Developing Leadership Competencies to Promote the Community Development of the Mississippi Delta Region

Parts of the Mississippi Delta region have been known for a number of very serious problems, including poverty, illiteracy, race relations, public health, and declining economy issues. An approach to combat its social and economic ills is to develop leadership competencies through a community leadership development initiative. The purposes of this study were to assess the extent to which leadership skills were developed in the Mid-South Delta Leaders (MSDL) program participants as compared to non-participants and to determine the specific impacts of the program on its participants. The study used a mixed methodology to assess the effect of the program on the development of a number of leadership competencies. The quantitative part used a posttest-only design with nonequivalent groups. The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI-self) instrument was used to measure the leadership actions and behaviors. Data were analyzed with MANCOVA test to examine the effectiveness of the community leadership development initiative. Results suggested that the participation in the MSDL program significantly influences the leadership competencies with an F = 2.554, p < 0.05. The qualitative part was to explore using a follow-on open ended question: what specific impacts or changes did the MSDL program have on you? The results identified ten themes of impact. These themes of change range from better understanding of cultural and diversity differences, better networking and collaborative opportunities, promotions and better jobs, and better understanding how leadership makes an impact on community change.