Teaching Leadership: Most Any Psychologist Can Do It

The past two decades have seen a growing interest in college courses on leadership in a variety of academic disciplines. The study of leadership has a long history, much of it based on psychology. As a result, psychologists are well informed and quite capable of teaching leadership courses. In this article, I discuss core theories of leadership, make connections to specific areas of psychology, and review current and future trends in leadership research. I also discuss the value that a course on leadership has for undergraduates, as well as specific suggestions for enhancing a psychologist’s ability to teach leadership courses. Keywords leadership, industrial–organizational psychology, psychology careers, teaching of psychology Leadership is a hot topic in higher education. Graduate degree programs are springing up all over, both in the United States and internationally. Many of these leadership programs are housed in schools of business or education, but there are inter-disciplinary programs in ‘‘Leadership Studies’ ’ at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well, including a few stand-alone schools of leadership (e.g., the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond and the School of Lead-ership Studies at Kansas State University). Moreover, a number of leadership courses are being offered at the undergraduate level and in professional schools, including medicine, nur-sing, law, and engineering. As a result, there is a large demand for faculty members who can teach courses on lead-ership, and there are a growing number of tenure-track posi-tions available for those who can both teach leadership and make scholarly contributions to the burgeoning research lit-erature on leadership. Before I discuss the benefits of studying leadership, I will review the core content in leadership, much of which is rooted in psychology. As we shall see, although the topic of leadership is studied by many disciplines, ranging from political science to communication to sociology, and especially management and business, most of the core theories, as well as the methods used in the study of leadership, emanate from psychology