Value-Acquisition Leadership Development Through Guided Self-Reflection

Alfreda Goods

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Value-Acquisition Leadership Development Through Guided Self-Reflection

Alfreda Goods

University of Phoenix, USA

Volume 22: 2025 pp. 51-72: ABSTRACT

Unethical leadership and dishonest business practices have created a global crisis of confidence in business leaders, highlighting the need for higher education to prepare graduates who are ethical, transparent, empathetic, and trustworthy. Although business curricula include ethics, cultivating enduring moral habits remains a persistent challenge. This qualitative, holistic case study examined how undergraduate business students engaged in self-reflection on their leadership and ethical values within the Differentiation of Personal and Professional Values course. A total of 235 colloquium logs from 16 junior-level students were analyzed using value, magnitude, and focused coding. Self-reflection emerged as both a humbling developmental process and a safeguard against unethical behavior. Students differentiated ethical behaviors such as humility, empathy, honesty, and fairness from unethical behaviors rooted in arrogance, self-interest, and lack of empathy. Progression through Bloom’s affective domain indicates that structured, values-based reflection can cultivate ethically grounded leadership and strengthen moral decision-making in undergraduate business education.

Keywords: Bloom’s Taxonomy, empathy, humility, affective, leadership development, selfreflection, values