the male students had higher scores of leadership skills than female students, no conclusion about the effectiveness of the LDP could be made unless the data were analyzed using ANCOVA by controlling the pretest scores as the covariates. ANCOVA by controlling pretest scores as a covariance was conducted for this research to determine the effect size of gender on post-test scores of leadership skills. The independent variables were decision making, self-management behavior, and interpersonal relationship. The table 4, 5, 6 show the ANCOVA analysis results for those variables respectively. Table4. The result of ANCOVA for Decision Making Source SS df MS F p η 2 Corrected Model a Intercept Covariate Gender Error Total Corrected Total a R Squared =.003 (Adjusted R Squared =.001) Table5. The result of ANCOVA for Self-management Behavior Source SS df MS F P η 2 Corrected Model a Intercept Covariate Gender Error

5 Total Corrected Total a R Squared =.009 (Adjusted R Squared =.007) Table6. The result of ANCOVA for Interpersonal Relationship Source SS df MS F P η 2 Corrected Model a Intercept Covariate Gender Error Total Corrected Total a R Squared =.008 (Adjusted R Squared =.007) Thus, there was statistically significant difference between before and after LDP for freshman male students. This results shows that Leadership Development Program for freshman students is more effective for males than for females. 5 Conclusions The finding is inconsistent with some researchers [16] who reported increasing of interpersonal relationship after leadership skill programs. ANCOVA showed that post-test scores of male students in decision making, self-management behavior, and interpersonal relationship tests were higher than those of female students. It was concluded that the leadership development program was more effective for male students rather than females. Although the current research provides important insight into perceived leadership skills among Korean college students, there are some limitations to the research. First, participants were drawn from one university, it may not fully explicate the role and effect of gender in perceived leadership among all Korean college students. Second, participants were first year students. It should be assessed that how long this program effect and gender differences would be maintained and how different academic major and grade would differ on leadership skills. References 1. Alexander, N., Guta, H. A., and Poole, G. : Gender Differences of Perceived Leadership Skills Among Saudi Students, Advancing Women in Leadership, Vol. 34, pp (2014) 2. Walker, R. C. and Aritz, J. ; Women Doing Leadership : Leadership Styles and Organizational Culture, International Journal of Business and Communication, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp (2015) 3. Park, E. M. and Park, M. R. : Effects of Leadership Development Program for University Program, The Korean Journal of Contents, Vol. 15, No. 6, pp (2015) 4. Berman, A. : Academic Leadership Development, Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp (2015) 5. Debebe, G. : Transformational Learning in Women s Leadership Development Training, Advancing Women in Leadership, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp (2009) 90

6 6. Fairhurst, G. T. : Discursive leadership. A communication alternative to leadership psychology, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 24, pp (2008) 7. Hofstede, G. : Attitudes, values, and organizational culture: Disentangling the concepts. Organization Studies, Vol. 19, pp (1998). 8. Eom, W. Y. : Study on the program development for youth leadership life skills, Philosophy Doctoral Dissertation of Myung-gi University (2007) 91