The formation of leadership identity within leadership educators: a duoethnography

Duoethnography is based on critical social theory, where researchers focus on becoming change agents of the studied phenomenon, grounding their research in collaboration and social justice (Crestani & Taylor, 2021; Fox & Sangha, 2023). Through narrative unity, scholars of duoethnography work collaboratively to share their experiences with one another, showing differences and similarities around a phenomenon, resulting in new meaning (Le, Tran, & Le, 2021; Long, Wolkenhauer, & Higgins, 2021). “The goal of this approach is to scrutinize and re-conceptualize existing beliefs through a conversation written in a play-script format so that new interpretations, meanings, and understandings become both necessary and possible” (Le et al., 2021, p. 2). The authors, through a critical multi-dialogic process, reveal new insight on a topic that might hold preconceived notions by others. Scholars practicing duoethnography display themselves as the sites, similar to a case study (Burleigh & Burm, 2022; Gibbons & Gibbons, 2016; Le et al., 2021). Critically engaging in deconstruction, co-construction, and reconstruction of experiences are central to duoethnographers, resulting in multiple modes of meaning making (DeCino & Strear, 2019).

Scholars Sawyer and Norris (2015) developed the main tenets of duoethnography which are:

• (1)

  Polyvocal/dialogic nature [i.e. the voices should remain distinguishable], (2) the examination of life history as curriculum, (3) the intent not to profess but rather to learn and change as the result of the conversation, and (4) the importance of learning from difference (Sawyer & Norris, 2015, p. 2).

Since then, these tenets have expanded to include:

• (1)

  Currere or, the process of reclaiming oneself in collaboration with another to reveal new insights about a phenomenon; (2) disrupting metanarratives; (3) dialogic change and regenerative transformation to go beyond storytelling to inform and bring about transformation; (4) trustworthiness as self-reflexivity; (5) audience accessibility, inviting readers into the knowledge production process; (6) clear ethical stances; and (7) trust between the researchers (Lopez & Morgan, 2021, pp. 233–234).

Through reflexivity, duoethnographers engage in trustworthy conversations, remaining open minded to the direction of the research. This helps create a thick description of the examined study, as the researchers are also the participants. “Reflexivity requires researchers’ continued, intentional efforts to uncover the layers of power and influence their positionalities have over their research projects” (Cummins & Brannon, 2022, p. 85). Often, researchers choose duoethnography because it is collaborative and relational. Through duoethnography, it is necessary for researchers to engage in dialogic exploration in order to avoid their talks from becoming an everyday conversation (Cummins & Brannon, 2022; Sawyer & Norris, 2015). The purpose of creating a dialogic form of inquiry is to allow readers to insert their own lived experiences into the research as they are reading (Burleigh & Burm, 2022). The use of critical reflection, questioning, challenging one another, and analyzing the texts makes duoethnography the significant methodology that it is. As a form of collaboration and knowledge co-construction, duoethnography also appeals as a feminist methodology where stories of marginalized communities are explored (Valdez et al., 2022). By using the methodology in this way, it serves as a form of change agency and personal transformation within a safe space, since the researchers should also have a form of trust among them.

However, duoethnography is different from other approaches such as collaborative and collective ethnography, as the approach is more relational in nature (Noel, Minematsu, & Bosca, 2023). Duoethnography creates a fluidity among the storytellers without following a rigid methodological structure. The methodology also differs in that both researchers involve themselves in the process of generating data and interrogating one another in the process (Fitzpatrick & Farquhar, 2018).

A subfield within leadership studies, leadership education and leadership educators are the ones who shape and develop students through their coaching, teaching, and mentoring. However, leadership identity is not something that is solely formed by the students, but by the educators as well. Leadership educators guide others and facilitate the process of students becoming leaders (Priest & Seemiller, 2018). Therefore, educators should reflect on their social identities, especially marginalized ones, within education, research, and practice to give voice to those who may have been excluded from leadership conversations, such as women, African Americans, people of color, non-able bodied persons, and more. These conversations are also needed because leadership that aligns with student development theory has historically prioritized the middle to upper class students who had access to and were more inclined to take on leadership opportunities (Beatty et al., 2020). Therefore, leadership education serves as a morally just and socially just endeavor to uplift the voices of those who have not been included in the field. Their leadership identities, therefore, deserve further exploration as well.

Leadership educators for social justice recognize that there are power structures within leadership studies that need dismantling and they see leadership education as a form of social responsibility (Chunoo, Beatty, & Gruver, 2019). If social identities are “products of environments based on systems of power and oppression” (Beatty et al., 2020, p. 40), then the field charges leadership educators with reflecting on and discussing these items within leadership education, as they enhance the conversation of leadership identity, influences, and characteristics. “Critical reflexivity practices … are useful tools for leadership educators to deeply understand the ways their identities and values show up in the creation, facilitation, assessment, and research of leadership education” (Beatty et al., 2020, p. 41). As a result of critical reflexivity, leadership educators who value social justice, focus on culturally relevant and socially just teaching techniques to create a flexible and open learning environment that will lead to new and progressive research, as well as growth within their students. Leadership education as a form of social justice suggests that students learn about marginalized communities in order to create a more inclusive, equitable, justice oriented and liberatory research agenda within leadership. “Liberatory pedagogical approaches to leadership education encourage interventions to empower participants in interrogating their own lives and exercise agency regarding the meaning they construct” (Chunoo et al., 2019, p. 92). Understanding one’s social identity and location is necessary to understanding one’s role as a leadership educator.

In their research, Seemiller and Priest (2015, 2017) proposed four parts of identity development spaces for leadership educators. We summarize those below:

• (1)

  Exploration: The space one explores to decide their professional identity as a leadership educator. This might happen more for new leadership professionals.

• (2)

  Experimentation: This is where the leader may expand their own characteristics aligning with more experienced professionals and adjust those characteristics based on authenticity such as accepting new leadership positions;

• (3)

  Validation: This is where educators see themselves as leadership educators based on self-validation and validation from others; and

• (4)

  Confirmation: This is where one fully sees himself or herself as a member of the leadership educator community. This may include mentoring new leadership educators or students.

This process is developmental and negotiable as one evolves as a leadership educator. One’s identity and experiences influence this educator development model where critical reflexivity can be utilized.

“Our own leadership identity can change based on group influences, our changing view of self when interacting with others, our developing self, and other developmental influences” (Maia, 2022, p. 29). While educators have often learned to create safe spaces in the classroom in order for learning to develop and evolve, Maia (2022) suggests that leadership educators create brave spaces, especially for marginalized students-spaces that encourage challenging and respectful dialog around topics. This can be challenging when creating learning environments for leadership education, where taking the social identities of students into consideration remains imperative for inclusion (Owen, Hassell-Goodman, & Yamanaka, 2017). One’s cultural identity and experiences affect how they see themselves as leaders, thus influencing their leadership development; the same can be true of leadership educators. When it comes to leadership development, students bring their prior experiences into the classroom space in order to connect to the learning material. Creating brave spaces makes room for students to share their stories in order to connect them to leadership concepts. For this study, we ground our work in Seemiller and Priest’s (2015) leadership identity formation, critical social theory via duoethnography, and Lee Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory. Through social constructivism, we use duoethnography as a social act of learning about one another through our own lived experiences (Chuang, 2021; Muth and Kiser, 2008). Aligning with Vygotsky’s objectives of social constructivism (Allen et al., 2022) as well as the tenets of duoethnography, we as researchers bring our full selves into this study. While we choose to ground our work in these areas, we acknowledge that there are many other foundation, philosophical, and theoretical lenses in which to study and learn more about leadership identity formation.

Prior to COVID, but also post-COVID, companies acknowledged that leaders experienced exhaustion and needed a break due to on the job stress (Bruce, 2021; Kaluza, Boer, Buengeler, & van Dick, 2020). While the focus of research post-pandemic was on the wellness of employees, leaders also faced hurdles within the area of wellbeing and/or self-care. Leadership wellbeing, also known as health-oriented leadership, consists of follower self-care, leader self-care, and staff care. Within self-care is awareness of one’s needs and practices in that area (Klug, Felfe, & Krick, 2019). The long list of leadership duties can lead to stress, burnout, and work exhaustion (Bruce, 2021; Dyess, 2017). Whether the practice of self-care incorporates exercise, meditation, or rest among leaders, the practice of it can lead to them creating a more caring and positive environment for all, as well as a positive leadership style (Dyess, 2017; Kaluza et al., 2020; Klug et al., 2019). “Managers need support and an emphasis on attending to their own self-care so they can offer it to others. They should be encouraged to honestly recognize and address their own feelings of stress, burnout, and uncertainty” (Bruce, 2021). When leaders practice holistic wellness, they are more likely to report job satisfaction, enhanced work performance, and lower levels of stress and burnout (Dyess et al., 2017; Dysart & Harden, 2022; Klug, Felfe, & Krick, 2022). Within the approach to wellness is not only physical activity, but also additional forms of self-care.

Leader self-care and wellbeing may contribute to the ways in which a leader responds to employees or role models self-care behaviors to employees. Kaluza et al. (2020) found that constructive leadership was strongly related to a leader’s positive wellbeing in long-term situations. Leaders may also be seen as role models who set the tone for those in their units (Klug et al., 2019, 2022). “Leaders’ own self care is seen as a favorable precondition for engaging in staff care, because leaders who have strategies to care for themselves may transfer them more easily to their followers” (Klug et al., 2019, p. 3). Of course, proximity to one’s leader contributes to whether or not an employee is encouraged to practice self-care methods. As an example, an employee who reports to the leader of their area may practice self-care because of seeing their leader practice it. However, an employee who does not regularly interact with their leader may not notice if self-care occurs or is prioritized. A leader who prioritizes health and self-care may be more prone to prioritize those motives for their own employees as well. This type of health-oriented leadership style could work well for organizations, but research in this area is new.

We developed our data collection methods keeping in mind duoethnographic components such as: (1) life as a curriculum; (2) polyvocal and dialogic talk; (3) deliberate juxtaposition; (4) notation of differences that are articulated and discussed to interrogate and disrupt stories; (5) questioning meanings held about the past to invite reconceptualization; (6) universal truths that are not sought; (7) duoethnography as a form of praxis; (8) an ethical stance as a negotiated space; and (9) deep layers of trust growing over time and allowing disclosure and rigorous conversation (Burleigh & Burm, 2022). Our data collection took place over one, traditional academic semester and consisted of an initial recorded meeting where we discussed our leadership development, bi-weekly journal entries each, and once per month recorded check-in meetings. For our initial meeting, we answered the following questions:

• (1)

  How did you become a leadership educator?

• (2)

  What contributed to your development as a leader?

• (3)

  How has your identity contributed to your leadership development?

• (4)

  In what ways has your upbringing influenced the way that you develop other leaders?

Relational commitment “exists when researchers listen actively and responsively to each other, respect each other’s complex identities and cultural understandings, and recognize the limits of their study in relation to their research partner’s life” (Sawyer & Norris, 2012, p. 32). Because of relational ethics and commitment, we established specific rules for conducting this study, especially given the sensitive nature of duoethnography being an extension of autoethnography (Beresford-Dey, Howden, & Martindale, 2024; Fitzpatrick & Farquhar, 2018; Lowe & Jones, 2024). First, we allowed our first interview question to serve as a recurring question throughout the data collection period. This allowed us to learn more about one another and each other’s journey, which also allowed us to have richer dialog and critical feedback later in the study.

Next, we agreed that our discussions would not relate to the doctoral graduate program, as Yancey was enrolled in the program and Richardson served as a faculty member within the program. Due to those power differentials, our data collection consisted of discussions where Richardson shared her experiences as a leadership educator in other areas (community workshops, volunteer roles, and former institutions in which she worked) and Yancey discussed herself as a leadership educator in those same areas, but also as a faculty member at a different university. After the initial meeting, we allowed our bi-weekly journal entries to focus on our own reflections as leadership educators over different periods. With the journal entries, we read each other’s entries, independently, and made comments, asked questions, and at times challenged one another to view situations critically in terms of leadership development. We treated our bi-weekly journal entries as scripts, featuring ongoing conversations with one another (Crestani & Taylor, 2021). We created the following questions to use as journal prompts in case we were unsure of what to write:

• (1)

  Describe your past week’s experience as a leadership educator?

• (2)

  What areas were successful as a leadership educator?

• (3)

  What areas, if any, served as a challenge as a leadership educator?

• (4)

  Open journaling/capturing the moment.

The guiding questions throughout the data collection process allowed us to cross-examine one another, our thoughts and perspectives, as well as analytically listen to one another and “make adaptations based on emerging questions and insights” (Sawyer & Norris, 2012, p. 44). This kept our research purposeful and within its proper context. Our once per month meetings served as verbal check-ins to discuss our journal entries deeper and to ask one another questions about each other’s experiences as leaders and as leadership educators. Data collection began in February of 2024 and ended in late May of 2024.

Our duoethnography process followed the flexible design components described by Sawyer and Norris (2012). Researchers using this working design recognize that research is flexible and adjustment is necessary at times. The flexible design process involves the following components:

• (1)

  Multiple dialogs

• (2)

  Insurrection of subjugated knowledge

• (3)

  Critical collaboration

• (4)

  Synergy of data collection and analysis

• (5)

  The signature of the reader (p. 40).

Within the flexible design components (especially around the synergy of data collection and analysis), we also incorporated reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) by Braun and Clarke (2019) to reach our final themes. The parts of RTA for data analysis are: (1) Familiarizing; (2) Generating initial codes; (3) Generating/searching for themes; (4) Reviewing themes; and (5) Defining and naming themes (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Each part is conducted multiple times, although scholars do not require a specific number of times.

Through that process, we conducted the entire thematic analysis three separate times, with each author taking a turn and then finally agreeing on the emerged themes in the final fourth round. Through familiarization, we read the transcripts and journal entries a minimum of three times to become familiar with our own data in order to understand it. Then we began generating initial codes and searching for themes. Within RTA, we took turns with this process until we could not generate any additional codes and we agreed upon the themes. Defining and naming the themes became easier as we identified key words that emerged from our data such as leader wellness. Instead of creating our own phrases, we allowed the data to tell us the themes. We analyzed our coding into themes and pulled narratives from our recorded interviews and journal entries to show the progression of our thought processes of leadership identity from the beginning of the study until the end. We also met at the end of the coding and analysis process to member-check one another.

Through this duoethnographic study, we described our evolving thoughts and processes through our interviews with one another, as well as journal entries. To keep our journal entries dialogic, we posed critically reflecting questions for one another to consider, which we discussed further in our live-recorded conversations. The three themes that emerged through our study were (1) leader identity history, (2) leadership education, and (3) leader wellness. These three themes were not isolated, but aligned with Seemiller and Priest’s (2015) four steps of LIF. Through critically reflecting on our upbringings, experiences as educators, identities within the context of race and gender, plus our experiences as leaders, we were able to identify who we were as leadership educators, along with our duties to our students, especially as it related to creating a more socially just world (Beatty et al., 2020; Chunno, 2019). The results of our study below represent selections from our entire transcripts that not only support each theme, but best represent the meaning of our entire transcripts.

Our dialog and reflection on our leadership identities as leadership educators ebbed and flowed throughout the entire study. Leadership identity is not static, but dynamic, and educators have the double challenge of considering ways of teaching leadership while also practicing it within the classroom and the community. Leadership identity fell into the category of Seemiller and Priest’s (2015) exploration label.

Yancey: Growing up, my family had a very collectivist approach to decision-making, as opposed to this kind of more individualistic approach. And so I say that to say that, you know, among the women in my family, my grandmother also was a significant role model in terms of leadership, in terms of advocacy, in terms of getting things done and making things happen. But when it came to making decisions as a family, if there was a decision that had to be made, even if it affected one person-you know, it had to be brought to everyone and let’s all discuss it together and let’s all give input. I think for me, interestingly, I never fully jived with that moment. So I was kind of the square peg in the round hole and I think that’s kind of shaped my own development as a leader in the sense of-- moving into adulthood, I kind of defaulted to, you know-well, I need to get advice. I need to get opinions from other people. Even though I didn’t fully feel comfortable doing that because that was how it was always done for me. I felt like I had to do that, even if I felt confident and comfortable with my own decision … that’s something that I really had to grow into as a leader because I was used to that really collectivist approach to making decisions.

Richardson: It’s so funny when you said, you know, you didn’t necessarily agree with or you didn’t necessarily jive with the collectivist approach to decision-making. In my family, we did not have the collectivist approach. It was whatever the adult or adults said goes. So as a result, I often take a consensus approach to leadership decision-making. So, I have an idea in my head of what I want to do, but I will often ask my team, and I use the term team on purpose, I would often ask, you know, my team just to see if anyone had either a better suggestion, or if collectively we could come up with a better answer. So there were times where I had no problem, you know, coming up with my own answer and executing it, especially in those times where I couldn’t get back to them [didn’t have time to talk with my team members]. But, if there were moments where I had time to draw people together, to talk about something, and we came up with a collective decision, then we would do that.

Yancey: I feel that-like before I came to the discipline of leadership and really had an understanding of what leadership was, I was in this world of counseling, which is what my Masters is in: counseling and student development. And so I recognize that I am a very centered relationship person and so I think part of that with my students is just I feel like, the old teacher adage, they have to know that I care before they can even receive anything or be comfortable in that space right? And so I don’t know as I think about my leadership approach, I always talk about how it’s this intersection of authentic leadership and servant leadership, but every time I teach this leadership theories class and these particular theories that are focused on relationships, I’m like, I don’t know, maybe I’m more like that [leadership theory]. We just finished up this week talking about leader member exchange. And you know, these dyadic relationships that our leader has with their followers. So I’ve spent all this week thinking how effectively do I have this relationship? It’s interesting that we’re doing this study this semester that I’m teaching theories because I swear to you, like, every week, whatever theory I’m teaching to the class [I think] how well am I leaning into this? Is this actually my leadership orientation? So I don’t know. We’ll see once I get through the whole semester, but it’s been an interesting journey for me to kind of reevaluate that process because if you ask me at the top of my head, I’m like, oh I’m a servant leader. I genuinely want to be this behind the scenes person that is kind of helping and nurturing and I don’t need the recognition. I don’t need the shine. I just wanna, you know, make a difference.

Richardson: Yes, it [my leadership identity] hit me in that, okay, I am a leadership educator. I recognize myself as a leadership educator now. I’ve done leadership-informal and formal. But, this is such new territory that I’m actually having to stop myself and become a student again before I can jump back into the role of leadership and leadership educator. And that was just something within, I think conversations of leadership identity, where we don’t often think about or recognize those moments where you just have to stop and go back to full on student mode so that you can then properly go back [to students] and educate, but also lead better [in other roles]. And so it’s like, that’s just the space I’m in right now. Sometimes, I’m like, where are all the books, where are all the articles? Where are the other conferences I need to go to so I can just sit back and listen? And I think that is what it’s sort of like. What is your leadership identity? It’s more of how does one aspect continue to influence the other [i.e. leadership identity and leadership education]? Cause it [leadership identity] keeps changing and I think I’m at the point where I’ve realized it. Not only does it keep changing, but I’m expecting it to change as I grow and evolve as a leader.

Richardson: I will say, just thinking about what we have talked about and what we’ve written about, I feel like the answer to the research question … it’s ever evolving. It just sort of depends on the time and the place and the audience and everything. I think I can say I’ve gained more insight on leader education and leadership identity as we’ve gone through this process. But yeah, it’s definitely continuously evolving, which is so interesting to me.

Yancey: Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, as we went through this process and I was trying to determine, you know, what are my leadership orientations, I still very much resonate with authentic leadership, but I’m also realizing that some of the, um, significant aspects of my leadership, I guess, don’t really have a theoretical orientation, yet in terms of wellness, I consider myself a very reflective leader and I don’t know that there’s necessarily a particular approach or theory at this point that has a lot of research behind it.

Within leadership education, we focused on our journal entries that fell into two characteristics of Priest and Seemiller’s (2018) leadership identification formulation: experimentation and validation.

Yancey journal entry: This past week, I’m reflecting on the process of completing a particular assignment as a model for my students, and the personal insights I gained in the assignment completion. In one of my courses this semester, my first assignment is a “Three Stories of Leadership” presentation. Students are asked to reflect on the people, places, experiences, identities, and/or influences that have most strongly shaped their approach to, and definition of, leadership. My goal is for my students early on to begin to think about how their unique positionality in the world affects the way they perceive and lean into “leadership.” I decided this semester to complete the assignment myself, and shared my own presentation with my students this past week during class. I decided to focus my three stories on (1) my identity as a black [cisgender] woman; (2) the influence of my grandmother, a significant role model in my life; and (3) the impact of my musicianship, as a classical pianist from about age 9 through college.

That said, I also see my leadership as a journey rather than a destination: as paradigms shift and new ways of being emerge, I recognize the need for consistent awareness and receptivity around new learnings and understandings. I am most excited when my students take a concept we’ve been discussing, and draw a direct connection to when they’ve experienced the phenomena, and/or how they can apply the concept/phenomenon to a current situation. If my students can walk away from any of my leadership courses having been able to do this on a weekly basis, then I have done my job.

Richardson response: So this part makes me think about the other aspect of leadership – the view of the followers. Would your students say the same thing or do you think they would define you doing your job as something different? I think that aspect also influences how we should measure leadership educator success.

Richardson journal entry: This past week, I’ve reflected on my role as a leadership educator. Just in the past few days, that word “educator” has come to mean different things, depending on the audience. I’ve been a coach, a teacher-breaking down concepts and explaining them in creative ways to different learners, and researcher-as I have drafted possible curriculum for leadership education students. It’s made me realize just how deep leadership education and being an educator goes because we are always creating, researching, teaching, coaching, or thinking about what needs to be developed or considered for our students. Mentally, being an educator is never ending and whether the audience is under the age of 23 or older, our students are always on our minds. That’s what makes an educator an educator. The leadership piece is always evolving though, at least for me.

I can’t help but consider marginalized populations and communities when I think of leadership. Leadership education is truly an inclusive, social justice initiative, especially when considering leadership outside of traditional for-profit entities. It’s something that can take place anywhere, so I’ve been toying with ways to emphasize that aspect to my students, but also practice leadership education outside of the academy in order to make it accessible. Who knew that this prompt could end up feeling overwhelming in relation to one’s purpose? I know that my purpose is to educate others and others do not have to be confined to an educational institution. I’ve got to think about this more.

I always knew that leadership was not a one size fits all, but now I really feel that educating others about leadership has to involve conversation, not just lecturing, and it has to incorporate the ability to adapt at different times. I learn from my students as much as they learn from me. We both bring our experiences into the setting, and while I may guide the learning to ensure that correct terms and theories are used, the setting is very much a reciprocal learning process. From there, we create meaning together. This occurs in the classroom, in a webinar that I am facilitating, or even in a workshop that I’m conducting. I might bring the overall “knowledge”, but I act more as a facilitator because experience has taught me that I will leave the situation gaining knowledge just like my students or participants.

Yancey response: This is great! I have often felt conflicted about this type of reassurance in my own leadership … I feel confident as an educator, based on sheer years of experience, but I have at times struggled with my confidence as a leader educator, because of my relative ‘newness’ to the discipline, in terms of years of education – despite the fact that I am finishing up my doctorate in it.

Confirmation (Seemiller & Priest, 2015) occurred during our final conversations as we reflected on the entire research experience and our views of leadership identity. While we were already participants in leadership educator communities via professional organizations, our institutions, and our own activities within our communities as leaders, we also experienced a confirmation of a new area: leader wellness. Leader wellness is a newer area of research; however, as we are both educators and African American women, we could not help but notice hearing or reading about African American women leaders, especially in higher education, who have passed away. In 2023, two college presidents: Dr. Joanne A. Epps of Temple University (Orbanek, 2023) and Dr. Orinthia T. Montague of Volunteer State Community College (Smithson, 2023) passed away. Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey passed away by suicide; she claimed a stressful work environment before her passing (Davis, 2024). As leadership educators, but also leaders in our own careers, as well as African American women, we both felt that wellness was something that we not only needed to emphasize to our students, but model for them as well.

Richardson: I was just actually, I was just thinking about how to teach some of my classes differently the next time I teach them. Because you’re right, it’s you [i.e. me]. You gain new information and new knowledge every time you do it [teach], especially about yourself. I’m right there with you. I will say one more thing that stuck out to me as I was going through your entries was the idea of leader wellness. I think, like I said in one of my comments, that leader wellness is so incredibly new to the field in terms of what’s been researched and what needs to be talked about more. It’s not talked about enough.

Yancey: Yeah and as I was looking back over our research questions this morning, before we met and thinking about kind of the second part of that first research question, the experiences of leaders in a post-pandemic world and how that has influenced the way we educate others. I think in looking at both of our journal posts, we both have been very intentional about number one, trying to prioritize this idea or recognizing the importance of leader wellness and trying to set those boundaries with our students. Then also encouraging them to set boundaries for themselves, and you know, as I think about it, I want to believe that I was intentional about that before COVID. But I think even more so in this post-COVID world, I think there is an increased awareness on behalf of leader educators to really make sure that we’re nurturing a group above current and future leaders that are prioritizing on that aspect [of wellness] because truly you can’t operate in any capacity if you haven’t taken care of yourself.

Richardson: As I educate others, especially women, stepping into their own style of leadership, I’m becoming one who is really focused on self-care. I have learned (especially this year) to model self-care by even telling my students that “hey, the weekend is for me and my family. I’ll respond [to emails] if I feel that it is an emergency. Do the same [make time for self-care] for yourself”. Therefore, I think that I am continuing this year-long modeling (hopefully) of showing what work hard, play hard really translates to and how it could work in a leader’s life pursuit.

Yancey: I love this idea of setting boundaries and encouraging students to do the same! I think that as women in particular, there’s a tendency to be nurturers, and sometimes even a guilt that comes with having to say no. I have always felt obligated to provide an explanation or disclaimer with my “no,” but the journey for me now is not apologizing for my no’s! As I set similar boundaries with my students, I’m finding that I try to capitalize on them as teachable moments … particularly for my women students (re: empowerment), but really for all my students (re: wellness). For the past year, I’ve had a statement on all my syllabi around wellness as a multidimensional aspect that I want us all – me as instructor and them as students – to attend to, and ways in which I hope we’ll do so both individually and collectively as a classroom community. I hope that in these small ways, I am not only teaching leadership, but modeling the importance of self-care for leaders (even if I don’t always feel like I embody it well myself).

As authors of this study, we explored leadership identity formation by sharing narratives of our own development and experiences as leadership educators via the method of duoethnography. Doing so allowed us to see the complexity of leadership and leadership educator evolution, as well as areas of leadership education that could use further study. The results of this study support parts of previous work on leadership education and identity formation, but also provide insight into newer aspects of leadership education and leadership development such as leadership wellness. Through this study, we were able to show that leadership identity was an ever-evolving process in which leadership educators can better themselves over time. One’s leadership identity may not be something that emerges when one takes on a leadership role with a title, but one’s identity as an educator and a leader may begin as early as childhood by the experiences one has within his or her family. We discuss our study by highlighting our research questions below.

We found that our upbringings significantly influenced the way in which we approach aspects of leadership such as decision-making. For Yancey, a consensus style of decision-making caused her to develop and gain confidence in making decisions, and taking responsibility for those consequences. This influenced the way that she taught decision-making to her students where they might have vacillated between gaining thoughts and perspectives from one another, but ultimately have to make final decisions for their teams. In Richardson’s case, decision-making was up to those in authoritative positions; therefore, she learned to appreciate consensus style decision-making, taking into account the perspectives and ideas of others in order to make decisions. Both authors also learned to incorporate and teach a relational style of leadership to students, aligning with their own knowledge of creating an environment of interconnectedness and trust among their students (Akpan et al., 2020; Chuang, 2021).

Both of us took into account our lives as leaders in areas outside of the classroom, such as in our homes. As spouses and mothers, we acknowledged that we were both in the role of caregivers and home managers, often managing our families and making decisions for our families in ways that changed during the pandemic, as well as after the pandemic (Pettigrew, 2021). As Black women researchers, we also recognized that much of our work within leadership centered on community and relationship building, which may have been stagnant during the pandemic for some researchers. As a result, we both began focusing on nontraditional leadership styles and attributes such as self-leadership among women, community leadership, and even self-care for leaders. Through our reflections, teaching leadership in a post-pandemic world as doubly marginalized educators meant prioritizing aspects such as wellness, equity, and advocacy within our teaching practices, as we created new meanings of leadership with our students.

This study showed that health-oriented leadership was something that we were still learning. There is a dearth of literature on health-oriented leadership/wellness among leaders, as most scholarship revolves around ways that leaders can support the wellness of their employees. There is even less information about wellness among leadership educators, though we are often placed in a position of being change agents (Fox & Sangha, 2023). However, within our study, we found that modeling wellness practices for our students was important, as we wanted them to understand that wellness should not only be a part of their lives, but a part of their leadership practice. Stories such as the death of Temple University’s former president, Dr. JoAnne Epps, and others highlight the need for discussions around health-oriented leadership (Medina, 2023; Smithson, 2023). In our case, modeling wellness and self-care for our students was a way of working towards social justice and equity within the classroom, as some students, for a variety of cultural reasons, may not have learned to prioritize wellness as a part of their leadership practice (Dickens, Womack, & Dimes, 2019; Sales, Burke, & Cannonier, 2020). Doing so through wellness was our way of promoting fairness in a work environment as leaders.

This study was completed via duoethnography in order to investigate the personal narratives of two leadership educators. The leadership educators, both African American women, had held various leadership positions and faculty positions within their career span of twenty years, each. The use of duoethnography allowed the authors to present their narrative in a non-linear fashion; however, the participants consisted of two people and not more. The results of this study could look different using a different population according to gender, race, career field, and location. A different methodology could also produce different results such as ethnography, narrative inquiry, or phenomenology.

By writing narratives in dialogic form, duoethnographic research stays accessible to readers and researchers invite the opportunity for further dialog and inquiry (DeCino & Strear, 2019; Sawyer & Norris, 2015). As a result, no study is fully complete. Leadership educator identity development is an evolving field that is also oriented within social justice in an effort to contribute to bettering the world, one leader at a time. Duoethnography provides an avenue for exploring narratives in a critically challenging and critically reflective way to help educators better their own development and practices. By combining this method with LIF (Seemiller & Priest, 2017), authors can analyze their own identities as leadership educators and as leaders, which can lead to further studies. Our recommendations for leadership education based on this study are:

• (1)

  Reflect on one’s own leadership development to establish their own values for teaching future leaders;

• (2)

  Have students reflect on their own upbringings to understand ways in which their leadership ideas developed;

• (3)

  Consider voices that are not regularly included in leadership studies to help create a more inclusive leadership perspective and curriculum; and

• (4)

  Incorporate within leadership curriculum aspects of leadership such as health-oriented leadership that focuses on the wellness of leaders, not solely employees and/or team members.

Based on this study, further studies could also include quantitative and qualitative research on the influence of leadership wellness on leadership effectiveness; LIF of leaders post-graduation; and/or differences in LIF of leadership educators of various demographics. This field of study is significant, as educators of leadership studies are often educators as well as leaders. Therefore, the dynamic of this development remains complex.