| Summary: | An extensive review of the literature reveals that today's community colleges are facing a national leadership crisis as "baby boomer" administrators continue to retreat en masse, leaving in their wake a staggering loss of institutional memory and cumulative experience. As the largest system of public higher education in the world, California's community colleges are currently onboarding unprecedented numbers of emerging new leaders to fill this void and will likely continue
doing so for the foreseeable future. The rationale underpinning this study is that given scholars' extensive focus on the external aspects of leadership development, namely skills and modalities, the research has largely overlooked the internal factors influencing leadership growth. Thus, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate and describe the relationship between lived experiences and leadership development in emerging community college leaders in light of
Mezirow's Transformational Learning Theory (1978; 1991; 1997; 2000). Influenced by Knowles' Adult Learning Theory (1984), Transformational Learning Theory assumes a metacognitive and adaptive view of learning and posits how adults can transform long-standing beliefs and learn from lived experiences resulting in perspectives that are, "progressively more inclusive, discriminating and integrative of experience" (Mezirow, 1991). The researcher initially identified forty-two prospective
participants for this study via their involvement with a "grow-your-own" (GYO) onboarding program for new administrators affiliated with a large, multi-campus community college district located in Northern California. Potential participants with no more than three years' leadership experience were asked to complete a preliminary screening protocol. The seven participants ultimately selected thus represented a small but purposively diverse collective. Via the use of semi-structured
interviews, the lived experiences of these participants with the phenomenon, "emerging community college leadership", was explored, including their use of reflective practice. The three goals of this study were to fill a viable space in existing scholarly literature by 1) adding to the growing body of research on Transformational Learning Theory by focusing specifically on the development of emerging leaders, 2) exploring the lived experiences of a population not well researched, and 3)
describing how the development of leadership capacity is connected to transformative learning experiences. This study had four findings: 1) cognitive dissonance can trigger learning for emerging leaders, 2) emerging leaders can strategically build their own professional skill sets, 3) reflective practice is a powerful tool for expanding leadership capacity, and 4) emerging leaders employ reflective frames to navigate their roles. These findings are discussed in relation to Mezirow's
theory as three sub-themes: "Lost in Place, Marshalling Forces and Situating in Place, and are accompanied by nine associated sub-themes: lack of control, insecurity, isolation, drawing on past experiences, forging connections, circumscribing boundaries, deepening perspectives, authenticity, and intentionality. Also included is a description of participants' use of reflective practice, its evolution over time and with accumulated experience, and its subsequent influence upon emerging
leaders' professional growth and development. The researcher concludes by connecting these findings to a series of specific recommendations for practitioners working with emerging leaders interested in facilitating their leadership development and also provides suggestions for potential avenues for future scholarly research. Keywords: baby boomer, annuitant, interim, transformative learning, emerging leader, metacognition, adult learning, constructivist-interpretivist
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