An Investigation of Womens Leadership Development

Ideas and theories that consider the intersection of leader diversity and development needs are in the beginning stages of exploration and understanding. The purpose of this investigation is to explore and understand how women in organizational leadership roles describe their lived experiences of leadership development. Women leaders participated in semistructured interviews to explore their perspectives and lived experience of leadership development. Five core meanings and themes were elucidated from interview responses using pheno-menological analysis methods. Each theme is discussed and re-commendations for future research are presented. The results of this investigation can be used in several ways: to inform specific indivi-dual-level considerations for womens leadership development, im-prove leadership development applications overall, and to describe potential actions needed to address the issues that influence womens leadership applications. The results of this study also have implications for the broader practice of diverse-leader development.