A Study On The Relationship Between Leadership Experience And Leadership Behavior Of The National Defense Students

Exploring the relationship between the past leadership experience and the current leadership behavior helps to reveal the development path of leadership of national defense students.The purpose of this study was to identify leadership experiences which national defense students attribute to their own leadership development and to then examine the relationship between those experiences and the five leadership behaviors measured in the Student Leadership Practices Inventory（Student LPI）^[1].The leadership behaviors measured in the Student LPI are grouped into five themes:“modeling the way”、“inspiring a shared vision”、“challenging the process”、“enabling others to act”、“encouraging the heart”^[2].The researcher applied a sequential mixed-method approach,which utilized focus groups and descriptive questionnaires to gather data.The research consisted of two phases,the second dependent on data from the first.In the study at S university,focus group interviews were first conducted and a total of 14kinds of leadership experiences were extracted,and two questionnaires were delivered to 148 national defense students.The survey results showed that 13 out of 15 correlations between leadership experience variables and leadership behavior variables were significant.In addition,efficient leaders and inefficient leaders were different in leadership experience on the whole.These findings represent a starting point for institutions to develop a training sequence that aims to help national defense students become more effective leaders.