Developing a talent pipeline: a community of practice creates and evaluates a leadership development program

Abstract

Expectations of leadership development continue to evolve in today’s work environment. An innovative practice between university and industry partners has emerged as a response to these expectations. In this trend, through an engaged scholarship lens, a leadership development pilot program prepares college students with essential skills to lead before entering the workforce. Three phases lay the foundation for this engaged scholarship approach: creating a community of practice, developing a leadership development program using the 70-20-10 concept (Johnson et al., 2018), and evaluating expectations and outcomes to ensure continuous improvement. The community of practice consists of the university and industry collaborators. The 70-20-10 framework, created by researchers and authors working with the Center for Creative Leadership, blends experiences (70%), coaching/mentoring (20%), and formal training (10%) to strengthen participants’ leadership acumen (Johnson et al., 2018). Two evaluation tools assess the program: Kirkpatrick’s four-level model (Kirkpatrick, 1998) and appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). Kirkpatrick’s four-level training evaluation model assesses changes in reaction, learning, behavior, and results (Kirkpatrick, 1998). Appreciative inquiry focuses on what is working well and practices continuous improvement (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). This study presents an engaged scholarship approach to create and evaluate a leadership development pilot program committed to preparing a talent pipeline. The purpose of the study is to understand better how the process of program evaluation is leveraged to 1) improve the Industry Fellowship Program outcomes and 2) build a community of practice to advance community engagement. The study focused on the participation of 19 students and their responses to online surveys and focus group interviews. Additionally, field notes and other relevant documentation such as monthly agendas contributed to lessons learned by the community of practice. This study led to a better understanding of how program evaluation may be leveraged to build a community of practice to advance community engagement and improve program outcomes. The evaluation led to a better understanding of the Fellows’ reactions to programming activities, discovery of acquired learning, application of key learnings (behavior changes), results of full-time employment. Implications of research are identified lessons learned from engaging in a community of practice.