From Knowing to Becoming: A Triadic Leadership Development Experience

Abstract

This autoethnographic study examined the leadership identity development of two women doctoral students engaged in a pilot triadic internship under the mentorship of a woman department chair within a large, accredited university. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm, the study drew on reflexive journals and group processing to examine how relational mentoring practices shaped leadership identity development. Three themes emerged: Feeling Trusted , Feeling Courageous , and Becoming a Leader. These themes illustrate a developmental pathway in which entrusted access and mentor transparency fostered trust, trust enabled courageous participation, and courage supported leadership identity integration. The findings suggest that meaningful leadership development does not emerge in isolation but is shaped through contextual, relational, and emotionally safe learning environments. Beyond doctoral education, this work carries practical implications for leadership development across organizational settings by highlighting how triadic mentoring structures may expand access, shared authority, and identity-forming leadership opportunities. By situating leadership learning in experiential and relationally embedded practice, the internship bridged the theory-praxis divide and modeled a feminist and developmental approach to mentoring. Ultimately, this study contributes to leadership scholarship by showing how triadic relational mentoring can support sustainable leadership identity development through trust, courageous delegation, and embodied participation.