Beyond a single answer: Student leaders' perspectives on essential leadership skills and leadership development in Malaysian higher education

Abstract

Student leadership programs are more justifiable if the learning outcomes are aligned with the student leaders’ own conception of effective leadership. In this qualitative descriptive study, we explored the leadership competencies that student leaders believed were most important and actions they proposed to develop those competencies. During a leadership camp in July 2022, two open-ended survey questions were answered by seventy-eight students holding formal leadership positions from one Malaysian public university. Responses were analysed using inductive qualitative content analysis. The two questions were analysed separately and frequencies of categories were only used to describe the prominence of the coded content. Seven competency categories were identified; communication skills (28 coded respondent-category occurrences), responsibility and integrity (25), emotional intelligence (24), leadership and team management (19), decision-making and problem solving (13), resilience and work ethic (13), organization and time management (8). Proposed developmental activities were coded into three domains: personal leadership character (35 action occurrences), interpersonal competence (35), and leadership performance skills (17). The findings suggest student leadership is more of a constellation of relational, ethical, intrapersonal, and execution-oriented capacities than one dominant skill. They also observe an important difference between what participants valued and how they thought those capacities should be developed. Universities should thus incorporate reflective practice, ethical and relational learning and applied leadership tasks in coherent programs. The study used short answers from one institution so the framework should be seen as a starting point for interpretation of program design and further testing, not as a validated sequence of development.