Leadership is an ill-defined domain. Designing and implementing leadership development, therefore, may be viewed as a multi-tiered problem involving the individual, the organization, and the professional field. Each tier must interact effectively with the others to create a system that promotes continuous growth of the leader. Effective leadership development can be considered an integrated system that supports the individual's lifelong learning, contributes to their personal learning and career trajectory, creates a healthy learning organization, and enhances their professional field.

The purpose of this design-based research study was to explore aspiring leaders' individual development, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning during and following participation in autobiographical 11-month leadership development program as an innovative form of an individual leadership development system. The developed intervention, delivered in a virtual environment, was entitled the Aspiring Leader Development Program (ALDP). This study explored an autobiographical approach to leadership development to generate design principles and insights exploring the potential of this leadership development system to empower the individual to become their own source for personalized self-study, to generate lessons learned, and best practices of leadership. In short, the ALDP supports learners in how to learn from their own successes and challenges, from colleagues and other leaders---to be aware of, reflect on, and act upon any personal transformation related to leadership and create an individual process of leadership development.

The study employed a specific design-based research approach of the Integrative Learning Design Framework (ILDF) (Bannan-Ritland, 2003) that includes four phases of Informed Exploration, Enactment, Evaluation: Local Impact, and Evaluation: Broad Impact. The study occurred within the Evaluation: Local Impact phase. An individual, qualitative, intrinsic case study and cross-case study analysis was employed that incorporated several micro-cycles and meso-cycles of systematic design-based research. Data were collected from 6 participants through informal semi-structure telephonic interviews at strategic points during the intervention, and included artifacts (two reflective essays and leadership philosophies), and feedback surveys (formative and summative).

The autobiographical designed ALDP leader development intervention resulted in a transformational learning for participants that led to insights and self-reported changes in their leader identity, critical reflection, awareness, perspectives, attitudes, performance, and behaviors. The study findings suggest that the ALDP participants had a transformational learning experience that fostered ownership of their leader development, strengthening their self-efficacy, defined and developed their leader identity, perpetuated their characteristics as lifelong learners, and expanded their engagement in self-direct learning. Design principles emerged that supported individual leader development as a dynamic system, incorporating the use of autobiographic narrative, authentic setting, evolution of a leader development book, in a virtual setting.