LESSONS FROM LEADERS OF TODAY FOR LEADERS OF TOMORROW

Emergent lessons learned and experienced can be harnessed to develop the next generation of effective leaders. Leadership requires both experience and continuous development to flourish. As learners of leadership, empirical growth can be found by developing knowledge and reflecting on the experiences of successful leaders. The goal of this exploration was to provide insights that can help students succeed with their leadership challenges and leadership dreams. Moving beyond the classroom learning, this research wanted to question the conventional wisdom surrounding leadership and take the teachable moment to reiterate to students that not only can great leadership be found locally, but lessons learned can bridge that gap between abstract concepts explored in the classroom and realworld application. Interviews were conducted to explore the lived experiences and personal meanings of leadership lessons learned from leaders in the community. Identified themes and subthemes captured a structural description of the participants lived experiences with leadership and developed an aggregate description to capture the overall essence of the await and how to determine lessons learned.