Do It Yourself: Exploring Youth Leadership Development in Rock Groups

Abstract

Effective leadership has become a highly prized capacity and capability that should be extensively developed in a wide range of economic, social and cultural organisational contexts. In response, a rapidly growing leadership industry has evolved in order to cater to this demand imperative through the provision of an impressive array of leadership programmes, services and interventions. Within this industry, youth leadership has itself developed into a significant field as evidenced by its scholarship, communities, initiatives, and schools. Despite this growth in popularity, there is a surprising paucity of research that is centred upon how youth actually go about enacting leadership. Most scholarship is dedicated to advancing normative models of leadership, frequently adopted from adult leadership models that advocate how youth should lead, rather than how they lead. Consequently there is the potential for a profound mismatch between these normative models the actual leadership behaviour of youth. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the closer alignment between normative models of youth leadership development and the actual practice of youth leadership and its development. This is achieved through the theoretical and empirical exploration of youth-led rock groups as a context for understanding and improving youth leadership development. Through a series of observations and interviews with youth-led New Zealand rock groups; this thesis seeks to explore the enactment and development of youth leadership in an alternative context that is directly relevant and readily relatable to youth. The thesis findings contribute toward a greater understanding of youth leadership and its development through the discovery of processes that contrast common perceptions. While youth leadership development is typically handled in an individualistic manner, findings emphasise a preference toward collaboration and collectivity in group work.