Reflecting on Experience for Leadership Development

Adrian Y.L. Chan, Ph.D University of Nebraska, 2010 Advisor: Fred Luthans This study proposes that being reflective or ruminative about one's leadership experience can have differential effects on one's leadership efficacy, implicit leadership theories and psychological capital. Specifically, through the aid of an event history calendar, conscript military trainees of high and low military experience from a SE Asian military organization were randomly assigned to recall and reflect or ruminate on his past leadership experience. Results show that type of reflection interacts with level of military leadership experience to differentially affect one's leadership efficacy, implicit leadership theories and leadership self-awareness. Reflection triggers produced significantly higher levels of implicit leadership theories under both low and high leadership experience conditions. In the low leadership experience condition, reflection triggers resulted in higher levels of leadership efficacy and leadership self-awareness but was not significant. On the other hand, in the high leadership experience condition, the reflection triggers performed significantly worse than the rumination triggers. Implications for the findings are discussed.