The formation of leadership identity within leadership educators: a duoethnography

Purpose The purpose of this duoethnography is to show how leadership educator identity may be an evolutionary process that encompasses one’s life history, experience as a leader and ability to learn more about leadership and experiment with leadership concepts. Design/methodology/approach We used duoethnography as our design approach with an emphasis on the flexible design approach as well as reflective thematic analysis. Duoethnography consisted of monthly-recorded virtual interviews between the authors and bi-weekly online journal entries. Findings Our findings show that leadership identity as leadership educators can evolve from childhood experiences of leadership development to adult lessons learned as leaders and as educators. The evolution process aligns with Seemiller and Priest’s (2015) concept of leadership identity formulation (LIF). Originality/value The research presented advanced LIF by considering childhood familial lessons as a part of one’s leadership identity, as well as recognizing that as leadership educators, leadership should be recognized as dynamic and evolving and not static.