Leadership from the Inside Out: Student Leadership Development within Authentic Leadership and Servant Leadership Frameworks

Developing undergraduate student leaders who are authentic in their leadership and who have a drive to serve and support those around them is not only good for the students and their host schools, but arguably good for students’ future employers and even the future of our society. Our goal is to determine how such student leaders could be developed within higher education programs or courses. We take a multi-disciplinary approach and examine the research on leadership development with both student and employee samples, framing the review in authentic and servant leadership theories, integrated with best practices in learning and training. We then build from our review of the literatures to provide concrete recommendations for student leadership development founded in authentic and servant leadership principles and utilizing experiential learning.