Dr. Sandy Geyer
My name is Dr. Sandy Geyer, and I specialise in leadership preparation for our future leaders. My work in leadership began on the day that I co-founded Allcopy Publishers Pty Ltd, with my brother, in our garage in 1996. Allcopy Publishers is the home of the Mind Action Series of textbooks and educational resources.
In 2012 I founded EnQPractice to further develop my work in entrepreneurial leadership development and emotional intelligence development within schools for both teachers and students. My book, Path of the Lion and training workshops, Circles of Empowerment reached many entrepreneurs, academic leaders, and student leaders, through my travels through New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa from 2012 to 2018.
My in-field observations from these experiences showed me that the long-term benefits of my work in these fields was limited for two reasons:
- I was only able to reach a small number of entrepreneurs and academic leaders with face-to-face workshops and presentations
- Effective leadership skills require a foundation of self-awareness and self-leadership which most of the entrepreneurs and academic leaders I was reaching did not have in place
By means of a doctoral study, conducted between 2019 and 2023, I placed my entrepreneurial skills together with academic grounding to develop an online course called Leadership Literacy for Life (LL4L), for first year high school students. The content of this course was designed with the specific purpose of creating a foundation for leadership learning, for our future leaders, in all leadership roles that they may encounter throughout their careers.
A new theory of leadership called “Seeding Leadership”, was created through this research process, which was informed by Integral Theory, and forms the foundation of the Leadership Literacy for Life courses.
Why is leadership literacy for future leaders an essential part of their self-identity development?
There is an ongoing leadership crisis in the world. The failure rate for entrepreneurial leadership is as recorded to be as high as 80% within the first five years, and 90% within the second five years.
Leadership within educational and corporate institutions remain heavily based on the traditional leadership philosophies, including commanding, authoritative and transactional leadership styles. These styles overuse power and control, and fail to empower others towards a common goal, the ultimate purpose of leadership.
Such leadership styles, whilst effective within certain contexts, are serving to disempower future leaders and their followers.
Research has shown that most students leave schools believing that only leaders do leadership and that they are not leaders. There are those students, in the minority who do leave school believing that they are leaders. This belief stems most likely from having been student leaders at school. These students tend to mimic the leadership styles of power and control that they learned and observed within the traditional school structures in their future leader roles.
Both groups are contributing to the world’s leadership crisis and the source of the problem is the lack of a leadership literacy learning experience while they are still at school.
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