Can one be taught to negotiate, persuade, and execute confidently, but not taught to be good? Research says that it is possible, and that it is done so quickly and unquestionably. Skills and character are not synonymous, and decades of educational research have found that developing one does not automatically develop the other. That is all part and parcel of the foundation of a values-based leadership curriculum: without values, skills are only technique; it’s about valuable leadership skills. With values, they are character.
Values-Based Leadership: The Research Landscape
This is not an original concept with an original set of language. It is an old idea, however, from an old research tradition in character education. Developmental psychologist Thomas Lickona, who is often called the father of the modern character education movement, constructed his theory around three interlocking concepts: knowing, feeling, and acting morally. In his seminal work Educating for Character, Lickona argued that schools cannot allow character education to be an extra-curricular concept. It needs to be designed for, taught consciously and practiced consistently, in the same way, one would approach the teaching of a skill (Lickona, Educating for Character). A knowledge of what is right is not the same as a caring about what is right, nor is either the same as acting rightly. A values-based leadership curriculum that only addresses one of these three areas leaves the others to chance.
This tripartite framework is significant because it explains the root cause of the failure of skills-only leadership training: a workshop can teach “moral knowing.” One can define honesty, integrity, and responsibility on a worksheet. However, understanding the definition is not the same as understanding the why or choosing to do so in practice. Values-based leadership training intends to teach all three, rather than just the first.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has taken this thread and pulled at it for decades through extensive research into social and emotional learning, which is a close cousin of the values-based leadership development. A landmark meta-analysis by Durlak and colleagues, which examined 213 studies and more than 270,000 K-12 students, found that students in social and emotional learning (SEL) programs had statistically significant gains in social-emotional skills, prosocial behavior, and academic performance, alongside a decrease in conduct problems (CASEL). Programs that targeted the core competencies increased students’ performance by 11 percentile points, on average, compared to students who did not participate, and follow-up research found that the positive academic impact was still present years later, at an average of 13 percentile points (CASEL).
Most astonishingly, a large-scale meta-analysis of participants for up to 18 years after the conclusion of their SEL programs found lasting improvements in well-being and social-emotional functioning that held steady regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or school location (PubMed, Taylor et al.). Values and character formation is not a short-term band-aid. It is a long-term process.
Why Skills Without Values Have a Shelf Life
Skills-based leadership training is not a worthless endeavor; it is an incomplete one. A student who acquires the skills needed to run a good meeting, negotiate conflict, or make a persuasive pitch has gained capability, period. However, capability is directionless without character to guide it. The same negotiation skill that allows a values-driven student to broker peace between two classmates can be used by a values-free student to manipulate a group for the benefit of himself. The capability is the same, but the end result is all about what is underneath it.
It is exactly what Lickona said of moral action: character has to be cultivated, and not just understood, and cannot be transferred to real-world behavior when we are under pressure (Atlantis Press analysis of Lickona). A skills-only curriculum can create students who convincingly act leadership behaviors without having the internal moral compass to make those behaviors valid over time. That is a danger to any school that invests in leadership development: a technique without character will not crash and burn in the first few days. It will quietly fail, later in the day, when no one is watching and the stakes are higher.
Character first, then competence, not because skills don’t matter, but because skills built on character last, and skills built on nothing don’t.
What This Means for Curriculum Design
Research points to a design principle for schools: leadership curricula should be based on values as the foundation and not as a values “unit” that is added to a primarily skills-based program. Lickona’s moral knowing, feeling, and action model, CASEL’s evidence of lasting social-emotional competency, and decades of character education research all point to the same conclusion: durable leadership culture requires an integrative approach, not a checklist of discrete skills.
This is why peer-led, research-backed practice is more valuable than lecture-based instruction. Moral feeling and moral action, as Lickona defined them, develop in the context of real-world experiences in which a student’s values are tested, rather than explained. A curriculum that is built on real-world experiences and peer accountability gives students reps at moral action, which is what skills-only training fails to do.
The Bottom Line for Educators
When you’re evaluating leadership programs for your school, ask this diagnostic question: does this program develop technique, or does it develop character that leads to technique as a result? The research tradition, from Lickona’s foundational work to CASEL’s large-scale meta-analyses, favors the latter. Values-based leadership is not a watered-down version of skills-based training; it is the version of leadership training built to last.
That is why Growing Leaders has built its research-supported iLead curriculum on that foundation that is character first, skills second, so that what students learn in the classroom becomes who they are outside it.
Ready to see how a values-based leadership curriculum rooted in decades of character education research can enhance leadership development at your school? Visit growingleaders.com.
